Ed Miliband has promised Labour will deliver where the SNP has failed with its planned publicly-owned energy company.
Labour’s shadow secretary for energy security and net zero said basing the proposed new GB Energy company in Scotland would help make the country the UK’s “clean energy capital”.
Saying this would be part of a “just transition” away from industries such as oil and gas, he added: “I’m old enough to remember when the SNP made this promise, seven years ago they promised a publicly-owned energy company.
“They have failed to deliver. We will deliver on that promise.”
His comments to the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow came as business leaders in the north east of Scotland raised concerns about the impact of failing to invest in the oil and gas sector.
It has been reported that business leaders including Sir Ian Wood, the founder of the Wood Foundation, the Scottish, Aberdeen and Grampian chambers of commerce, the co-leaders of Aberdeen City Council and others wrote to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to tell him the country needs to “encourage, not deter, investment” in new North Sea fields.
© PARaising concerns about the impact of Labour’s proposed North Sea windfall tax, they told him: “If North Sea production is to cease prematurely, a certain outcome of this policy, then our entire energy transition is undermined.”
Industry body Offshore Energies UK has already warned as many as 42,000 jobs and £26 billion of economic value could be lost under Labour plans to extend the windfall tax on UK oil and gas producers.
But Mr Miliband insisted Labour will not just deliver on climate change, “but on the economic change that this country needs”.
He told supporters at the Glasgow conference: “We’re going to have GB Energy, a publicly-owned energy company, headquartered here in Scotland investing billions of pounds, in floating wind, in the new technologies.”
He said Labour’s plans for a national wealth fund will also invest in areas including carbon capture and storage technology, in electric battery factories, and in infrastructure such as ports.
“We’re going to have a British jobs bonus,” he told the conference.
“We want to end the grotesque situation where we have massive offshore wind farms off the coast of Scotland but not a piece of them is built here in Scotland. We are going to change that.”
He said such measures will help create a “just transition across Scotland, especially for our oil and gas communities”.
He added: “We will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the industries that will power our future – hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, floating offshore wind. These are the technologies.
“For the first time we are going to succeed where the SNP and the Tories have failed. We will deliver.”
Mr Miliband’s speech came a week after Labour faced criticism for ditching a key pledge to spend £28 billion a year on green projects if it wins the next general election.
Environmental groups, trade union allies and energy industry figures all expressed disappointment at the U-turn.
Sir Keir said the party is being “straight” with voters, adding that economic “damage” by the Tories means Labour “can’t now do everything that we wanted to do”.
Recommended for you
