Nothing has changed: Has Labour really watered down its clean power target?

Keir Starmer's 'don't call it a reset speech' landed with something of a bump yesterday morning, with much of the media reaction adhering to the template of impatient hostility that was firmly established within hours of Labour taking office. 

It is fair to say Labour's insistence that the new 'Plan for Change' was always intended as a logical progression from the five 'missions' that defined the party's election campaign stretches credulity, especially given the pace of the government's polling collapse. If it looks like a reset and sounds like a reset, then it probably is a reset. But equally, the lack of any benefit of the doubt or recognition of the scale of the challenge the Party inherited after 14 years of Conservative economic mismanagement continues to frustrate Labour insiders.  

Journalists lined up yesterday to challenge Starmer on why the economy and public services had not been fixed inside five months. Commentators rushed to social media to mock how absurd it was for a government to think anything could ever get better. Kemi Badenoch gave the Conservative brass neck another polish, declaring Labour had "14 years in opposition and still weren't ready for government". 

Meanwhile, several media outlets that have repeatedly criticised Labour's clean power goals for being too ambitious decided to splash on how the target contained in the new 'Plan for Change' - which commits to delivering "at least 95 per cent clean power" by 2030 - represented a 'U-turn' on the government's previous commitment to build a clean power system.

Tory MPs - some of them with more than their fair share of embarrassing U-turn experience - joined the fray, slamming the government for dropping a target they insisted could never be achieved anyway.  

The problem, as the government belatedly attempted to point out, was that the 95 per cent target does not represent a U-turn - or at least not one in the way that it is being characterised.

The Labour Manifesto promised to deliver 'clean power by 2030' and contained a series of sub-targets to "double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030", alongside investments in other clean technologies. 

But it did not precisely define what would constitute 'clean power by 2030' and a close textual analysis could argue the Manifesto's insistence that "families and businesses will have lower bills for good, from a zero-carbon electricity system" is a statement of fact, rather than a explicit target. Crucially, the Manifesto also pledged to "maintain a strategic reserve of gas power stations to guarantee security of supply". The implication - widely understood by the energy industry, environmental campaigners, and anyone paying attention - was that some gas power plants would continue to be used in 2030. The clean power available in 2030 would not be 100 per cent clean. 

More detail was confirmed recently by the National Energy System Operator (NESO), which set out how it defined a 'clean power system' as one that relied on clean sources for at least 95 per cent of its power over the course of a given year. It is a definition the government was quick to accept.

This is entirely sensible. Ensuring the UK has 95 per cent clean power by 2030 is a hugely challenging undertaking, but it is technically and economically feasible. In contrast, getting to 100 per cent clean power would require the deployment of large scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) and long duration energy storage projects that are yet to be developed at scale and would prove hugely expensive. It makes more sense to deploy renewables to largely decarbonise the grid as quickly as possible, and then replace unabated reserve gas power plants during the 2030s as new nuclear projects come online and CCS, long duration energy storage, and hydrogen costs hopefully start to fall.

Interestingly, the target of 95 per cent clean power by 2030 serves to formalise the previous Conservative government's plan to have a 100 per cent clean power system by 2035, which would have required the energy industry to get to around 95 per cent clean power by - you've guessed it - 2030.

Labour had largely mapped all this out ahead of the election, which is why the Manifesto contained a degree of constructive ambiguity in the undefined pledge to deliver 'clean power by 2030'. Starmer was technically correct when he yesterday insisted there had been "no watering down" and the "clean energy pledge is exactly what is was in the election".

Where Labour is on slightly shakier ground is with a Party document from March on how to make the UK a clean energy superpower, which did contain a promise that "by 2030, the UK will be the first major country in the world to run on 100 per cent clean and cheap power, with lower bills for all".

However, here too there was a degree of ambiguity given the same document pledged to "invest in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and long-term energy storage to ensure that there is sufficient zero emission back-up power and storage for extended periods without wind or sun, while maintaining a strategic reserve of backup gas power stations to guarantee security of supply". 

The text amounted to a firmer commitment to deliver a fully clean power system by 2030, but there was still a tacit acceptance there could still be some modest emissions from gas-fired power stations ferreted away in the corners of the energy system come the end of the decade.  

And either way, the March document was superseded by the manifesto in June. If there was a U-turn on the 100 per cent clean power target it was an entirely reasonable one and it happened well before voters went to the polls. 

Where criticism of Labour is more justified is in the way the opacity it felt it had to employ during the election campaign keeps creating problems for it in office. Whether it is winter fuel payments, national insurance tax hikes, inheritance tax changes, or the clean power target, a failure to be clearer on what was planned or to better explain why the plan has had to be modified keeps chipping away at the government's standing.

Labour could have said it planned to deliver a clean power system by 2030 backed up by negligible amounts of gas power, and would set a precise target post-election. But it instead chose to promise 'clean power by 2030' and let people interpret that how they wished. The strategy may have strengthened the green dividing line with the Conservatives during the campaign, but it has now helped enable the charge that there has been a post-election U-turn.

The frustration for the energy industry - which gave the new Plan for Change a cautiously optimistic welcome - is that the latest row is yet another political distraction from the serious business of reforming the planning system and turbocharging green infrastructure investment. Starmer reiterated how the government is serious about delivering the sweeping reforms the country desperately needs to both revive the economy and decarbonise the energy system. He could have been talking about how EVs now account for a quarter of new vehicle sales, how offshore wind companies are poised for a hiring spree, or how Labour intends to deliver triple the number of major infrastructure planning decisions compared to the last Parliament. Instead, he had to defend the government against yet more pointed questions about alleged U-turns. 

This is partly a function of a media ecosystem where many titles regard any Labour government as somehow illegitimate, but it is also a result of the government failing to tell a clearer story about the broadly admirable policies and targets it is trying to deliver.