Reeves pledges to get cranes in the sky
Energy and infrastructure took centre stage at the Labour Party conference on Monday as Rachel Reeves promised to deliver investment to all parts of the country and Ed Miliband said he would take one million homes out of fuel poverty.
Chancellor Reeves addressed delegates in Liverpool with a forceful speech aimed at adding weight to the pro-growth public service vision being set out by the party since winning the general election.
She said that under the Tories “whole industries [had been] held back by underinvestment or the lack of a real strategy for their future”.
She name-checked the life sciences industry in the North West and clean technology in South Yorkshire as growth areas, promising “shovels in the ground” and “cranes in the sky”.
Communities, Reeves urged, “need not look on while the future is built somewhere else.”
Developers active in the energy sector have been among the first to mobilise their project teams in the initial months under the new government.
Lifting the moratorium on onshore windfarms was the trigger that fired the starting pistol for a fresh wave of energy projects.
Energy secretary Miliband, also speaking to conference on Monday, promised to take control of energy from overseas investors, with a focus on increased renewable energy capacity.
The newly created Great British Energy, chaired by Manchester-based former Siemens UK CEO Juergen Maier, is tasked with investing in clean technology produced and controlled in the UK.
This government will also bring in stricter energy efficiency standards, Miliband said. There will be consultation “by the end of the year on boosting minimum energy efficiency standards for private and social rented homes by 2030.”
The threshold for being able to rent homes will be tightened from Energy Performance Certificate E to the much higher bar of C or equivalent by 2030.
Energy and infrastructure continued as a recurring theme around the exhibition hall and at fringe events into the evening.
Tom Bradley, director at public affairs consultancy Cavendish, said: “The energy sector is certainly feeling energised this week in Liverpool, with net zero and the green industrial revolution near the top of the agenda.
“With Labour, and Ed Miliband, having made making the UK a green superpower one of their key missions, industry is feeling like it’s got the attention it wants and needs for now. But, there is also a challenge to the new Government – industry wants to see action from Government, and quickly.”
At the Northern Powerhouse Partnership drinks reception held at EY Liverpool, Oliver Coppard, Labour’s mayor for South Yorkshire, said cooperation with government had been better in 80 days than the previous two years he served under the Conservative government. He echoed Reeves’ remarks about a future for all when he described his goal as “giving opportunity to everybody who lives in South Yorkshire and Barnsley and Rotherham and Doncaster and in Sheffield. And that is the real prize, making sure that somebody who’s growing up in one of those four places today genuinely feels like they can stay near and go far.”
However, business lobbyists attending conference from across energy and industrial sectors were not all happy. Those in more niche energy areas such as biomass and liquid gas are waiting on key policy direction and clarity around tariffs. The automative sector was caught out by the electric vehicle U-turn made on targets to ban combustion engine cars made at the eleventh hour by the last government. The follow-up from Labour is vitally important to the automotive sector.
If combined authorities and their metro mayors continue to get more power under Labour then energy spending and licensing could become an interesting testing ground between regional and national policy.
