The Liberal Democrats have set out ambitious plans to tackle the climate emergency by generating 80% of electricity from renewables by 2030 and insulating all low-income homes by 2025.
As one of the party’s key priorities in their ‘Plan for a Brighter Future’, the Liberal Democrats have committed to raising the energy efficiency standards for new homes alongside investing £15 billion over the next Parliament to retrofit 26 million homes. This would save the average household £550 a year on energy bills.
The party has also announced a Liberal Democrat government would prioritise accelerating the deployment of renewable power generation, including a new target of doubling solar and wind power by 2030.
Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for the Climate Emergency, said:
The climate crisis is doing irreversible damage to our planet. The Liberal Democrats are committed to Climate Action Now so we can protect our planet for future generations.
The Tories have banned on-shore wind, slashed support for solar power and cancelled the Green Deal. They are persistently hindering and delaying Climate Action delay. That is no better than Climate Change denial.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party who have a clear, ambitious plan to cut harmful emissions by 2030 and get to net zero by 2045. We would raise efficiency standards of every home and more than double the amount of electricity we generate from renewables.
Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote for a Prime Minister that will deliver a bold green plan to build a brighter future.
Two highlights of the plan are;
Home Insulation
Liberal Democrats aim to upgrade every house in the UK by 2030 to Band B EPC rating, prioritising all fuel poor homes by 2025.
50% of UK homes are rated EPC Band D, upgrading those homes to Band B will save the average home £550 a year – people will save money if their EPC Band is lower (E, F, G). Source: English Housing Survey 2017 to 2018.
Liberal Democrats will use £3 billion capital spend a year on home insulation over the next parliament (£15 billion over 5 years) – this will be used to incentivise households to upgrade their homes and also to provide fully subsidised home upgrades to those in fuel poverty. This spending will also leverage an extra £4.3 billion from private sources.
Renewable energy
The Government currently projects that the renewable share of energy generation will rise to 59% in 2030. The Liberal Democrats’ target is to increase it to 80% by 2030.
By 2030 a Liberal Democrat government will have more than doubled the amount of wind power (both on-shore and off-shore) and solar power compared to 2018.
This means increasing from 21 Gigawatts of wind power capacity in 2018 to 53 Gigawatts by 2030 and solar increasing from 12 Gigawatts in 2018 to 30 Gigawatts by 2030.
Tidal power generated just 0.02 Gigawatts in 2018, but could generate up to 10% of predictable long-term power. Liberal Democrats will reserve specific pots of funding for contracts for tidal sources, to allow greater support to develop these new technologies.
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A large chunk of this money will be wasted by overcharging by contractors. The big incentive for solar panels is fitting smart meters that run backwards and getting rid of standing charges, allowing the owner full benefit of solar power generated (which will be used by industry during the day). It is also important that a cut-out switch is included in the system so that during a blackout the panels still supply power to the property but not the grid, thus giving the house owner full independence in times of chaos, which given climate change are likely to be more frequent.
The current trend for huge expanses of glass in houses is often ruinous for thermal efficiency, cavity wall insulation by comparison a rather pointless indulgence which often causes damp ingress in older properties. Secondary glazing using double or even triple glazing, on the other hand, really does slash energy usage and allows older windows to remain in place (saving them from landfill).
More thought and less enthusiasm for throwing away huge chunks of public money needed. Also the absurdity of councils fining people who fit their own windows if not approved by the building inspector needs to be abolished (surely a pure bit of Liberalism as such actions do no harm to others).
Writing as someone who has renovated a dozen houses built from all periods 1850-1980, those home improvement costings are roughly an order of magnitude out (at least), unless there are some very special words I cannot detect which will generate about 90-95% of the investment from somewhere else.
This is a vapourware auction.
£19.3bn in total is under £700 per house.
For a comparison, just rolling in loft insulation in a normal small semi will cost someone towards half of that figure. Putting in loft insulation alone from scratch will save perhaps 5-10% – but most of the stock already has some of that as it is low hanging fruit.
Double glazing for a similar house is 4-5k, and a ASHP system is 5-10k. EWI would be more like 12-15k.
If stuff is being done by a government it is likely to be far more expensive due to the bureaucracy. Having explored External Insulation Programmes by LAs, the programme organiser may add 50% over the cost of the actual contractor.
And of course, EPC has never been a meaningful measure for bills as it is based around C02 emissions – and has been fundamentally updated since the 2017-18 figures (read 2016 as they take a year to come out) used above. Due to the successful progress on decarbonisation of our energy supply electric heating is now rated roughly as good as gas for C02. If we want to incentivise better insulation etc, prices probably need to go *up*.
Surprised Ed Davey let this through; whatever else he does he can definitely add up.
Anyhow, in the absence of a proper justification (which may emerge) I am way beyond sceptical.
In my area there are many new houses being built and the population is massively increasing. It seems all the new developments are planned on the assumption that occupants will have access to cars in order to live reasonably “normal” lives, any intended public transport provision being minimal. Can we expect to see this situation change should you be in, or part of, government?
2 comments that must be taken onboard and analysed.
The Green Party’s £100 bn per year for 10 years is a more realistic costing for what we need to do.
Nothing about transport? Nothing about aviation? Nothing about charging points for electric cars? Nothing about modal shift from cars and planes to active travel, public transport and trains?
Putting in some loft insulation in a few houses and putting up some wind turbines isn’t enough. At the very least we need to be encouraging onshore wind as well as off shore.
This just looks like a business as usual – like we’ve had for the last 30 years. It’s quite likely that as global heating really gets going in the next 10 years some 85 % of the land surface of the planet will become uninhabitable, with wet-bulb temperatures at unendurable levels for humans. Cue massive migrations, loss of agriculture … many mega deaths.
All new housing developments should be geared to electric cars AND buses. It is important for bus services to be built into housing areas. Cars mean the use of raw materials that will be come increasingly scarce. One bus uses less material than many
.cars and can conserve the raw materials needed.
£3 billion per year seems pitiful. How about £10 billion per year, with the additional money going to renewable energy, factory energy efficiency, electric vehicles and public transport?
We need to do a LOT better than this. Greens and Labour are will ahead of us. Thomas and Jenny are right. If this is the best Wera can do we had better get Ed back. I doubt of the leaders read LDV, but the comments here need to go to Jo, Wera and Ed quickly.
We are offering trinkets that do not solve the problem, without challenging people to change. If we do not improve this offering, within days, Jo can give up any idea of being PM. Come on Lib Dems we can do better than this
>In my area there are many new houses being built and the population is massively increasing. It seems all the new developments are planned on the assumption that occupants will have access to cars in order to live reasonably “normal” lives, any intended public transport provision being minimal.
This is difficult – if cars are planned out, what are wheelchair users and eg frail elderly people who cannot walk supposed to do? You might argue against that depending on sustainability of the site.
The huge issues that are not addressed are:
– The only part of housing with no energy improvement regulation in place is owner occupied. These are the richer people – why should they be subsidised. Try differential Council Tax based on EPC (the only measurement we have) or an extra 2% on Stamp Duty for properties below C band.
These put out far more C02 than newbuild.
– Newbuild to zero carbon is easy these days, without any need for techno-gimmicks are were used in the days of Code for Sustainable Homes. Set a high standard and let the market meet it through higher quality fabric,
– A huge issue is enforcement of building standards. Wander round a new estate with an IR camera and spot the poor attention to detail. Enforcement needs to be on all units, not on one in ten or one in fifty.
Though I am not a LD, I think my suggestions above meet the trad LD policy style of a combination of some centralism, but mainly leaving room for varied solutions.
Worth saying this is not the full manifesto. That is still to come, and I’m sure will have lots more detail – including (I imagine) electric cars. This is just a very broad-brush introduction to the party’s policy approach. Lets wait to see the full detail before ripping it apart too much.
£3 billion is a fraction of 1% of our total tax revenue. As Thomas says, pathetically small. Labour have gone for £25 billion. That sounds more realistic.
The £100 billion figure from the Greens is no doubt what it would actually take to overcome the climate crisis. But it’s unaffordable. There does come a point when an overambitious promise, however honestly given, is really just a lie in the making. Because the money markets, or lorry drivers blocking the M1, or an anti-Extinction-Rebellion rebellion, will eventually force you to break that promise.
However – If our final “offer” is going to raise much higher than the £3 billion on the table – Then it’s high time we put the final figure on the table!
While electric cars are locally better for Nox and particulate emissions, it’s not clear that there is a big benefit for CO2 emissions, just displacement from in the car to the power station. Electric cars look to be another attempt at Business as usual – with minimum change. They do not address the hostile environment cars create in the urban environment to everyone else, walkers, cyclists, wheelchair users, baby buggy pushers etc. They do not reduce congestion, so continue to get in the way of public transport, and use up road space that could be used for active travel. In fact on some policies – allowing them in bus lanes as an incentive, for example – they detract from attempts to modal shift to public transport. And then they get parked all over the road, creating even more congestion
And of course there is the CO2 impact of manufacture.
SUVs have become so much heavier than normal cars that they now pollute even more for similar mileage, despite more efficient engines.
We need to be thinking more holistically – people are effectively forced to use cars by the lack of reasonably convenient alternatives, lack of access to supermarkets except by motor transport for example, remote hospitals etc. remote housing estates without local services and so on.
Ok it’s not as bad as the USA, where it’s almost impossible to walk anywhere useful, but we’re getting there.
OK Ross, I will wait. However at the moment Greens and Labour are streets ahead.
Scientists the world over are saying in no uncertain terms that we now have approximately 10 years in which to tackle climate change before it’s too late. This is a massive challenge which necessarily needs to be addressed at a global level.
So what type of government do we need in the UK over the next 10 years or so?
A bunch of right-wing populists who still don’t believe that climate change is real? And even if they did, they’ll be far too busy re-inventing the wheels of commerce to do anything about it any time soon!
OR
A party which is committed to collaborating with our neighbours and the wider world to tackle climate change urgently and effectively.
Answers on a ballot paper on December 12th . . .
Why is it suddenly an emergency? What happened? Greta? ER?
Why ? Because we’ve wasted 30+ years, inwhich time Co2 emissions have risen 50% and global temperatures about one degree
How much of that one degree was due to warming up from the Little Ice Age (1550-1850)?
It is all too easy to be cynical about pragmatic steps towards a greener existence. There is no realistic prospect of people abandoning their cars in the sort of numbers Jenny would like. Electric cars offer a valuable stepping stone away from fossil fuel powered vehicles. As electricity generation shifts in favour of renewables the associated emissions will diminish considerably. There is an old saying “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.
@Peter – “How much of that one degree was due to warming up from the Little Ice Age (1550-1850)?” I not quite sure what you mean, but think the answer is “none of it”.
Temperature was fairly stable in the early 20th C, and has risen by 1 degree since then, with the trend much steeper since around 1980. And I think if it wasn’t for our adding so much CO2 to the atmosphere we would have been expecting another “little ice age” instead.
I see barely any mention of mobility, walking and cycling. I’m rather disappointed if I’m honest that this is just more of the same and any impact on the climate will be negligible at best. If we are to make a difference to climate, health and mobility we should be endeavouring to deliver Dutch levels of cycling investment and fundamentally reshaping our local planning objectives to deliver the necessary changes quickly. Whist the focus on renewables is welcome it doesn’t address the health, social and productivity costs of gridlock that we are accustomed to. We currently invest £2.07 in London and 72p person in the UK generally on cycling infrastructure. Contrast that to the 30Euros per in the Netherlands. I for one would like to see at least equivalent level of investment, if not more as we need to catch up so fast. Much more ambition needed.
No, I don’t particularly want people to abandon their cars. They are very useful. What I do want is a change in our public road and street network to prioritise human beings, such that walking, cycling, or just being in the street (playing??) is possible, rather than everything being sacrificed to the car. It is possible – Holland shows us how. Then we might get the modal shift at least for short journeys that we need. How about cancelling HS2 and Trident, and using the money to sort our public spaces out? I note that fuel duty has been held down for years – that not only encourages more and heavier cars, driving more miles, but deprives us of money to use to improve our road infrastructure.
@David Allen
One can do some back of the envelope costs based on current costings for the different electricity sources:
Going from 21 to 53 GW of wind power will cost £17 bn (all onshore) to £28 bn (all offshore)
Going from 12 to 30 GW solar will cost £12 bn
10% of total current electric power generation is 8.3 GW, so that would be 25 Swansea Bay lagoons @ £1.3 bn or £32 bn
Also we import much more electricity from France and the Netherlands over the interconnectors than we send them (19 TWh in 2018) which corresponds to an extra 2 GW (say £1-1.5 bn)
Totalling this all up gives £62-73 bn, just to replace existing electricity supply without even switching from gas to electricity with air source heat pumps for heating, and we haven’t even considered the cost of storing electricity (batteries or pumped storage) or of strengthening the National Grid to cope with more intermittent electricity sources.
@Denis Mollison
I’m not sure that the climate of the early 20thC could be described as stable. The period 1920-1945 shows the same amount and rate of warming as the period 1975-1998. Interestingly, the former cannot be attributed to increased carbon dioxide.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/hadcrut_diff.jpg
The cooling that took place in the early Seventies caused Climatologists to warn of an impending ice age. If increasing CO2 prevented that we should be very grateful. Cold kills far more people than warming.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
@Peter – Come now. The period 1920-45 is not “Early 20th century,” by any sensible definition. You’re struggling a bit here.
@Ross
What would you call it?
I’m not sure it has a neat description. I mean it’s a big old chunk of years, but the mid-point of it is 1933. That’s literally a third of the way through the century. That’s not ‘early’. Early, to me, would be something like 1900-1910. You can’t call a period early when it includes 1945 for heavens sake.
I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much, except it does seem to indicate some pretty muddled thinking, that’s all.
It will be hard work creating a brighter greener future if we still stuck on nit picking over the extent of climate change. Right now I would like to see far more detail in the policy in respect of cycling and walking. Currently, with a few exceptions our cycling infrastructure is next to useless, and yet it’s clear the fastest means of making an impact on our emissions and our health in general. We talk of electric vehicles and yet the cheapest, simplest to implement quickly is the eBike. Simple, quick to charge, relatively cheap and will go all day if fed enough cake. Contrast with expensive projects such as Crossrail that take 20 plus years to bring any significant benefit in respect of emissions. As the Dutch, the Danes, the Germans and Belgiums have learned, the only thing that stops people cycling more, are roads that are too dangerous. Therefore we should be include some commitments to include some effective alternative infrastructure that actually yields some results in the next parliament.
“will go all day if fed enough cake” Cake please !
Aviation… a definite problem. The current kerosene fed jet engines are really efficient; unfortunately they spray CO2 all over and steam in the upper atmosphere, neither of which are beneficial. I don’t see that we can abandon aviation altogether – it’s much more efficient over water than diesel ships, for example – although maybe nuclear powered passenger transport ships (and freight, for that matter) are the way to go? For now, less flying, and what there is fuelled by kerosene created from waste and crops might be a CO2 neutral stopgap. Longer term, maybe hydrogen fuelled jets? airships? Technological development clearly needed here.
@Peter
The worst kind of fake news is facts taken out of context. So what if the temperature rise from 1920-45 was the same as from 1975-98, as your graph clearly shows it was followed by a cooling between 1945 and 1975, while the temperature has continued to rise since 1998. Your graph stops at 2010 but we have had even more warming since then; the world’s five hottest years are (in descending order) 2016, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2014.
https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hottest-global-years-on-record
Also a paper on more people killed by cold than heat in the past does not predict that the same will apply in the future. Just because climatologists were wrong in the past does not mean they are wrong now (though we probably benefit from CO2 levels around 350 ppm rather than 280 ppm, over 400 ppm and moving rapidly towards 1000 ppm is not good).
Very informative and useful exchanges of views. It’s made me think about how I can improve my home energy use and transport arrangements, covering the costs and benefiting from long-term savings, learning from family, friends, neighbours and local firms as well as the Internet. This is what is needed: education – open, honest and informative debate and involvement of the public in finding practical, cost-effective solutions to evolving problems. Let’s not get involved in the ‘dumb and dumber’ bidding war of uncosted government spending between Con & Lab, with billions of unplanned give-aways rounded up to the nearest ten or hundred and no idea how to raise the money. Soak the rich? Dump the ‘undeserving poor’? Double tariffs and cut corners once we’ve left the EU? Let’s show that we’ve learnt from the Age of Austerity: don’t be mean, but spend wisely; help people to participate in finding effective solutions to real problems, local, regional, national and international (no more Grenfell Towers!); don’t make promises or threats we can’t keep. That should mark the difference between the Lib Dems in the sensible center and the extremes of left & right.
@Laurence
You have just provided a good example of fake news, though I have no doubt it was entirely unintentional. The graph shows temperature anomalies relative to a thirty year reference baseline. This is perfectly normal. What is exceptional here is that if their baseline had been any earlier it would have been during or immediately following the Little Ice Age. It is therefore of no surprise that we see a strong warming trend.
The same article makes fake claims about wildfires, sea levels, cyclones and hurricanes. Wildfires have decreased significantly. Cyclones and hurricanes are not getting more frequent or more severe. Sea level is rising steadily at a modest 3mm per year as you would expect when glaciers are melting, which is what normally happens during an Interglacial period.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90493/researchers-detect-a-global-drop-in-fires
https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/Global_Sea_Level_Rise.png
https://i0.wp.com/policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png
@Peter
Once again, you are using facts to mislead. From your first reference
The changes in savanna, grassland, and tropical forest fire patterns are so large that they have so far offset some of the increased risk of fire caused by global warming, said Doug Morton, a forest scientist at NASA Goddard and a co-author of the study. The impact of a warming and drying climate is more obvious at higher latitudes, where fire has increased in Canada and the American West. Regions of China, India, Brazil, and southern Africa also showed increases in burned area.
The operative word here is some
The sea-level rise graph only tells us what the sea level rise has been so far, it doesn’t tell us how much sea-level rise is already ‘baked-in’ by CO2 emissions so far. If this is 100 years of sea-level rise, then the total rise would be 30 cm, if 1000 years then the total rise would be 3 metres.
You say “Cyclones and hurricanes are not getting more frequent or more severe” but the graph you cite only lists numbers of cyclones and hurricanes, not their severity.
As I said above, the worst kind of fake news is using real facts out of context.
@Laurence
Here are US and Australian hurricanes data with categories.
https://i2.wp.com/www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg
https://i1.wp.com/www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
https://i1.wp.com/www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/images/tc-graph-1969-2012.png
The simple truth is that extreme weather is not getting more extreme or more frequent. You should be pleased about that.
Laurence, if you do not believe the official data from governments than there is not much more that I can do. My motivation is that I despise the lies being fed to the public. I am not surprised that you find the truth incredible, the lies are relentless, widespread and overwhelming.
If you are interested in climate change then I suggest that you stick to official data from government sites. They are biased because they have funding and historical claims to justify but they do normally stop short of making fraudulent claims.
I feel very strongly that politicians and policy makers should have the best information available and not be swayed by lies from advocates with their own agendas. Climate change is rife with noble cause corruption which creates exactly the type of problem we are seeing here.
Never argue with a troll. You just get stuck under a bridge and the troll enjoys it.
Peter:
Are you denying that carbon dioxide, methane and oxides of nitrogen absorb heat in the form of infra-red radiation? Are you denying that there are more of these gases than there was 200 years ago?
@Peter
Why don’t you go back to the Daily Mail website where your selective quoting of facts will no doubt receive support. Rather than address the fact that the sites you qoted do not support your arguments, you just throw up more links to sites. It is classic obfuscation technique used by those who just want to stop any action being taken.
Lawrence Cox,
Thanks for your post, which costed a major programme of renewable power plant building at £73 billion. That compares with the Greens’ budget of £100 billion per year and Labour’s budget of £25 billion per year. On that basis, it sounds like a broadly reasonable ambition, provided it is planned for a timescale of, say, 5-10 years.
Martin and Laurence, it is a fact that hurricanes and other tropical storms such as cyclones and tornadoes have been less frequent in the last couple of decades. The Australian and US website links and the data they show are genuine. Check it out for yourself. Surprising, isn’t it? But true.
I am not denying anything about IR absorbing gases. Gases with a dipole moment are active in the infra red and that is not in doubt. However, as I pointed out earlier, it does annoy me to see widespread claims that hurricanes, etc are getting more extreme when that is simply not the case.
Those who feel strongly about climate change would have more credibility if they didn’t lie about it.
Peter:
You understand IR spectroscopy, but do you accept that levels in the air of carbon dioxide, methane oxides of nitrogen and other molecules with a dipole moment have increased over the last 200 years? If so you have to accept that more radiant heat has been retained in the atmosphere. The questions are then, how much more heat and to what effect?
With more retained heat, it is hard to deny that there will be less ice. As for weather conditions, the only likelihood is that patterns will change. This can include some regions experiencing more hurricanes and others experiencing less, some regions might get wetter while others become drier.
Over hundreds of generations, the progress of evolution has a way of sorting this all out, but there is no rule that this has to include humanity or that human societies can escape the consequences or even that those societies that have caused problems will be more subject to the consequences.
In the end it is a generational question, as is Brexit, a question of how much we care for future generations. I have heard it said that there is a fairly strong correlation between climate change denial and support for Brexit – it should not be too much of a surprise.
@ Peter,
“it does annoy me to see widespread claims that hurricanes, etc are getting more extreme when that is simply not the case. Those who feel strongly about climate change would have more credibility if they didn’t lie about it.”
If you are going to make accusations of lying then you need to back up your claim with evidence. You are grouping together both the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. It is possible that we could have the same frequency but hurricanes have become more intense. Or we could have a greater number of hurricanes of the same intensity. So it is is necessary to separate the two but at the same time avoid the temptation to only highlight the one that suits your political motivations.
In fact as scientists we shouldn’t have political motivations. Political motivations make the subject of Economics totally unreliable. We don’t want climate science to go the same way, although I suspect it may well be too late to say that.
I have seen previous papers which have indicated that the frequency may not have increased but intensities have. But this paper, which is more recent, suggests that both are increasing. With an increase in duration too.
But the real evidence of global warming is to be found in measured temperatures. I’ll post up some NASA references on that if you like.
https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/changes-hurricanes
@ Martin,
“……there is a fairly strong correlation between climate change denial and support for Brexit ”
You’re likely right. Nevertheless, as rational human beings, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that climate change is happening pretty much as climate scientists say it is, but at the same time that the EU is falling apart under the strains caused by the faulty neoliberal/ordoliberal economic ‘understanding’ of the EU PTB.