Energy & Environment

Dear Baroness Bennett,

When I watched the wonderful sight of 100,000 people marching through the streets of Glasgow at COP26, I longed for the different denominations of Marxists sprinkled among them to remember the ecological wilderness left by the socialist regimes that have ruled from the East German border to the South China Seas.

Nowhere has the environment been trashed as thoroughly as by the committed Left. No one understood that more clearly than Margaret Thatcher. As, following the science, she rallied fellow leaders at Rio de Janeiro to begin the fight against climate change, she also warned them that the revolutionary Left would seek to capture the cause and subvert it for their own political ends.

So it is that, despite the stark reality of their record, the misery Marxists maintain their discredited solutions as necessary to combat global heating.

Capitalism has brought out both the best and the worst in men and women. Nevertheless its towering successes in science and medicine; in the arts and architecture; and in broadening the horizons of millions upon millions of people contrasts with the bleak emptiness of the legacy of the revolutionary Left.

Capitalism does need management – not the stifling of socialist control, but the rules and regulations that make sure that we do not reinforce occupancy or allow powerful companies to protect their position

Here, in the United Kingdom, the political tradition that produced William Wilberforce and the Earl of Shaftesbury also introduced almost every major improvement in environmental legislation. It was that same faction that framed the Climate Change Act, and now has set in statute the most ambitious course to net zero carbon emissions in the entire world.

Of course there is much more to be done and no one will be more determined to ensure that ministers deliver on their commitments than me. I know too, though, that however disappointing this Government can be in so many ways, only through the power of the market can we deliver the huge economic and societal changes necessary to combat climate change.

The conversion of the financial system to accepting environmental, social, and governance criteria and sustainable development as the essence of investing has been the dramatic change of the last two years. The only thing that would stop that green investment is the extremist state control policies of the Left.

That doesn’t mean that this Government has just to sit back and let it happen. Capitalism does need management – not the stifling of socialist control, but the rules and regulations that make sure that we do not reinforce occupancy or allow powerful companies to protect their position by using their power to restrict competition or inhibit innovation.

We need tough regulation to curb the excesses of monopolies – and that means Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, as well the homegrown variety. Government has to create the conditions for green investment and sustainable growth.

The market will deliver, and it is its power alone that has the strength to bring to about the greener, cleaner, kinder world that we want.

Yours,

Lord Deben

Dear Lord Deben,

As sledgehammer used to smash down a wall is no use in building it back up again; you need an entirely different set of tools.

The pursuit of profit at the expense of all else – climate and nature, human health and wellbeing – has delivered the world we have today, with its nature in collapse and society in ferment.

Those profits today are built on massive externalised costs, from the bill for local authorities to dispose of the huge mass of Amazon packaging, to the dried-up river and trashed soil that helped produce a ‘cheap’ cotton T-shirt on the high street.

It is possible to imagine – and we need to bring in one fast – a system that ensures the real cost of the product is reflected on the price tag, but in a system where companies are legally required to put the pursuit of profit above all else, that’s tackling the symptoms of the problem, rather than its causes.

At the centre of the capitalist system is inequality. In the period known to economists as the Great Levelling, post-Second World War, the Global North saw modest declines in inequality, but since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, that’s gone into screaming reverse. The offering to ‘the 99%’, who haven’t got funds stashed in tax havens and can’t suck dividends from companies while loading them with debt, is that if the pie keeps getting bigger, they’ll get more crumbs, but you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet. That’s not a statement of politics or economics, it is physics.

The offering to ‘the 99%’, who haven’t got funds stashed in tax havens and can’t suck dividends from companies while loading them with debt, is that if the pie keeps getting bigger, they’ll get more crumbs

A system in a rich country like the UK that leaves millions dependent on food banks shows that crumbs are inadequate, even at our current planet-devouring levels of consumption. This when millions are trapped in the insecurity of zero-hours contracts, insecure employment, and wages that have to be topped up by the state to meet even the most basic level of subsistence.

To tackle these multiple issues, we need human creativity, knowledge, skills, time, and energy. That’s something capitalism has been squandering at a level of profligacy close to matching our treatment of the natural world.

From schools and universities designed to produce, first factory fodder, then office drones, people have been forced into hideous working conditions, from the inhuman horror of abattoirs processing the flood of misery from factory farms, to the misery of call centres, where people are treated like robots, with which we all dread having to deal.

That model relies on ‘the boss’ deciding how people spend their time, energy, and talents. It is profoundly undemocratic, and destroys human initiative, creativity, and capacities.We need a universal basic income, that frees individuals to choose how to direct their own efforts.

As we’re seeing with the increasing use of citizens’ assemblies – like the Climate Assembly, direct, deliberative democracy delivers good decision-making. As the foundation of our economic system, that can start to deliver the kind of world we need – one where the economy serves people and the planet, instead of people serving the economy

Yours,
Baroness Bennett

Baroness Bennett is former Leader of the Green Party. Lord Deben is Chair of the Climate Change Committee. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine Favourable climate? Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Derrick Brutel]

Stopping catastrophic climate change is the greatest political, social, and economic ambition humanity has ever put its mind to. The UK’s role in this is huge: it’s not just the emissions from our roads, homes, and factories to deal with, but also the emissions that we can change with our finances and global influence. It will make or break the legacy of every Prime Minister and Chancellor – including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

The transition we need to make isn’t a one-term project. While the action we take in this decisive decade will depend, in part, on our current Cabinet, climate change will require steady action from government after government. For that to be possible, that requires every one of us, from the smallest hamlet to every department of Whitehall, to pull together in the same direction.

We’re already on our way. Public concern about climate change has never been higher. Though it’s sometimes typecast as a left wing concern, environmentalism is embedded into Conservative values: after all, despite later backtracking, it was Margaret Thatcher that addressed the UN in 1989 on the “prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to Earth itself”. The evidence shows that public concern is broad-based and defies party allegiances.

Across the board, the UK public is urging the Government to take the decisive action needed to bring down emissions and create the resilient, green economy of the future. For instance, a recent Ipsos MORI poll shows an overwhelming majority of the public thinks the UK should do more to tackle climate climate change.

Meanwhile, the public strongly supports a range of policy measures to reach net zero, including better integrated public transport by local government (93%), grants for heat pumps and home insulation for the least well off (77%) and raising flying costs, particularly on frequent fliers (89%).

There’s growing evidence that the public are willing to play their part in the adaptations needed to make the changes we need as a society, with almost 7 in 10 confident they will be able to make the changes in their own lives to help combat climate change.

Climate change and nature are at the heart of the things the public really care about: economic strength in a changing world; safety from extreme weather events; keeping living costs down and homes efficient; stopping future deadly pandemic viruses jumping from animals to humans; and protecting green spaces and natural beauty.

This is why people from all walks of life, teachers, nurses, pensioners, schoolchildren, and everyone in between are connecting the dots and bringing the issue of climate change to life in communities across the UK.

There’s a spirit that resonates with the UK public: rolling up our sleeves, getting our hands dirty, and putting in the hard graft to make progress and tackle the challenges before us. That is exactly what we must continue to do, to ensure that reaching net zero isn’t just something we look back on as a change we had to make, but one that we were proud to do.

There’s no better recent example than the Great Big Green Week. The Climate Coalition, the largest group of organisations and people working on climate and nature, convened a massive national event to celebrate action on climate and nature right across the UK. Over 5,000 events took place throughout a seven day period. The events drew in people from all walks of life, with almost half having never been involved in this type of activity beforehand.

This was only possible because people in the UK, no matter their political stripes, are putting their differences aside to champion a greater good. There’s been more engagement with local MPs, translating concern from the community up to the halls of Westminster. As MPs have listened to their constituents, we’ve seen a deluge of policy announcements. While they need to go further and faster, they have begun to transform the political landscape.

Following the Glasgow UN Climate Conference, it’s incumbent upon all of us to work with our neighbours, our places of worship, community halls, conservationists, teachers, gardeners, and campaigners to stop catastrophe. This is the greatest political challenge we will face in our lifetimes. Our success or failure will determine nothing less than how long and fulfilling the lives of our children, grandchildren, and future generations will be. For exactly this reason, communities across the UK will be joining together once again for the Great Big Green week in 2022, to ensure action to achieve net zero is front and centre.

Ben Margolis is the Director of the Climate Coalition. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine Favourable climate? Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Pexels]

Whatever our politics, there is one thing most of us can agree on: this century will be a period of immense economic and social change. Most of us acknowledge that a major contributor, perhaps the major contributor, to that change is the potential for climate breakdown if serious action isn’t urgently taken to keep global heating below 1.5°C. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it, we are at “code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”

It’s important to spell this out so we understand what the terms of the debate on climate change are. We are not arguing over whether we should change society or not – that is inevitable. What we are arguing over is how society will change. The do-nothing scenario virtually guarantees that future generations will grow up in a brown, overheated wasteland defined by scarce resources and authoritarian politics.

A Green New Deal offers us a chance to create something good from a reckoning with climate breakdown. It gives us an opportunity to rewild our spectacular natural world, create good, well-paid jobs for people currently working in fossil fuels, as well as our children and grandchildren, and make life more affordable and enjoyable for working people with free or low-cost public transport, cheap energy, clean air, and more green spaces.

There is another option: we could leave the transition to green energy to the free market. In some ways, that is what we are doing. As Dr Nicholas Beuret at Essex University puts it: “While campaigners will be focused on trying to close the [emissions gap], business has already stepped in to fill it.” As the hard right mediasphere of GB News, talkRADIO, and so on ridicules the net zero emissions target as a pipedream, many companies are using it as a business plan. Action – albeit vastly insufficient action – is being taken by the UK’s business community. So what’s the problem with just facilitating that? Why do we need a Green New Deal at all if the markets can do the work for us?

At CLASS we’ve been looking at what happens when there are massive changes to the economy and industry which are not organised in a way to prioritise working people. Our report Work in 2021: A Tale of Two Economies examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the labour market and the experiences of the ordinary people that comprise it. We found that the pandemic has exacerbated a set of existing inequalities that had reached crisis point, even before those first pneumonia cases were identified in Wuhan.

We already know what happens when a fossil fuel industry closes without planning for the future of the people working within it

One desk-based, middle class section of society – working predominantly in industries like finance and real estate – has sailed through the pandemic relatively financially unscathed, and even enlarging their personal savings in some cases. Another section – working in sectors like retail and hospitality – have become more precarious and more underpaid, and have been invariably forced to go to work during the height of the pandemic at great risk to their personal safety. The lives of these two groups of people have become so contrasting, that it is like they exist in different countries.

We already know what happens when a fossil fuel industry closes without planning for the future of the people working within it. Britain’s coal mining communities suffered mass unemployment and immiseration after the pits were closed. In 2019, Sheffield Hallam University found that many coal mining towns hadn’t recovered from pit closures a generation later. As more fossil fuel jobs become obsolete, we risk going through this process all over again.

Supporters of Bright Blue will have different ideas about how to organise the economy to CLASS, but what both can surely agree on is that there is a point where vast inequality becomes corrosive to politics, democracy, and the economy. In 2017, Forbes magazine published an article arguing that rising income inequality was a threat to capitalism itself.

In 2019, the Institute for Fiscal Studies released a major report arguing that rising inequality was “a threat not just to capitalism but also to our democratic system.” We’ve certainly seen this at CLASS, in the many conversations we’ve had with working class people. People express alarming resentment towards politics and political leaders, which ultimately fosters a culture of “anti-politics” – fertile ground for charlatans like Donald Trump to win elections.

What’s needed is action to transition to green energy in a planned way that prioritises resolving massive income inequality, so that our democracies, politics, and economies can remain intact. We need a Green New Deal.

Ellie Mae O’Hagan is the Director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS). This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine Favourable climate? Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Pexels]

As we recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK has been hit by a cost-of-living crisis. Nearly one in three British adults say they are now struggling to meet their financial commitments. The challenge of making ends meet is forecasted to worsen, with an increase in National Insurance tax taking effect in April and rising inflation predicted to reach over 7% this year. As such, the government has taken action to attempt to alleviate the financial stress on households. Although more thought through than Labour’s suggestions, the Government’s strategy may have missed the mark with effectively helping the most vulnerable. 

Rishi Sunak unveiled a package of measures to soothe the cost-of-living crisis. The package includes a £200 discount off of all households’ energy bills this year, and 80% of households in England receiving a £150 council tax rebate. While this is useful in alleviating the current financial squeeze felt by families, it can be said that this fails to support those most in need. 

For instance, the £200 discount has to be paid back incrementally by households from 2023, arguably postponing the issue of unaffordable energy prices rather than providing a solution. Additionally, almost half of those benefiting from the £150 council tax rebate are in the top 50% of the population. Even taken together, the measures will account for just half of the price cap rise – increasing by 54% or £693 a year. 

Currently, VAT on domestic fuel bills is charged at 5%. The out-cry for VAT to be cut on fuel was amplified by the unusual coalition of Labour Party parliamentarians and the climate-sceptic Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) on the Conservative backbenches. The argument for this is simple: the aforementioned cost-of-living crisis pushing millions into hardship, with estimates suggesting that the energy cap rise will put 6 million people into fuel poverty, almost double that of 2021. 

Removing VAT on energy bills would not solve the crisis at hand, as well as being poor value for taxpayers’ money. This is because eliminating VAT would only help ease energy bills by less than £100 for the average household whilst losing the Treasury close to £2bn a year. The issue is that cutting VAT helps everyone, even those that do not need state aid. In other words, bigger homes with greater heating requirements receive more benefit from the cut, which are homes that are often occupied by high-income families. 

More targeted measures provide greater help for hard-pressed households with a similar financial cost to the Treasury. For example, the Warm Home Discount, affects over 2 million struggling Britons, which could be more than doubled to £300 and expanded in coverage to help over 8 million for a cost to the Exchequer of around £2.5bn. This option offers a more targeted approach providing relief to families who are most vulnerable to fuel poverty.

The long-term solution to the energy cost crisis is rooted in its cause. It’s our reliance on gas, which around 23 million or 85% of homes in the UK depend on. The UK’s gas supply is sourced from foreign providers like Russia, Qatar and Norway which means that the UK’s energy security is partly in the hands of international markets. The repercussions have not only hit households, but businesses too. The 300% increase in prices over 2021 has driven energy providers out of business altogether. For example, Bulb Energy and Avro Energy supplying a combined 2.4 million households have gone bust since the energy crisis began.

On the other hand, the Government has made significant steps towards transitioning to a more secure and sustainable economy. The UK has in the last year been in the vanguard of the global fight against climate change. Hosting COP26 and setting the target of reducing emissions by over three quarters by 2035 have placed emissions reduction at the heart of Whitehall’s agenda. In 2020, 43% of the UK’s electricity came from renewable sources which is partly attributed to the breakthrough in renewable technology. The cost of solar power has fallen by over 80% in the last decade and offshore wind power has increased 715% between 2009 and 2020.

The UK has to continue expanding its energy supply and security with home-grown renewables. This is where the UK’s commitment to climate action can benefit households in the long-term, with renewable energy being cheaper to generate than purchasing and transporting foreign natural gas. This highlights how important fully embracing the green transition is to supporting living standards and avoiding volatile energy prices. Now is the best time to commit to a green energy future.

Tom is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Pexels]

The recent ascent of energy bills in the UK is causing widespread panic and is being labelled by many as a national crisis. Prices are expected to continue to rise by as much as 50% through to Spring. This is particularly distressing for low-income households who may have to ration food and heating for the foreseeable future. There has also been a hard hit on energy providers across the UK, many of which are on the brink of bankruptcy.

The root cause of this problem is attributed to the global rise in wholesale energy prices, markedly due to the squeeze on oil and natural gas supplies that took place over the winter. The impacts are being felt across Europe and should be seen as a wake-up call to move to a more stable and sustainable energy mix over the next decade. 

This crisis offers a silver lining in the fact: it will shift focus on integrating more renewable sources of energy. Much like the Covid outbreak exposed slow government reaction and the underlying lack of attention that was being shown to preparing for pandemic responses, this upturn in living costs highlights the necessity to move to a more diverse energy mix. 

It also highlights the importance of domestic production of energy. The energy price shocks that prevail in the coming months can help push this into the public agenda and increase the urgency of adopting renewable energy in the long term.

The best way to avoid external price fluctuations affecting our domestic markets is to reduce our reliance on natural gas imports. Adoption of renewable energy sources offers a stable power supply that is not subject to global shocks. The renewable energy sector accounts for over 35% of total energy production in the UK and prices of solar and wind power are getting increasingly cheaper. There is reason to be optimistic, however much more is needed if we are to meet the government’s net-zero targets and move away from the impacts of global energy inflation. 

The UK is endowed with a variety of features that are suitable for offshore wind, nuclear and also solar energy despite Britain’s ‘terrible weather.’ We should tap into those and gain an upper hand in the race to become a global leader in renewable energy. There are certain issues with efficiency and intermittency, but these can be addressed with extensive development of storage and smart grid adoption. Nuclear energy can also be used to account for the intermittency problems of wind and solar.

The domestication of our energy production will appeal to both environmentalists on the left as well as right-wing nationalists who fear the implications of importing fossil fuels. Ongoing tensions between Russia and NATO raises concerns over whether we should be importing their natural gas supplies and whether this is damaging to our national sovereignty. Long-term domestic development will be key to avoiding confrontations or disputes over gas imports.

The energy bill crisis also warrants extensive policy response in order to help low-income households and small businesses to weather the storm. The Warm Homes Discount scheme will be important in avoiding an increase in fuel poverty and many are calling for VAT on energy bills to be scrapped. While support from the government is unequivocally needed, do these short term schemes undermine the need for more urgency in adopting a long term strategy? 

It is important that the government does not sacrifice moving to a stable energy mix in the long term for policies with the intention of gaining support from the public in the short term. Instead, both short and long term strategies should be used to help the nation emerge from the energy crisis and transition to a sustainable mix that ensures these issues do not impact us in the future.

Ardi is currently undertaking work experience at Bright Blue. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Gov.uk]

Rising energy costs has once again brought into sharp focus the precarious high-wire act that many households face when it comes to managing their finances. For those just about managing – or perhaps recovering from the financial wounds inflicted by the pandemic – a ‘bill shock’ like this could be the tipping point. 

There has long been a strong link between fuel costs and poverty but at CCW we’ve also been acutely aware of the difficulties many people face in affording water. It seems unthinkable that anyone would find themselves unable to afford this basic human need. But over the years consumers have shared with us experiences of missing meals or even rationing water use just to keep their payments affordable. These are choices no-one should have to make.

Just over a year ago we were presented with a rare opportunity to forge a new path towards ensuring no-one has to ever worry about affording their water bill. The UK and Welsh Governments asked us to lead an independent review into the existing support for households in England and Wales and how it could be strengthened. 

Working in partnership with the industry and organisations boasting a wealth of experience in utilities and poverty, our review brought to life the scale of the challenge we face. 

It revealed that while water companies had made some significant headway in supporting those unable to afford their water bill, the majority of those in crisis were still not getting the help they need. Huge variations in the funding and eligibility criteria of different water company social tariff schemes – which cap the bills of low-income households – had created a postcode lottery of help. A household facing the same financial hardship might receive a bill discount of up to 90 per cent, or nothing at all, depending on where they live.

Other obstacles also lay in the path of customers. These varied from mental and emotional barriers – including a reluctance for people to confront their own financial difficulties – to a lack of trust in utility companies. Poor communication from companies and the complexity of existing schemes often made these obstacles even harder to clear.

In May this year we tabled the findings of our review including a series of recommendations we believe can break down these barriers to help. The central plank of our plan is the creation of a single social tariff for England and Wales. This would replace the patchwork of schemes that companies have developed themselves. It would ensure no-one spends more than 5 percent of their household income – after housing costs – on water bills. Funded through either a bill cross subsidy or public expenditure, it would immediately lift 1.5 million people out of water poverty. It would also provide peace of mind and certainty for every household that they would be able to afford their water bill, even if their circumstances suddenly changed. 

Our blueprint for change is now being considered by government, with more detailed work underway to explore how the new tariff could work and be implemented. In the meantime we’re pressing forward with a wave of other recommendations tabled by our review.

Many of these changes could be swiftly rolled out, including giving customers far greater choice and flexibility over how they manage their payments. The adoption of an industry-wide approach to crisis funds and simplifying the application process that covers all support schemes would also improve access to help. 

In the longer term we want to help water companies develop ‘common branding’ for all the main support schemes to help bolster awareness and end confusion over assistance. 

Water is not just the essential through which some of us might experience poverty – it’s also the medium through which most of us will feel the impact of climate change. Droughts and flooding are becoming more commonplace. Overcoming these challenges – whether that’s making sure we stave off the threat of water shortages or the increased risk of sewer flooding – will demand substantial investment from water companies. Ultimately it will be customers that foot the bill, which brings us full circle back to the importance of ending water poverty.

With a robust plan in place to keep bills affordable for those struggling to pay, the conversation with other customers about funding greater investment in protecting our services and the environment becomes easier. That’s why tackling water poverty should be seen as part of the solution – not an obstacle – to overcoming the pressures posed by climate change. 

Andy White is a Senior Policy Manager at the Consumer Council for Water. You can read their full report here. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Number 10]