Make Farage mad with solar farms!
Solar farms and wind farms should be given automatic planning approval in areas that vote in Reform Party MPs. That’s part of my response to the Reform Party’s plans to ensure that asylum hostels are kept out of Reform voting areas and instead built in areas that vote for the Green Party. Another part of my plan is that Reform voting areas should subsidise the installation of free heat pumps and solar panels in adjoining Council areas. The cost of doing so should simply be added as a precept to the Council charges paid by people in Reform areas.
Of course there has to be a bit of flexibility in such plans. For example, Clacton is a seaside town and presents an excellent opportunity for the installation of experimental shoreline wave power technologies. I don’t know whether they’ll work, of course (some of them might!), but the point in this case will be to make Nigel Farage mad and shore up (pun intended) political divisions across the country!
Net zero U-turns
We know how the Conservatives were so aware of the climate crisis that they made net zero by 2050 law in 2019. But we also know that they have turned away from this so radically now that any Conservative MP that still supports it will be thrown out of the Party! But what does scrapping the net zero target actually mean for Government policy? Actually, there are not any remotely expensive “net zero” measures in place at the moment, that is apart from expensive sops to big industry in the form of nuclear power and carbon capture and storage? And the Conservatives are very keen on maintaining the incredibly costly nuclear building programme anyway. What scrapping net zero really means, apparently, is little more than scrapping the few hundred million going to subsidise heat pump installs and getting rid of incentives to buy electric cars.
Electric vehicle retreats
Meanwhile, the UK Government is retreating from its current target of 80 per cent of new cars being electric by 2030. This is also even though 2026 targets for EVs seem likely to be filled, and that in July well over 40 per cent of new cars were electric, 27 per cent being battery electric. This is despite the Government’s best efforts to dissuade potential EV owners by promising that they will be taxed per mile travelled from 2028, including when driving abroad!
If you want to look for a real programme to boost EVs, look no farther than Norway and Denmark. In those countries, battery electric vehicles now make up over 97 per cent of the domestic car market. How do they do it? They have got some big incentives for EVs In Denmark, for example, EVs have massive reductions in the (very large) purchase taxes payable for new vehicles, and workplace charging at employers’ offices is made cost-effective through tax reductions.
Fairweather friends
I’m sorry to report that Dale Vince has called for the net zero target to be ditched and DESNZ to be abolished (really!!!). Its responsibilities would be transferred to the Treasury. Specifically, Vince calls for subsidies for heat pumps and electric cars to be scrapped. Now, many (in fact, almost all) people in the green movement have regarded his opposition to heat pumps as a bit strange, but now he’s gone the whole anti-net zero Monty.
What does he want, to be a Conservative Parliamentary candidate? – his anti-net zero views certainly qualify him for that. I do not know his motives for this disappointing turn, but his claim to have started the world’s first green energy company seems to have been superseded by the first (claimed) green energy company to be led by an anti-net zero campaigner! Maybe it’s just that the recent climate-induced heat has gone to his head?
Apparently, Dale is worried about giving the Reform Party too much ammunition. He says, “By ending the obsession with, and huge expense of, Net Zero policy, Vince believes Labour can neutralise Reform UK’s attacks and build broader public support for a pragmatic green growth agenda.” Maybe he thinks Farage and Tice will smile at him and say, yes, your green energy company can have lots more contracts to build solar and wind farms. Really, I don’t think this will work out well for him, given Reform’s pledge to scrap all possible contracts given for wind and solar projects.