The home is a central pillar: Incentives for Heat pumps, which will be free along with free insulation for low-income homes, EPC obligations on landlords, new homes to be at a zero-carbon standard, greater subsidies, and more EVs.
In energy markets, they want to decouple electricity prices from the wholesale gas price, but don’t say how they will achieve this. They will also introduce a social tariff.
Local communities get a key role, there will be local plans (which are already part of NESO’s role). Large suppliers must work with communities to sell power to local customers, isn’t this how the grid already works?
We know the Lib Dems like Europe, and they will align our emissions trading scheme with the EU’s and build more interconnectors.
A Net Zero Delivery Authority is something that I have been a proponent of, so I’m pleased to see this in there.
A tougher nut to crack will be introducing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, unilateral implementation of CBAM could inflate prices here, but getting international agreement could take years.
This has been a harder summary to write than the other parties as it’s not so much a policy as a plan for a shopping spree. There isn’t much that isn’t included, and like all shopping sprees there’s going to be a large bill for all of this, which despite the oil and gas windfall tax, ultimately, we will all pay.
