Prospect launches 10-point plan for a green recovery
Prospect is today launching a Green Recovery Plan for the UK Energy Sector. It is a ten-point plan setting out how we can bounce back from the COVID crisis while generating much needed jobs and decarbonising our energy supply.
Progress towards our climate goals is faltering, and a lack of strategic leadership and clear policy direction means we are on track to miss our legally-binding decarbonisation targets.
The coronavirus pandemic threatens to further derail our efforts to reach net zero, at the very moment when action needs to be ramped up. Yet, given the right mix of policy measures, the UK could be a global decarbonisation trailblazer, creating new green jobs and engines of clean growth in the process.
Sue Ferns, Prospect senior deputy general secretary, said:
“For too long there has been no clear leadership from government and no long-term plan to get us to our decarbonisation goals. Prospect’s robust and deliverable plan for a green energy recovery sets out how the UK can get to where it needs to be while boosting local and national economies, creating new jobs, and securing a just transition.
“A low carbon energy sector requires a commitment to more renewables, new nuclear, and the delivery of workable new technologies like CCUS. Without this we will definitely fail to meet our legally binding carbon targets, become increasingly reliant on imported energy, and could face significant energy gaps.
“The time for dither, short-termism and political weakness is well and truly over. Ministers and energy companies alike need to use their collective will and financial power to do what is needed.
“The current government claims to want to level up the economy. This plan can help them do that. They have a large majority in the Commons, all they need is the political will to make it happen.”
The 10-point plan is as follows:
- Publish a comprehensive net zero roadmap
- Accelerate deployment of low-carbon infrastructure
- Embed a whole-systems approach
- Develop a fair funding formula
- A strategy for energy conservation
- Maximise the benefits for UK PLC
- Net zero workforce plan
- Ramp up research and development
- Just transition
- A net zero energy commission
