Ed Milliband narrowly defeated his older brother David Milliband for the Labour Party’s leadership on Saturday, boosting the prospects of the environment taking priority at the forefront of UK policy making. During his last 18-month tenure as Minister for Energy & Climate Change, Ed Milliband boasts an impressive track record for progressing environmental policy within the previous Labour government. Notable developments include:

1. Passing the Climate Change Act – Considered to be Labour’s biggest environmental success, the CCA made the UK the first nation in the world to legislate for emissions reductions. Whilst David Milliband and others helped to drum up support for the legislation inside the party, Ed has been praised with strengthening the Act to deliver robust targets and ambitious goals.
2. Ed manoeuvred around existing party policy for the introduction of Feed-in tariffs, modelled on other European schemes, which offer long-term, guaranteed payments for every kw of renewable energy generated. This has successfully incentivised homes, communities and businesses to invest in small-scale renewable energy systems, boosting the UK’s renewable energy generation.
3. Ed also ensured that under his tenure, no further coal-fired power stations would be built without mechanisms to capture and store the CO₂ they produced.
4. The third runway at Heathrow, which deliver significant increases in the UK’s CO₂ emissions, was also opposed by Ed, but he ultimately lost this battle, as Labour became one of the only parties to support the idea.

Concerns have been mounting recently over fears that the Coalition Government could hinder progress for the development of a low carbon economy, potentially through cuts to the feed-in tariff rates, in addition to the previously announced closure of valuable quangos such as the Sustainable Development Commission (and possibly even the Carbon Trust – currently under review).  This bestows a golden opportunity on Ed Milliband  - to take the throne for the ‘Greenest party’. Milliband’s election as leader of the labour Party has bolstered the hopes of many environmental stakeholders, indeed many of whom Milliband will have previously worked with.

Milliband could do far worse than increasing investment and support for renewable energy and energy efficiency measures across the UK, providing thousands of new green jobs, business opportunities and spurring prospects for economic growth and recovery, reducing reliance and imports of fossil fuels and positioning the UK as a global leader in the global race for a low carbon economy.

However, despite his extensive understanding and background in the climate change agenda, a significant opportunity to reorder the party’s priorities was already lost at the Labour Party Conference last week. Whilst the agenda emphasised issues such as the economy and immigration, energy and climate change was nowhere to be seen. It seems Ed Milliband’s first challenge will be to unite his party, and deliver the optimism, passion, revolution, and youth he so emphasised in his leadership speech.

Speaking at the recent Conservative party Conference in Manchester, held on 5-8^th October, shadow energy and climate change secretary Greg Clark claimed that the UK needed an ‘emergency plan to rescue our energy policy’ within days of a general election.

The current UK energy policy from a glance appears to contain many strong ‘green’ policies, but in some cases, and a certain level of financial commitment to funding these policies.  But unfortunately the impact of these policies is simply too early to tell.   It may be argued that the Labour Party have made several large strides in leading the way forward to the global talks in Copenhagen, by being the first country to call a UN Security Council meeting on climate change, and by being the first country to introduce a Climate Change Bill with the aim to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 20% by 2020.

Despite the above strides, the Conservative’s argue that UK is in a ‘dire position’ and is in absolute need for a new ‘Green Deal’ which aims to; 

• Provide £6,500 to every household to upgrade the energy efficiency of their home
• Improve the carbon footprint of the least efficient homes and save 9.4 million tonnes of CO2
• Create around 70,000 jobs, including 3,500 apprenticeships
• Open up a market worth £2.5 billion a year
• Authorise five GW of clean coal capacity fitted with carbon capture and storage
• Immediate publication of the planning needed for new nuclear power stations
• Give the right for every community to host wind farms and keep the revenue from business rates generated for 6 years
• Make the national grid extend its network offshore
• Build Marine energy parks
• Lastly, scrap Labour centralised, target led approach to house building

Over the past 12 years the UK government has seen 15 Energy Ministers tackle the climate change agenda.  The most recent drive from government, led by Ed Milliband in concentrated in the delivery if the Low Carbon Transition Plan and more widely known, the UK’s Climate Change Action Plan.

Supported by the establishment of the Department of Climate Change, another Labour initiative, a number of policy commitments are designed to create a low carbon economy, these include;

• Introduction of the Renewables Obligation
• Climate Change Levy (see rates through the HMRC link)
• Carbon Reduction Commitment
• Implementation of long-term legal Frameworks e.g. Committee for Climate Change to measure these changes
• Zero carbon homes target setting by 2016
• Development of a £100m blueprint for renewable energy – to target supply
• Adoption of a Waste Strategy aimed to deliver 9.3 million tonnes of savings of CO2 per year by 2020
• Water and air is recordable cleaner than 1997 levels and waste recycling has quadrupled

So how much of these green pledges are just talk?  The government has pledged big targets to reduce CO2 in the UK, but many of the Party members are aware of the small details on how they will be delivered.  For example, according to a study carried out by ComRes research of 150 MPs, it revealed that 72% were unaware of the government’s target for all new housing to be zero carbon from 2016.  The study further identified that members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group were unaware that a quarter of MPs didn’t know that more than a quarter of UK emissions came from Housing. 

Perhaps the green campaigns from both parties need to target their members, as well as communicating plans to its voters.  There are many successes attributed to the policies employed by the Labour Party to date, however, it is also clear of the recent challenges in delivery, for example, the Part-L planning consultation, the nuclear debate, and the changes to the Carbon Reduction Commitment timescales for its implementation. 

Once a policy is made, does it stand up strongly to meet the realistic outcomes, to time and budget, or simply sound good to the voters in Britain – you can decide, its your vote!