The Green Party will invest £12 billion a year in renewables to revolutionise the way we produce energy and produce 75,000 jobs in the process, it has announced today.
The fully-costed plans include a massive investment of £8.4bn each year to build an additional 40,000 wind turbines by 2030, providing 70% of the UK’s electricity.
The Greens will also provide additional support for other renewable energies such as solar, geothermal, tidal and hydro to provide much of the remainder of the UK’s energy supply by the end of the next decade.
This investment will be focused on enabling local communities to develop their own renewable energy projects, so that the benefits of locally generated energy can stay local.
The radical proposals form part of the Green Party’s ambitious Green New Deal which aims to ensure the UK is on track to carbon net zero by 2030.
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Former Green Party leader and candidate for Brighton Pavilion, Caroline Lucas, said : “We need a radical transformation of our energy system if we are to meet net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Investing in community-based renewable energy will not only help reach that target, but also puts power in people's hands.
“This is the Green New Deal in action: delivering clean energy, green jobs and empowering local communities”.
Lucas today [Tuesday 3 December] visited a solar farm in Bristol with Bristol West candidate Carla Denyer, a former wind farm engineer.
Denyer said: “Before I got into politics, I was a renewables engineer. But I got frustrated trying to change the world one wind turbine at a time. With this policy, the Green Party would usher in the kind of large-scale change to our energy generation that Britain needs to be carbon neutral by 2030.
“It’s ambitious and optimistic. But the time for delay on climate action is over. We have the technology to go carbon neutral. We have the people and we have the skills. All we need now is the will. The time for action is now.”