Following our interviews with climate spokespeople in the run-up to the General Election this is the first in our series of interviews with Labour\u2019s leadership hopefuls focusing on their energy and climate agenda. The series is intended to highlight the key issues in the debate around energy and climate in the UK.<\/p>\n
There is undoubtedly something somewhat refreshing about Jeremy Corbyn \u2014 at least by the standards of political interviews.<\/p>\n
Sitting somewhat awkwardly below a rapidly-assembled poster with the word \u2018leader\u2019 hovering above his head, the Labour MP for Islington North cuts a bemused figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy time is no longer my own,\u201d he says apologetically after our interview is cut short by his friendly but fretful press officer.<\/p>\n
Whilst some politicians fail to answer questions, with Jeremy it\u2019s more that the question gets lost amidst a blizzard of detail, sometimes not especially relevant. And this isn\u2019t even meant to be one of his pet subjects.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mum and dad were both scientists in various ways,\u201d he says explaining how he came to learn about climate change as early as the 1970s.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been involved in opposing the large road building programmes in Britain in favour of rail [\u2026] I\u2019ve supported measures to improve energy efficiency,\u201d he says \u2014 before running through how his local council has cut bills through home insulation schemes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would want the public ownership of the gas and the national grid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe least efficient are the private rented sector which is lacking sufficient regulation to bring all this about,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
Solar panels on every home<\/p>\n
To Corbyn, a fundamental tool to enabling action on climate change is bringing things back under public control.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe post-war model of energy supplies in Britain was to bring into national public ownership all the electricity generation and all the gas generation [\u2026] these were then privatised under Margaret Thatcher\u2019s government and since then we\u2019ve had a rather strange kind of energy market.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would want the public ownership of the gas and the national grid,\u201d he asserts before suggesting that nationalising power supply may prove more tricky.<\/p>\n
For large power stations \u201cit would be fairly straightforward to bring that into public ownership,\u201d but Corbyn is keen on a distributed model for power generation with solar panels on every new home and warehouse (in preference to fields).<\/p>\n
\u201cI would personally wish that the Big Six were under public ownership, or public control in some form,\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s simply not credible or possible to make that into a mass public corporation\u2026 we also want to encourage municipal and cooperative developments of energy, essentially the more locally you generate electricity the more efficient it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
He runs into the same quandary when it comes to the companies we buy our gas and electricity from.<\/p>\n
Big Six<\/p>\n
\u201cI would personally wish that the Big Six were under public ownership, or public control in some form,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I don\u2019t want to take into public ownership every last local facility because it\u2019s just not efficient\u201d.<\/p>\n
The general picture Corbyn paints is fairly clear: nationalise the big stuff, promote energy efficiency, and decentralise power.<\/p>\n
The coal plants, the pipes, the wires, even the biggest energy companies would, somehow or other, come under state control or ownership. \u201cIt seems to me that having the fundamentals of the national grid and future energy supplies and security of energy supplies in public ownership is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI get this argument put to me quite often, that it [clean energy] hits the poorest hardest. Well it doesn\u2019t have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can do it by majority shareholding, you can do it by increased share sales which are then bought by the government in order to give a controlling interest. I\u2019m not looking at throwing money away but I am looking at the question of public control and how it\u2019s achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes it cost? Yes. Is there a return? Yes. Because quite clearly any profits made then go to the public, rather than shareholders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone would accept that distinction. Sitting in a cramped union office opposite Euston station, an eclectic range of dated socialist posters moved delicately out of shot, it would be easy to see Corbyn as a throw-back \u2014 all nationalisation and 1980\u2019s style state-socialism. But that would be a misleading simplification.<\/p>\n
Attacking government policy he says \u201cwe discourage the growth of self-generation of electricity through solar and it seems we\u2019re still besotted with the idea that the most important thing is the big scheme, whereas in fact it\u2019s a holistic approach [we need] which is about basically everybody using less,\u201d and decentralised, locally owned generation.<\/p>\n
Cap bills<\/p>\n
In addition to a big push for solar (he also supports onshore wind) he wants regulations which enforce high standards of insulation and \u201cexacting standards on all things that use electricity, be they cars, electrical appliances or anything else\u201d.<\/p>\n
But insultation and clean energy require investment up front. The government\u2019s climate advisors have suggested such measures could account for around \u00a3175 of bills by 2030 and recent research by the left-leaning IPPR think tank suggested the cost of clean energy on bills falls disproportionately on the poorest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get this argument put to me quite often, that it hits the poorest hardest. Well it doesn\u2019t have to. It depends how the pricing mechanism works [\u2026] in any event one can have a cap on prices to ensure that doesn\u2019t happen,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
And there is definitely one \u2018big scheme\u2019 idea where he feels savings could be made. \u201cI think we\u2019ve been misled about the true costs of nuclear power generation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe safety issue of any nuclear power stations \u2013 what\u2019s happened in Japan \u2013 is obvious for all to see [\u2026] and the issue nobody has an answer to is the question of nuclear waste\u201d. He opposes any new nuclear power plants.<\/p>\n
But if he isn\u2019t straightforwardly statist it would equally be a mistake to paint him as simply a green evangelist of small scale renewable energy.<\/p>\n
In the 1980\u2019s Jeremy was a fierce advocate of the UK\u2019s coal industry and jobs for the miners \u2014 and it\u2019s not something he has entirely let go of.<\/p>\n
Clean coal<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last deep mine coal mines in South Wales have gone but it\u2019s quite possible that in future years coal prices will start to go up again around the world and maybe they\u2019ll be a case for what is actually very high quality coal, particularly in South Wales, being mined again.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s probably why Jeremy is a supporter of carbon capture and storage for coal plants \u2014 a technology he has backed in Parliament and which could charitably be described as yet to be proven at a commercial scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s complicated. At one level it looks very expensive but the advantages also look quite attractive,\u201d he suggests.<\/p>\n
His view of oil extraction is also nuanced.<\/p>\n
He supported the creation of a sanctuary in the Antarctic to prevent mining and oil drilling and now opposes fracking in the UK. He didn\u2019t oppose North Sea drilling directly though \u2014 simply suggesting there was no need for it.<\/p>\n
And when it comes to global action to limit emissions Corbyn also stands out from the much of the rest of the left-leaning \u2018green blob\u2019.<\/p>\n
Global regulation<\/p>\n
He has spoken in favour of \u2018global regulation\u2019 to prevent the export of carbon and seems sceptical of the current framing of global talks which puts the burden heavily on developed nations \u2014 a notion many on the left support.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an acceptance that there should be a different pace of approach towards emissions so that so-called developing countries such as India and China had less exacting standards placed upon them than European countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got the impression that \u2014 as with the EU \u2014 Jeremy would adopt a pretty aggressive negotiating position on international climate targets. As with the EU though what is less clear is what would happen if he doesn\u2019t get what he wants.<\/p>\n
Many politicians are notorious for not telling you what they want, instead answering a question about what they want with what they think is politically or economically possible.<\/p>\n
Much like the popular leaders of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain part of the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn is that he doesn\u2019t do that \u2014 quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
\u2018The right thing to do\u2019<\/p>\n
But as with those movements when it comes to prioritising his ambitions he is harder to pin down.<\/p>\n
The nationalisation of firms worth hundreds of millions could make Jeremy\u2019s flagship pledge to end tuition fees look relatively modest but he believes it can done, at the same time as spending large sums on clean energy. And hundreds of thousands of solar panels can be installed at the same time as rolling out carbon capture and storage on coal.<\/p>\n
Corbyn\u2019s belief in his solutions is based on principle and so unwavering.<\/p>\n
When I pushed him to say if nationalisation was more of a long-term ambition he brushed off the notion. \u201cIt means the government \u2013 which is ultimately responsible for these things \u2013 takes a direct responsibility for it. That seems to me the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he doesn\u2019t duck the detail on how his promises might be delivered. But if, like Greece\u2019s Syriza, a Corbyn government were forced to choose between his priorities it\u2019s hard to know which he could ultimately deliver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following our interviews with climate spokespeople in the run-up to the General Election this is the first in our series of interviews with Labour\u2019s leadership hopefuls focusing on their energy and climate agenda. The series is intended to highlight the key issues in the debate around energy and climate in the UK. There is undoubtedly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[],"supplier":[],"class_list":["post-27521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27521"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=27521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}