Starmer pushes UK in the direction of harder web zero targets as a part of EU deal – is that an issue?

Not many people know that

By Paul Homewood

h/t Doug Brodie

The Labor Party is now trying to do as much damage to this country as possible before they are kicked out:

Sir Keir Starmer is preparing to bind Britain to the EU’s net zero plans, which would impose radically tougher clean energy targets on households and businesses.

The prime minister and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, are negotiating Britain’s rejoining of the EU’s internal electricity market, which treats the 27 EU countries and Norway as a single borderless electricity grid.

The EU will only allow Britain back into the system if Sir Keir agrees to the bloc’s ambitious renewable energy targets, which would require the UK to rapidly decarbonise not just electricity but also heating and transport.

In practice, this would mean that net zero targets would have to be doubled.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy minister, accused the prime minister of “ceding control of our energy system to bureaucrats in Brussels”.

She said: “UK ministers will be forced to cut emissions, regardless of the impact this has on people’s energy bills or the competitiveness of our businesses.”

Labor is seeking to forge closer ties with the EU and MPs have debated in recent weeks whether Britain should return to the customs union.

The plans would also support Mr Miliband’s ambitions to decarbonise the electricity grid and allow the UK to import foreign electricity if weak wind or sunshine reduces the output of wind and solar farms.

The EU’s demands were expressed in a document published quietly on the Cabinet Office website. The plan is both technically demanding and politically sensitive as it would subject Britain’s energy policy to EU jurisdiction.

It says: “The Electricity Agreement should… set an indicative global target for the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption in the United Kingdom. To ensure a level playing field, the global target should be comparable to that of the European Union.”

The EU’s goal is for 42.5 percent of its total energy to come from renewables by 2030, with a target of 45 percent.

This is around double the current UK level of 22 per cent.

Mr Miliband has set a target to decarbonise UK electricity generation by 95 per cent by 2030, but electricity only accounts for 20 per cent of total UK energy consumption, so this will never be enough to meet EU requirements. Transport, heating and industrial energy account for 75 percent of the UK’s total energy consumption.

Britain currently gets around 75 percent of its total energy from oil and gas, a figure that has barely changed in decades.

Energy experts said the EU target could only be met by accelerating the replacement of boilers with heat pumps, supplementing petrol and diesel with more biofuels and encouraging even faster adoption of electric vehicles.

“Bill payers should be very concerned”

David Turver, an energy analyst, expressed doubts about the feasibility of the target even with more ambitious measures.

He said: “Whether it is a target of 42.5 percent or 45 percent by 2030 does not matter.

Ms Coutinho said: “Bill payers should be very worried about what the Labor government signs up. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive is like all the worst parts of the UK’s climate change law – on steroids.”

Great Britain left the EU’s internal electricity market in 2021 as a result of Brexit – but has since become increasingly dependent on its European neighbors to maintain electricity operations.

The electricity generated in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and Denmark reaches Great Britain via seven interconnectors – submarine cables – and more are planned.

As of Tuesday, about 18 percent of Britain’s electricity was generated abroad, mainly in France, Norway and Denmark.

On some recent days, more than half of the electricity used in London and the South East is generated in France.

The UK’s exclusion from the EU market means its traders are banned from using the automated algorithms that optimize cross-border flows of goods and must buy and sell manually.

They also have to purchase connection capacity and power in separate transactions. The “difficulty” of such trading creates additional costs estimated at up to £370 million a year.

The whole story here.

The Tories and Reform must make it clear that they will abandon this agreement when they take office. If the EU doesn’t like it, it knows what it can do.

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