Ed Miliband to give major energy speech as fury erupts over ‘lunacy’ | Politics | News
Ed Miliband will announce major changes (Image: Getty)
Ed Miliband’s “anti-oil and gas stance” will fuel fresh price hikes for families already struggling with the cost of living crisis, critics warned.
Energy Secretary Mr Miliband will โdouble down, not back downโ on the shift to clean energy, including speeding up the rollout of renewables and electrifying heating and transport to get homes and businesses off fossil fuels.
And he will dismiss those calling for drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea by warning that ignoring two fossil fuel crises in less than five years โwould be completely irresponsibleโ.
But Claire Coutinho MP, Shadow Energy Secretary, said: โIf we want people to use electricity, then we need to make it cheap, thatโs the Conservative position, but Ed Miliband has instead been piling cost after cost onto peopleโs electricity bills.
โHe talks about breaking the link, but energy experts have said his plans will just mean generators game the system which could raise the price.
“Itโs also a red herring because the cost of fuel is only 25 per cent of an electricity bill, 75 per cent is made up of non-commodity costs, taxes and levies the Government is choosing to whack on households.
“Thatโs why our Cheap Power Plan would start taking off those costs and save the average household ยฃ200.โ
Scottish Conservative energy spokesman Douglas Lumsden said it โbeggars beliefโ that Mr Miliband is โdoubling down on his anti-oil and gas stance when itโs doing untold damage to our economy and energy securityโ.
He added: โWhen household fuel bills are going through the roof, itโs lunacy to turn our back on a plentiful energy source under our own seabed.โ
Consumers face high prices at the petrol pumps and looming energy bill rises in the next price cap period from July as a result of disruption to global energy markets caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The latest crisis comes three years after the last energy spike prompted by Russiaโs invasion of Ukraine.
Key to the plans is breaking the link between gas and electricity prices, in the face of volatile fossil fuel prices setting the cost of wholesale electricity the majority of the time.
Gas plays an outsized role in the cost of electricity in Britain, setting the wholesale price of power around 60% of the time, down from around 90% at the beginning of the decade, despite supplying a much smaller and decreasing share of power.
That is because of the marginal pricing system, in which the most expensive source of energy brought on to the grid to meet demand sets the price for all generators, apart from those on other types of contract.
That price-setting source is often gas, leaving British consumers at the mercy of volatile wholesale gas prices, while delivering a windfall for generators such as nuclear and older renewables that are not on fixed contracts.
So the Government is proposing a voluntary move by โlegacyโ clean power generators, which supply around a third of Britainโs power, onto fixed-price contracts, with the Treasury expected to provide tax incentives to encourage them to switch.
It is hoped the new contracts will deliver benefits on consumersโ bills over the next 12 months, though officials are not yet able to say what savings could be delivered.
Mr Miliband is expected to tell the Good Growth Foundation event: โAs we face the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years, the lesson for our country is clear: The era of fossil fuel security is over, and the era of clean energy security must come of age.
โFor Britain and so many other countries, clean energy is now the only route to financial security, energy security and national security.
โWhile some have said we have gone too far and too fast, I profoundly disagree.
โIn response to recent events, our action must now be faster, deeper and more wide-ranging.
โThat is why we will double down, not back down, on our mission for clean energy.โ
The plans include making it easier for people to switch to electric vehicles and heat pumps, getting them off oil and gas, with deregulation to make it easier and quicker to install clean tech.
These include permitted development rights for people to install cross-pavement facilities for on-street charging, and making it easier for renters and leaseholders to request and install chargers.
Officials say it will support surging demand for heat pumps, solar panels and electric cars, boosted by the Iran war.
Plans to โmassivelyโ expand renewables across the public estate, using brownfield land, industrial sites and railway land to host solar panels and wind turbines, could unlock up to 10 gigawatts (10GW) of capacity โ powering the equivalent of five million homes โ officials say.
There have been calls from the Tories and Reform UK to increase supplies of oil and gas from the North Sea, and to bring down bills by scrapping measures to help the UK shift to a โnet-zeroโ clean economy, such as new renewables and heat pump subsidies.
In his speech on Tuesday, Mr Miliband will say: โTo ignore one fossil fuel crisis and carry on with business as usual, as some wanted to do, was wrong.
โTo ignore two in less than five years would be completely irresponsible.
โAnd it would be even more irresponsible because unlike the twin fossil fuel shocks of the 1970s, there is now a compelling alternative in the form of clean energy.
โAn alternative that cannot be disrupted by foreign wars because it comes from our own wind, sun and nuclear resources.โ
