Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a landslide majority in the recent UK general election. Promising to make Britain a “clean energy superpower,” the new government has a lot of work to get done and related industries are eagerly awaiting bold action.

In its manifesto, the party set an ambitious target for the UK to achieve clean power by 2030. It has pledged to work with the private sector to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by decade-end. It has also promised millions in support for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, alongside setting up Great British Energy, a new publicly-owned company that will deliver clean power.

The new government has already started the ball rolling. For one, it lifted the previous Conservative government’s ban on new onshore wind farms – a move hailed by environmentalists and industry experts. 

“It’s encouraging to see the Labour government hit the ground running and swiftly enact the campaign promises, such as lifting the de facto ban on onshore wind a mere 72 hours after taking office,” Clare Jackson, ceo of trade body Hydrogen UK, tells Kallanish. “This demonstrates the government’s serious commitment to making Britain a clean energy superpower, for which hydrogen will play a pivotal role.”

While achieving clean power by 2030 is a “big challenge,” it is “just the sort of ambition needed to beat the climate crisis and safeguard our energy bills against volatile gas price shocks,” says the independent think tank Green Alliance.

Meeting this target would not only require renewables but also other low-carbon forms of flexible power, including long-term energy storage and more hydrogen power, Green Alliance adds in a statement. 

Echoing this, Ed Matthew, campaigns director at climate think tank E3G highlights achieving Labour’s clean power target would require adequate support for short and long-term storage solutions.

“Storage and flexibility are essential to create a balanced power system and it is also critical path to creating the cheapest and most affordable decarbonised power system,” Matthew tells Kallanish. “But political effort needs to be super-charged to get us on track. It must be a top energy policy priority – it can bring growth, jobs and security.”

Green Alliance adds: “If the UK is going to lead the world in low carbon technologies and achieve independence, the government needs to adopt a strategy to ensure long-term supplies of critical raw materials that prioritises demand reduction and circularity. Transport, buildings and industry also need to do much more to decarbonise.”

Within a week of coming to power, the government established a £7.3 billion ($9.35 billion) National Wealth Fund to attract investments in the “industries of the future.” To be allocated through the UK Infrastructure Bank, the fund has earmarked £500 million for green hydrogen manufacturing and £1 billion to boost the deployment of carbon capture technologies. Another £1.5 billion has been pledged to new battery gigafactories so that Britain’s “automotive industry leads the world” and £1.8 billion to upgrade ports and build supply chains. The fund also includes £2.5 billion to “rebuild” the UK’s steel industry.

For the new government, “the first 100 days will be critical,” notes Hydrogen UK's Jackson, adding the government’s key priorities for the H2 sector should begin with the approval of projects under Hydrogen Allocation Round 1 (HAR1) and Track-1 of the Cluster Sequencing process. The former will guarantee a strike price to selected hydrogen projects and the latter will support carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) clusters.

The trade association recently launched a manifesto, outlining key policy recommendations for the new government to support the hydrogen industry. These include the need for a single standard for a consistent definition of low-carbon hydrogen; ensuring HAR1 projects can progress to final investment decision “immediately”; and supporting a technology-agnostic production approach, among others.  

“Getting HAR1 and Track 1 projects over the line early will send a strong signal that the UK is open for investment, and ready to lead the global hydrogen economy,” Jackson adds.

Additionally, Dennis Schulz, ceo of British electrolyser manufacturer ITM Power, highlights the importance of creating a local hydrogen supply chain, both for domestic use and exports.

“This is a volume game: electrolysers will get cheaper with volume,” Schulz explains in a LinkedIn post. “A strong and strategic domestic demand will not only lower our hydrogen molecule price but significantly improve the competitiveness of our electrolysers for strengthened export as well. With key suppliers likely to co-locate where we scale production capacities, electrolysers and their supply chains have the potential to create an enormous amount of jobs in the UK, and to grow wealth.”

For the transport industry – the UK’s largest emitting sector – industry experts believe the next five years will be crucial for switching to zero-emission vehicles and creating an equitable transport system. Among its many promises, the Labour Party has pledged to reinstate the 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. It came after the previous government pushed back the date to 2035 last year. Labour has also promised to support EV buyers by “accelerating the roll-out of charge points.”

But the industry has called for more action to accelerate EV adoption.

Automotive trade body SMMT’s chief executive Mike Hawes has called on the government to “create the conditions for mass EV adoption in Britain.” Boosting EV adoption, Hawes says, would require a “bold” plan to make zero emission mobility “possible” for everyone. 

At the same time, Ralph Palmer, UK electric vehicle and fleets officer for campaign group Transport & Environment, says the new government will inherit an EV market supported by the zero-emission vehicle mandate – a “world-leading regulation.”

“It’s critical that the new Labour government build on this ambition by delivering policies that help further boost EV demand,” Palmer says. “They could do this by developing a public communications campaign on EVs, introducing targeted measures to support consumers and refreshing the UK's charging strategy to level-up provision across the whole country.”

Along similar lines, Hawes has called for incentives for EV purchases, fairer VAT on public charging and infrastructure, a plan for decarbonising light and heavy commercial vehicles, buses, coaches and minibuses, and a dedicated infrastructure strategy.

While a reintroduction of the 2030 ZEV mandate is “laudable,” the government would need to prioritise three things to achieve this, says Thom Groot, the ceo and co-founder of the Electric Car Scheme. Firstly, it will have to extend the low Benefit in Kind (BIK) tax rates until 2035 at 5%. It will also have to lower the VAT on public charging to 5% and “avoid the temptation to impose tariffs on affordable EVs from outside the UK.”

“Keir Starmer will have a bulging in-tray over the next few months, but he and his government cannot afford to let this key policy fall down the priority list,” Groot warns. “If this happens again, as it did under the Tories when the deadline was initially extended, the goal risks becoming totally unrealistic.”

Meanwhile, the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA) has called on the Labour government to “be bolder” and “more ambitious” to fully seize the opportunities of the energy transition.

“The impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world and the longer we delay the higher the costs of addressing it become,” says Trevor Hutchings, ceo of the REA. “We will also miss out in the global race for investment and talent in the technologies of the future. The REA is challenging this administration to be bold and quickly seize this opportunity.”