Labour’s plans for a ‘secure route to energy security and sovereignity’ with plans to insulate 19 million homes has been revealed by shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband.
Mr Miliband said that the next Labour Government will invest £60bn over 10 years retrofittting and insulating homes in order to reduce bills for people and reduce dependancy on imported gas.
He added that it was about the cost of living and tackling climate crisis with a green new deal.
The five point plan which Labour revealed is:-
- Invest £6bn a year on retrofitting houses to make them more energy efficient.
- Reverse the seven-year moratorium on onshore wind farms in order to double onshore wind capacity to 30GW by 2030.
- Aim to double offshore wind targets by 2035 to 75GW
- Increase all efforts on renewable power
- End the delay on new nuclear power plants
Agreeing with the plans, Brian Berry, chief executive of The Federation of Master Builders said: “The FMB supports the Labour Party’s commitment to begin an ‘energy efficiency revolution to insulate 19 million homes’. As energy prices are inevitably set to push the cost of living into unsustainable territory for many UK households now has got to be the time to take action in the aim to reduce households vulnerability to these expected price increases and reduce the UK’s total carbon emmisions”.
“Local builders appear to be keen to deliver green upgrading, but require confirmation of long term certainty from government which will encourage customers to upgrade their homes”.
He went on to say that the construction industry has been asking for a national retrofit strategy to incentivise energy efficient upgrades to our existing homes. Future plans to make our homes greener and more energy efficient must be long-term to give consumers and builders the confidence in upgrading schemes”.