The UK election will take place on Thursday, the 4th of July 2024. As the marketing company for green-tech adoption, we understand how important government policies are for startups across the country producing green and clean technology. Below we have summarised the main points from each party’s manifesto that are relevant to UK green technology companies.
Labour:
- Pledge to justify the UK as the “green finance capital of the world” by compelling UK-regulated financial institutions to plan to make transitions that align with the 1.5 °C goal of the Paris Agreement”.
- Introduce a new national wealth fund to “support Labour’s growth and clean energy missions”, including £1.5 billion for new EV battery gigafactories.
- Complete the Green Prosperity Plan, linked to the national wealth fund, to invest in “industries of the future”, creating 650,000 jobs by 2030 and rewarding clean energy developers who offer “good jobs” in the UK.
- Deliver a “near fully decarbonised electricity system” in the UK by 2030.
- Create Great British Energy: a publicly-owned clean energy investment company, aiming to partner with industry to provide “thousands of local clean energy projects”.
- Support a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which would impose a levy on certain imported goods from countries without carbon pricing regimes in place.
- Scrap short funding cycles, instead planning 10-year budgets for key research and development institutions to develop better partnerships with industry.
- Create a Regulatory Innovation Office to bring together existing functions of government. This would allow regulations for new technology to be kept up-to-date through shorter approval times and greater cross-regulatory coordination.
- Use the British Business Bank to encourage greater SME investment across the regions of the UK by giving it more operational independence.
Green Party:
- Commit to achieving net zero by 2040.
- Require new homes to maximise the use of solar panels and heat pumps, or “equivalent low-carbon technologies”.
- Require planning applications to include whole-life carbon and energy calculations for their construction, maintenance and operational use.
- “Wind to provide around 70% of the UK’s electricity by 2030” through both offshore and onshore farms.
- A £4 billion “investment in skills and training (including retrofitting)” to allow workers to transition towards new roles expected to be created.
- “Increase investment into research and development by over £30 billion in the lifetime of the five-year parliament”, with focus on areas such as “carbon neutral construction and carbon capture”.
- Give funding and technology to “support the development of environmentally and socially sustainable economies of low-income countries”, addressing “the causes and impacts of the climate and nature emergencies”.
- Support for improvement and electrification of public transport, along with “new cycleways and footpaths”; this additional £19 billion investment over five years “includes the reallocation of funding earmarked for road building”.
Liberal Democrats:
- Commit to achieving net zero by 2045.
- Launch an emergency Home Energy Upgrade Programme, with “free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households”.
- Invest in renewable power to push 90% of the UK’s electricity to be generated from renewables by 2030, and a “rooftop solar revolution” with incentives for householders who install solar panels.
- “Appoint a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in the Treasury to ensure that the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon”, along with a Net Zero Delivery Authority to link departments together and allow local councils to carry out net zero strategies with additional resources and funding.
- “Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of our natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050”, which includes “doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats” and “doubling woodland cover by 2050”.
- Back the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (see Labour).
- Restore the requirement that new cars and small vans sold from 2030 are zero-emission, facilitating this with the return of the plug-in car grant and the roll out of “far more charging points”.
- Support science, research and innovation, particularly among small businesses and startups, in universities and in zero-carbon, environmental and medical technologies, including by:
- “Continuing to participate in Horizon Europe and joining the European Innovation Council”.
- “Aiming for at least 3% of GDP to be invested in research and development by 2030, rising to 3.5% by 2034”.
Conservatives:
- Increase research and development public spending by £2 billion to reach £22 billion in the coming year.
- Reward energy firms that invest in manufacturing in the most disadvantaged places in the UK or invest in more sustainable supply chains with bonuses, thus creating more “good jobs” in the renewables sector.
- Implement a new import carbon pricing mechanism by 2027 to ensure that “iron, steel, aluminium, ceramics and cement from countries with a lower or no carbon price will face a comparable carbon price to those goods produced in the UK”.
- Invest £6 billion in energy efficiency over the next three years to make around a million homes warmer.
- Improve access to finance for SMEs including through expanding Open Finance and by exploring the creation of Regional Mutual Banks.
Scottish National Party (SNP):
- Commitment to reach net zero in Scotland by 2045.
- Reduce fees for Scottish energy producers to connect to the grid, with the aim of speeding up renewable energy development, along with updating the Contracts for Difference scheme to successfully manage this pipeline.
- Put in place an “immediate emergency budget following the election to reverse cuts to public spending”, some of which will be allocated to green energy.
- Support for workers in oil and gas who require transitioning in the North East with a £500 million North-East Transition Fund.
- Prohibit new nuclear power plants in Scotland, preferring to push for “significant growth in renewables, storage, hydrogen and carbon capture”.
- Press for “direct interconnection between Scotland and the continent”, and regulatory agreement to “unlock Scotland’s renewable potential” in hydrogen production.
- Ban the import and sale of new, non zero-emission buses by 2025, as well as giving full support to “production and use of sustainable bridging fuels in the maritime and aviation sectors”.
- Establish a new Low Income EV Car Leasing Fund, backed up by at least £500m, to enable 50,000 EV leases a year.
Plaid Cymru:
- Commit to achieve net zero by 2035 (in Wales).
- Increase Air Passenger Duty (for passengers flying from the UK) and kerosene tax for private jets.
- Promote “renewable energy investment” as an alternative route to energy companies using loopholes to exploit the current system.
- Create a Welsh Green New Deal, which includes “re-skilling and supporting Welsh employees and apprentices” into “emerging green and net zero sectors”.
- Consider alternatives in some cases to large-scale pylon and solar developments when connecting renewables to the grid, with a possible option being the undergrounding of cables.
- Oppose new development for nuclear power stations, and oppose new licences for oil and gas drilling.
- Support the message of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal agreement by halting biodiversity decline by 2030 and begin counteracting the losses as soon as possible.
Reform UK:
- Scrap “green energy subsidies”.
- Expand nuclear energy with “new Small Modular Reactors, built in Britain”.
- Increase and incentivise “ethical UK lithium mining for electric batteries, combined cycle gas turbines, clean synthetic fuel” and tidal power.
