Miliband vows to fight nimbys on eco plans – but won’t reveal cost...
ED Miliband has been challenged to reveal the cost of his green policies after he vowed to fight nimbys to generate more renewable power.
The Energy Secretary says he will ‘take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists’ to reach the net-zero target by the end of the decade.
His remarks have raised fears that communities will have energy pylons and wind farms inflicted on them as well as soaring bills to pay for them.
Conservative energy spokesman Claire Coutinho said: ‘Ed Miliband’s rush to net-zero for the sake of ideology will leave us in the worst of all worlds – with higher bills, jobs sent abroad and ever more reliance on China.
‘He must set out a full systems costs immediately so that British billpayers know how much all of this will cost them.’
At Energy UK’s conference in London yesterday, Mr Miliband vowed to end the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels by building more green energy infrastructure.
‘The faster we go, the more secure we become,’ he said. ‘Every wind turbine we put up, every solar panel we install, every piece of grid we construct helps to protect families from future energy shocks.
‘This is an argument we need to have as a country because the converse is also true. Every wind turbine we block, every solar farm we reject, every piece of grid we fail to build makes us less secure and more exposed.’
Mr Miliband did not repeat Labour’s vote-winning election pledge to save families £300 a year on their heating bills.
He made no mention of the figure that he, Sir Keir Starmer and others used during the election campaign about the benefits of Labour’s GB Energy project.
Following the election, Labour reversed the decade-long ban on onshore windfarms, approved four of the UK’s largest solar farms and set up green power company GB Energy, with £8billion of funding.
Mr Miliband’s plans have raised concerns that the growing number of onshore energy projects will require a huge increase in pylons and overhead lines to connect them to the grid.