Ed Miliband ‘confident’ Labour will achieve clean power target by 2030

Earlier we spoke to the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. We started by asking him what problem he’s trying to solve with this new company and this partnership between the Crown Estate and GB energy?

Ed Miliband: We’ve had a terrible cost of living crisis in Britain over the last couple of years, and that comes from our dependence on fossil fuels. Both fossil fuels that we produce at home and those we import, because they’re sold and priced on the world market. So dictators and petro-states can control those prices. So our mission on which we were elected, our mandate, was to become a clean energy superpower. And Great British Energy, a new publicly owned energy company, is one of the tools to drive forward to that clean energy that we need. Offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, to give us that energy security, lower bills and good jobs that we need for the future.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But what will this invest in that the private sector wouldn’t have done by itself anyway?

Ed Miliband: Let’s take, for example, some of the leading edge technologies, floating offshore wind. So we have fixed offshore wind in this country, and that’s a pretty mature market. But floating offshore wind is a new technology. Now what Great British Energy can do is it can invest in that technology of the future in partnership with the private sector to, in the terminology, de-risk those investments. So the state putting some money behind this gives some assurance to the private sector. They’re more likely to come in. It can generate a return. So it’s not just a grant. It’s actually taking a stake in that investment, giving a return to the taxpayer over time.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So your ambition is to be a publicly owned energy generator?

Ed Miliband: A publicly owned clean energy generator, definitely. That is what it’s going to be.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But it’s not going to be a retailer. It’s not going to be like EDF, where it’s…

Ed Miliband: It’s not a retailer, it’s a generator. Look, we’re not going to become Orsted or the generation arm of EDF overnight. But that is the long-term vision. In five years we’ll make progress. Hopefully if we’re elected again in five years time, we can make further progress. It’s a different way of thinking about how Britain approaches these issues, it is saying ownership matters, it is saying we want to generate wealth for the country.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: When you talk about generating wealth, this company is going to make profits. The Crown Estate already makes a billion quid or so. What’s going to happen to it? Because if it goes into treasury, it’s like a stealth tax. Are taxpayers going to get a bit of it back?

Ed Miliband: I’ll be discussing that with Rachel Reeves. Look, some of it will go into GB Energy to reinvest. Some of it will come back to the taxpayer.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: How?

Ed Miliband: Well it will generate wealth. Some of it will go back to the treasury. It will generate wealth for the country which we can reinvest, not just in energy, but in public services and so on.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But we don’t get a dividend?

Ed Miliband: We’re developing these plans. But we certainly want people to see benefits from Great British Energy. So one of the other things it’s going to be doing is investing around the country in clean energy projects, and we want to see local people near those clean energy projects get a benefit from that. So there’s lots of things we can do with this income, but it’s income for the country.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Is the King to make money out of this?

Ed Miliband: The King won’t make money out of the GB Energy investments. His Majesty gets a share of the Crown Estate investments, and will continue to do so. That’s negotiated with the treasury. But money that Great British Energy puts in will come back to Great British Energy and to the taxpayer.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What that means is that your target of 2030 is looking very ambitious. I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks you’ve got a good chance of hitting it…

Ed Miliband: Well, you’ve met me.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: You’re confident, are you? And we can judge you on that?

Ed Miliband: Absolutely. Look, Chris Stark who used to run the Climate Change Committee, Greg Jackson who runs Octopus, Patrick Vallance who did the vaccines taskforce. It is about a different way of doing things. In our first three weeks in office, we’ve lifted the onshore wind ban. I’ve approved more nationally consented solar projects than the whole history of the last government. We are proceeding at pace. It is really challenging, but I’m confident we can do it.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Have you banned new drilling licences in oil and gas?

Ed Miliband: We’re not going to issue, we’ve got a clear policy which is not to issue new licences for oil and gas. That was our manifesto commitment and we’re going to implement that.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Are you cutting off your nose to spite your face in doing that?

Ed Miliband: No.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Are you turning down profitable energy sources?

Ed Miliband: No we’re not. We’re going to keep existing oil and gas fields open for their lifetime. It’s very important to have a balanced transition in the North Sea. But the reason why new oil and gas licences won’t make a difference to us is they don’t cut the price. They don’t make any difference to the price of energy. We’re far better off putting our resources, putting our effort, into the clean energy of the future, which we do control, which can bring down bills.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Given how you said this is a long term project, you promised that energy bills would come down by £300 or more by the end of this parliament. How’s that going to happen as a result of this? Or was that going to happen anyway?

Ed Miliband: We stand by the idea that for energy security and for lower bills there is only one answer, which is clean energy, because energy bills are forecast to rise in the autumn. That’s not because of anything the government’s doing. It’s because the gas price internationally is going up. We don’t control that. What this is doing is, to coin a phrase, taking back control and saying, ‘we as a clean energy superpower can control the price.’ Because we set the price of wind power and nuclear and so on. So we set the price, and that’s the way we get control and can have lower bills.