Takeaways from another busy week in Parliament

Ed Miliband's speech to Parliament

Today the new Secretary of State made a passionate statement to the House on energy. The key points were:

• There will be an onshore wind taskforce to "work with developers to rebuild the pipeline of projects".
• A reconvened Solar Taskforce will produce a "solar roadmap" with greater ambition. Rooftop solar will play an important role “as part of the future standards for homes and buildings.
• There will be an announcement on the Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 6 budget by the end of July, which will get the offshore wind industry "back on its feet" and "ensure as much clean homegrown energy gets built as possible while ensuring value for money".
• DEFRA Secretary Steve Reed will produce a land use framework, working in tandem with the Strategic Spatial Energy Plan.
• Communities will continue to have a say and directly benefit from infrastructure built in their area.
• GB Energy will oversee the biggest expansion of community energy in history through the Local Power Plan.

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The King's Speech

The government's huge legislative programme includes several bills relevant to clean energy. At this stage, however, detail is limited to a page or two of briefing and it's not until autumn that we can expect to see more details. Relevant Bills include:

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This is one of the more detailed briefings recognising the importance of planning reform and for the need for the consenting process to speed up at both the local and national planning regime level. Grid upgrades and renewables both get a mention. Specific points include:

• A commitment to "simplify the consenting process for major infrastructure projects and enable relevant, new and improved National Policy Statements to come forward" and to update National Policy Statements every five years
• An interesting statement that they will be "improving local planning decision making by modernising planning committees" and a commitment to increasing local planning authorities' capacity, "to improve performance and decision making, providing a more predictable service to developers and investors".

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These are positive, but still high-level, commitments. As set out in our recent paper, points that Regen will focus on include:

• Renewables going through the local consent route must also be identified as critical infrastructure through the upcoming update of the National Planning Policy Framework (expected within the next month).
• With no mention of the potential Strategic Spatial Energy Plan and Centralised Strategic Network Plan and how this will align with the planning regime, this needs to be made clear as soon as possible.
• Planning commitments will require hiring more staff and retaining existing staff. As such, we are calling for the hiring of 1,000 new local authority infrastructure planning officers alongside a review of pay and working conditions for planners to ensure staff retainment.

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The Bill gives limited further insight, with a broad brief that Great British Energy will "develop, own and operate assets" and "facilitate, encourage and participate in" clean energy, energy efficiency and emissions reductions. GB Energy has also been formally launched today.

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The briefing argues that granting the Crown Estate borrowing powers "will allow it to bring forward 20-30 gigawatt of new offshore wind seabed leases by 2030, boosting offshore wind capacity".

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This was something of a surprise that it was included and takes forward an element of the previous government's 'Jet Zero' strategy.

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The focus is on enhanced powers over strategic planning, local transport networks, skills, and employment support and new 'Local Growth Plans'.

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CCC progress report

Alongside all the positive announcements of the government's first couple of weeks, the latest progress report from the Climate Change Committee is a timely reminder of the scale of the task that we all have over the next five years to meet our carbon commitments. The message is: good progress so far, but urgency is required to get on track for our international commitment to 68% emission reduction by 2030 and future carbon budgets.

Decarbonising electricity has been the key factor in meeting our first three carbon budgets. Since 2008, emissions from this sector have fallen 72% from 171.8 MtCO2e to 48.6 MtCO2e in 2022. However, this progress on the power sector needs to continue and we need much faster progress in other areas.

The CCC identifies major gaps in the policy framework to deliver emission reductions in line with our commitments – particularly in emissions from buildings. Key recommendations from the committee include:

• The importance of this and next year's Contracts for Difference allocation rounds if we are to get offshore wind developed at the scale required to meet the government's targets and our carbon reduction commitments.
• "Removing policy costs from electricity prices" to "support industrial electrification and ensure the lower running costs of heat pumps compared to fossil-fuel boilers are reflected in household bills". According to an MCS report this week, putting these on general taxation would save the average household £200, but require the government to find another £6 billion a year in tax revenue/borrowing.
• Reversing the rollback of policies by Rishi Sunak of policies on decarbonising buildings – for example, requiring landlords to ensure buildings meet minimum standards of energy efficiency.

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Future Energy Scenarios

Finally, the Regen team have also been busy getting to grips with the 2024 Future Energy Scenarios, which provide an important planning tool for the industry. You can see an overall evaluation from Ray here and Grace has done a comparison of the Pathways with Labour's commitments, which you can see here.

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