The green vs. NIMBY split blowing up British politics

LONDON — There’s a new, green rift running through Westminster.

Every major party in the British parliament is committed to ambitious climate targets in the years ahead. But that means rapidly building new solar farms, wind turbines and pylons all over the country — and MPs are getting nervous about where all this stuff is going to go.

The Labour government is rushing to switch the energy system from fossil fuels to homegrown renewables by 2030. The Conservatives say they will do the same just five years later. Both have promised to steer the country to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 — and some smaller parties want to hit net zero even faster than that.

Voters are not all thrilled, though, about the new developments about to spring up across the country’s green and pleasant land. Alert to unrest in their own backyards, MPs from all parties are starting to make a fuss.

Ministers claim that by ridding the energy system almost entirely of oil and gas by 2030, electricity will be cleaner, homes warmer and bills lower by the time the next election rolls around.

“Candidly,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told the Commons in September, “unless we build the grid, solar and onshore wind, we will never get off the rollercoaster of international gas markets.”

Trouble on the backbenches

That means doubling the amount of energy generated by giant onshore wind turbines in the next five years and trebling it from solar farms, government advisers say. Twice as many pylons and transmission cables will have to be built in the next five years as in the last 10 to carry that new clean power.

The pace of change has already spooked some of Labour’s own backbenchers, however, who worry constituents will be rattled by the prospect of new energy projects criss-crossing their part of the country.

“They do not feel they are being listened to, in terms of what they want and where they need it,” Ben Goldsborough, Labour MP for South Norfolk, told MPs last month, referring to solar farms planned for his constituency. 

People understand the need to “drive towards net zero,” he said — but if voters feel overwhelmed they will reject the U.K.’s “future development towards being a green superpower.”

Goldsborough isn’t alone.

Suffolk Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter told local media in August that planned new cables would have a “detrimental impact” on her patch. Her colleague Matt Western said the “aggregate impact” of new solar farms in his Warwickshire constituency meant they were “not appropriate.” 

The issue makes Labour bosses so nervous that, according to one senior government official, ministers appointed to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero were vetted in case they faced campaigns against green developments in their own constituencies — a problem which dogged the previous Conservative government.

DESNZ and the Cabinet Office declined to comment on pre-appointment discussions with new ministers.

A problem stalking all parties

Conservatives MPs, too, are worried about the country’s green plans. 

Nick Timothy, a new Conservative backbencher and former adviser to Theresa May, the prime minister who signed the U.K.’s legally-binding net zero target into law, called Miliband’s decision to overrule inspectors and greenlight a giant solar farm in his constituency an “insult” to local people.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel has also been campaigning against local pylons. “I’m against these carbuncles being plonked on our undeveloped coastlines,” said Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins of pylons proposed in her constituency.

“We need to understand the concerns of communities who are seeing huge swathes of countryside now given over to massive solar development,” said former Energy Minister Andrew Bowie, who has lobbied against new pylons in his own Aberdeen constituency. 

Even the Green Party — which returned four MPs in July’s general election on a promise to hit net zero as early as 2040 — gets squeamish when clean energy plans encroach on their leafy new seats.

Adrian Ramsay, the Green co-leader, wants work paused on new pylons running through his Waveney Valley constituency. “There hasn’t been a proper options assessment in the way that I’m calling for. And we’ve got to get these things right, because it’s going to be infrastructure that’s there for the long term,” he told POLITICO.

The Liberal Democrats — now the third largest party in the House of Commons — say the whole country should aim for net zero by 2045. They plan to send a delegation to the U.N. COP summit in Azerbaijan this month to push for global climate action

But they’re not immune from the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) tendency.

At the July election, the Lib Dems won a swathe of seats in leafy areas of middle England once dominated by the Conservatives, where voters are not always keen on acres of solar panels and whirling turbines.

Layla Moran, an Oxfordshire Lib Dem MP, is “probably the greatest NIMBY in the House of Commons,” claim her political opponents. Moran says she shares her constituents’ “anger and frustration” at a proposed local solar farm and has been campaigning against it.

The Lib Dems should be bolder about claiming a role in blocking local developments, according to one senior MP.

“The danger is that we’re all so scared of the NIMBY tag that we empty-headedly agree to stuff that isn’t in the right place or isn’t the right kind of thing,” Environment spokesperson Tim Farron said. 

Striking NIMBYism

The government is still working out where all this new green infrastructure will go. But pollsters say they are right to expect their own MPs to grow cautious.

“The NIMBYism that’s present in constituencies across the country is striking. And I think the thing is, because Labour are now looking like they’re in a tough situation, individual MPs will be feeling that,” said Scarlett Maguire, director at JL Partners.

Plenty of Labour MPs are “sitting on incredibly marginal victories” in July, Maguire added, so that “local issues and local campaigning — and the case your MP can make for themselves as your local representative — will only become more important over the next few years.”

Those nervous MPs include nearly 90 in seats where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party came second to Labour.

Reform is firmly opposed to new green infrastructure and has promised to weaponize the perceived pain from net zero on the doorstep.

Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO: “We’ll fight the next election on scrapping net zero. And if I’m right that the bills don’t come down in the next couple of years, I tell you what, people are going to be very angry.”

Chris Stark, the official leading the Whitehall unit tasked with hitting the 2030 goal, is alive to the challenge of getting voters onside.

“I don’t think we’re going to win over everyone in the country, but I do think that there’s a sizable group of people who don’t know what we’re planning to do and are fearful of it. And that’s something I’d like to tackle,” Stark told an industry reception in September.

A way through

Some Labour MPs want their colleagues to hold their nerve on net zero and green infrastructure, however.

“We need to get on with it and build lots of things. It’s far too slow at the moment, and it costs more to build in the U.K. than anywhere else,” said Josh MacAlister, a new Labour MP and a member of parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. Labour’s “growth group” of pro-building MPs has taken the message directly to Miliband and the Cabinet.

In search of a trade-off for accepting something which is, to plenty of voters, currently unacceptable, ministers think there may be a way through the impasse. It comes via voters’ wallets.

Labour have promised communities will benefit from hosting new infrastructure.

Details on those benefits are coming “very, very soon,” according to Stark. “I’m excited about that. It’s a key part of the clean power 2030 plan.” 

But MPs are still waiting. A DESNZ spokesperson said only that the department was “considering ways to ensure communities who live near clean energy infrastructure can see the benefits of this, and will provide an update in due course.”

Some MPs, including Lib Dem Sarah Dyke, who represents rural Glastonbury and Somerton, wants ministers to offer bill discounts or even cash payments to farmers who host new solar farms. Pylon-hosting constituents “want to hear the word ‘compensation’,” said Labour’s Ben Goldsborough.

If the government can get this right, such benefits may be a way to win the hearts and minds of voters — and their MPs, according to Maguire the pollster. 

“I think [the government] is still yet to find perfect messaging and the perfect argument for this,” Maguire said. “But I would — if I was in that position — be considering more transactional offers.”