According to Theresa May, Kemi Badenoch’s promise to repeal the Climate Change Act is a ‘catastrophic mistake’. Writing for The Spectator today, Ed Shackle, who works for a market research firm called Public First, was adamant that the policy change won’t just degrade the planet or obliterate Lady May’s thin political legacy – it is a bad electoral error, too. Quoting one of his polls, he claims that 37 per cent of Conservative voters say they wouldn’t vote for a party which is not committed to reaching net zero. He also claimed: “The British public consistently backs energy infrastructure – even when it’s close to their homes.’
Not round my way, in Cambridgeshire. It has been rather entertaining to watch support for renewable energy collapse just as it arrived on our doorstep. I live among Conservative and Lib Dem voters who are instinctively pro-environment. There are lots of solar panels (including on my own, which is paying 70 pence per kilowatt-hour, thank you very much) and electric cars and heat pumps too. I have never held a straw poll, but I would guess that, until recently, a comfortable majority of people in my village would approve of net zero targets.
But now it’s actually affecting us. Ed Miliband’s renewable energy boom has arrived in the village. We have long had an electricity sub-station and associated transmission lines about a mile away across the fields, but our area has now become a magnet for solar farms. The first arrived a couple of years ago without causing too much anger. But the owner wants to extend them. Meanwhile, proposals have been made for a massive solar farm a few miles away which would bring a new line of pylons close to the village. At the same time, a company wants to build a large lithium battery installation outside the village. We already have one, which is also currently being extended.
Take the battery installation. This is the current state of the planning section of the local authority’s website: ‘Public comments received: 81. Objections: 81.’ Angry letters have been sent from 52 different properties in the village (some have sent more than one). There are around a hundred houses in the village. The objectors – declared interest, I am one of them – have raised concerns about the fire risk from the battery installation (very real, as they can burn for hours if they go into ‘thermal runaway’), unsightliness, noise, loss of countryside and much more besides. And we have hardly started complaining about the pylons yet. No-one really likes this stuff. Sporting one of the brassiest of all political necks, even former Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay opposed a line of pylons that has been planned through his Suffolk constituency to bring electricity from offshore wind farms to London.
The Conservative party has long had a posh and powerful green lobby whose members have supported green energy on the grounds that it has allowed rich money-making opportunities on their considerable landholdings and who personally don’t have to worry about anything so vulgar and lower-middle-class as energy bills. But I would somewhat question the notion that most Tory voters of the shires will gladly support net zero whatever the costs. On the contrary, as the effect on bills and other implications of net zero become impossible to ignore, attitudes towards net zero are changing rapidly across the political spectrum. Now, advocates of net zero have Green Nimbys to contend with too. I think Badenoch may well have this issue spot-on.
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