Election 2024 – Party Policies on Energy & Climate

Liberal Democrats are committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045 at the latest.

The Liberal Democrats will: 

• Make homes warmer and cheaper to heat with a ten-year emergency upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes, and ensure that all new homes are zero-carbon.

• Drive a rooftop solar revolution by expanding incentives for households to install solar panels, including a guaranteed fair price for electricity sold back into the grid.

• Invest in renewable power so that 90% of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewables by 2030.

• Appoint a Chief Secretary for Sustainability in the Treasury to ensure that the economy is sustainable, resource-efficient and zero-carbon, establish a new Net Zero Delivery Authority to coordinate action across government departments and work with devolved administrations, and hand more powers and resources to local councils for local net zero strategies.

• Establish national and local citizens’ assemblies to give people real involvement in the decisions needed to tackle climate change.

• Restore the UK’s role as a global leader on climate change, by returning international development spending to 0.7% of national income, with tackling climate change a key priority for development spending.

Take the action needed now to achieve net zero by 2045, including:

• Meeting the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by at least 68% from 1990 levels by 2030.

• Requiring the National Infrastructure Commission to take fully into account the environmental implications of all national infrastructure decisions.

• Putting tackling climate change at the heart of a new industrial strategy

• Investing in education and training to equip people with the skills needed for the low-carbon economy of the future

• Ensuring that nature-based solutions, including tree planting, form a critical part of the UK’s strategy to tackle climate change

• Putting the country’s farming and food system on an environmentally sustainable footing

• Making it cheaper and easier to switch to electric vehicles, restoring the requirement that every new car and small van sold from 2030 is zero emission, investing in active travel and public transport, electrifying Britain’s railways, and reducing the climate impact of flying

• Coordinating action across the UK by creating a Joint Climate Council of the Nations

Cut energy bills and emissions, and end fuel poverty, by:

• Launching an emergency Home Energy Upgrade programme, with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households and a central role for local authorities in delivering this programme.

• Providing incentives for installing heat pumps that cover the real costs.

• Immediately requiring all new homes and non-domestic buildings to be built to a zero-carbon standard, including being fitted with solar panels, and progressively increasing standards as technology improves.

• Reintroducing requirements for landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties to EPC C or above by 2028.

• Introducing a new subsidised Energy-Saving Homes scheme, with pilots to find the most effective combination of tax incentives, loans and grants, together with advice and support.

• Introducing a social tariff for the most vulnerable to provide targeted energy discounts for vulnerable households
• Helping people with the cost of living and their energy bills by implementing a proper, one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers and traders.

• Decoupling electricity prices from the wholesale gas price.

• Eliminating unfair regional differences in domestic energy bills.

Accelerate the deployment of renewable power and deliver energy security by:

• Removing the Conservatives’ unnecessary restrictions on new solar and wind power, and supporting investment and innovation in tidal and wave power in particular.

• Maintaining the ban on fracking and introducing a ban on new coal mines.

• Building the grid infrastructure required, facilitated by a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework.

• Implementing the UK’s G7 pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies, while ensuring a just transition that values the skills and experience of people working in the oil and gas industry and provides good opportunities for them, and takes special care of the regions and communities most affected.

• Investing in energy storage, including green hydrogen, pumped storage and battery capability.

• Working together with European neighbours to build a sustainable supply chain for renewable energy technology.

• Building more electricity interconnectors between the UK and other countries to guarantee security of supply, located carefully to avoid disruption to local communities and minimise environmental damage.

Support the expansion of community and decentralised energy, including:

• Empowering local authorities to develop local renewable electricity generation and storage strategies.

• Giving small low-carbon generators the right to export their electricity to an existing electricity supplier on fair terms.

• Requiring large energy suppliers to work with community schemes to sell the power they generate to local customers.

• Reducing access costs for grid connections.

• Reforming the energy network to permit local energy grids.

• Guaranteeing that community benefit funds receive a fair share of the wealth generated by local renewables infrastructure.

Restore the UK’s role as a global leader on climate change by:

• Restoring international development spending to 0.7% of national income, with tackling climate change a key priority for development spending.

• Showing leadership on the Paris Agreement by meeting the UK’s nationally Determined Contribution and arguing for greater global ambition.

• Working together with European neighbours to tackle the climate emergency, including by associating the UK Emissions Trading System with the EU ETS.

• Continuing the UK’s support for the UN Loss and Damage Fund for countries particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, to ensure a just transition for all.

• Pressing for all OECD countries to agree to end subsidies for foreign fossil fuel projects.

Hold businesses to account for their role in tackling climate change by:

• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment.

• Requiring all large companies listed on UK stock exchanges to set targets consistent with achieving the net zero goal, and to report on their progress.

• Regulating financial services to encourage climate-friendly investments, including requiring pension funds and managers to show that their portfolio investments are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and creating new powers for regulators to act if banks and other investors are not managing climate risks properly.

Support British industry to cut emissions by:

• Setting out a clear and stable roadmap to net zero, repairing the damage done by Conservative U-turns and giving businesses the confidence to invest.

• Expanding the market for climate-friendly products and services with steadily higher criteria in public procurement policy.

• Implementing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism for high-emission products, protecting UK businesses from unfair competition.

• Reducing emissions from industrial processes by supporting carbon capture and storage and new low-carbon processes for cement and steel production.

• Providing more advice to companies on cutting emissions, supporting the development of regional industrial clusters for zero-carbon innovation and increasing the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund.

Natural Environment

• End the sewage scandal by transforming water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end, and replacing Ofwat with a tough new regulator with new powers to prevent sewage dumps.

• Set meaningful and binding targets to stop the decline of the country’s natural environment and ‘double nature’ by 2050: doubling the size of the Protected Area Network, doubling the area of most important wildlife habitats, doubling the abundance of species and doubling woodland cover by 2050.

• Plant at least 60 million trees a year, helping to restore woodland habitats, increase the use of sustainable wood in construction, and reach net zero.

• Pass a Clean Air Act, based on World Health Organization guidelines, enforced by a new Air Quality Agency.

• Strengthen the Office for Environmental Protection and provide more funding to the Environment Agency and Natural England to help protect the environment and enforce environmental laws.

Tackle the national scandal of sewage-polluted rivers, waterways and beaches, and make water companies work for people by:

• Introducing a Sewage Tax on water company profits.

• Enforcing existing laws to ensure that the storm overflows only function in exceptional circumstances.

• Setting legally binding targets to prevent sewage dumping into bathing waters and highly sensitive nature sites by 2030.

• Embracing nature-based solutions to tackle the problem of sewage dumping.

• Strengthening the powers of local authorities to monitor the health of rivers, lakes and coastlines, restore the country’s natural environment and tackle climate change.

• Introducing a ‘blue corridor’ programme for rivers, streams and lakes to ensure clean and healthy water and setting new ‘blue flag’ standards.

• Improving the quantity and quality of bathing waters and sensitive nature sites with more regular and robust testing of water quality.

• Giving local environmental groups a place on water companies’ boards.

• Introducing a single social tariff for water bills to help eliminate water poverty within the next Parliament.

• Implementing Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act to require sustainable drainage systems in new developments.

• Mandating all water companies to publish accessible real-time data on any sewage they dump.

Ensure everyone has access to a healthy natural environment, regardless of where they live, by:

• Significantly increasing the amount of accessible green space, including protecting up to a million acres, completing the coastal path, exploring a ‘right to roam’ for waterways and creating a new designation of National Nature Parks.

• Passing a new Environmental Rights Act, recognising everyone’s human right to a healthy environment and guaranteeing access to environmental justice.

• Making sure that the UK has the highest environmental standards in the world.

• Protecting at least 30% of land and sea areas by 2030 for nature’s recovery.

• Working together with European neighbours to tackle the nature crisis, including applying to join the European Environment Agency.

Hold businesses to account for their responsibility to the environment by:

• Introducing a general duty of care for the environment

• Requiring large businesses to publish transition plans to become nature-positive across their activities and supply chains.

• Introducing nature-related financial disclosure requirements for large businesses.

Make planning work for the country’s natural environment and ensure that developers pay their fair share by:

• Ensuring new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity, with up to a 100% net gain for large developments.

• Introducing a strategic Land and Sea Use Framework to effectively balance competing demands on the country’s land and oceans.

• Empowering Local Nature Recovery Strategies to identify a new Wild Belt for nature’s recovery.

Create a nature-positive economy, tackle plastic pollution and waste, and get Britain recycling by:

• Introducing a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and containers, working with the devolved administrations to ensure consistency across the UK, learning the lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish scheme.

• Aiming for the complete elimination of non-recyclable single-use plastics within three years and replacing them with affordable alternatives.

• Working to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030 through the UN High Seas Treaty and finalising a Global Plastics Treaty to cut plastic pollution worldwide.

• Setting an ambition of ending plastic waste exports by 2030.

Ensure that nature-based solutions form a critical part of their strategy to tackle climate change by:

• Restoring peatlands as a carbon store, and banning the use of horticultural peat and the routine burning of heather on peatlands.

• Protecting and enhancing temperate rainforests.

• Creating and restoring habitats like saltmarshes, mudflats and seagrass meadows to guard against coastal flooding and erosion and absorb carbon emissions.

• Tackling ‘greenwashing’ by introducing new Blue Carbon and Soils Carbon Standards that are properly enforced and accredited.

• Working with international partners to fight deforestation around the world.

• Creating a real network of marine protected areas, ensuring that they are fully protected from damaging and destructive activities, protecting and restoring blue carbon and ensuring climate resilience at sea.

Food and Farming

The Liberal Democrats will: 

• Introduce a holistic and comprehensive National Food Strategy to ensure food security, tackle rising food prices, end food poverty and improve health and nutrition.

• Accelerate the rollout of the new Environmental Land Management schemes, properly funding it with an extra £1 billion a year to support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming.

• Maintain high health, environmental and animal welfare standards in food production and guarantee that all future trade deals will meet them too, ensuring that Britain’s farmers and food manufacturers are not put at an unfair disadvantage.

• Give Britain’s farmers the ability to trade with European neighbours with minimal need for checks by negotiating comprehensive veterinary and plant health agreements.

• Support farmers properly in restoring woodland, peatland and waterways, creating new natural flood protections and managing land to encourage species recovery and carbon storage, while producing food for the table.

In addition, they will give farmers and fishers a fair deal by:

• Introducing a range of other ‘public money for public goods’ programmes, such as nature recovery, planting trees and protecting wildlife, contingent on farmers and land managers opting into an Environmental Land Management scheme.

• Exploring additional funding options to ensure an intelligent transition to better farming practices.

• Investing in rural and coastal infrastructure and services, including local abattoirs, so that communities are viable and can attract and retain workers, particularly from younger age groups.

• Using public procurement policy to support the consumption of food produced to high standards of environmental and social sustainability, and which is nutritious, healthy and locally and seasonally sourced.

• Renegotiating the Australia and New Zealand trade agreements in line with their objectives for health, environmental and animal welfare standards, withdrawing from them if that cannot be achieved.

• Ensuring that sustainability lies at the heart of fisheries policy, rebuilding depleted fish stocks to achieve their former abundance, including a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Fishers, scientists and conservationists should all be at the centre of a decentralised and regionalised fisheries management system.

Strengthen the Groceries Code Adjudicator to protect consumers from unfair price rises and support producers.

Ensure farming and food system is on an environmentally sustainable footing by:

• Ensuring farmers receive proper, independent advice about how to transition to new environmental farm payments schemes, with proper funding for advice services.

• Supporting farmers to reduce the pollution of rivers, streams and lakes.

• Working with and rewarding farmers to reduce the use of costly imported and environmentally harmful artificial fertilisers and pesticides, helping to protect bees and other pollinators.

• Introducing a Research and Innovation Fund to support new and emerging technologies in the sector including the development of alternative proteins in which the UK can become a world leader.

Give consumers confidence in the food they eat by:

• Providing local authorities with greater powers and resources to inspect and monitor food production.

• Ensuring all imported food meets UK standards for health and welfare, and that goods are properly checked.

• Introducing robust and clear-to-understand food labelling.

Ensure Britain continues to be a world leader in animal welfare and standards by:

• Passing a comprehensive new Animal Welfare Bill to ensure the highest standards possible.

• Ensuring that no animal product that would be illegal to produce in the UK can be sold here, including foie gras and food produced with antibiotic growth promoters.

• Developing safe, effective, humane, and evidence-based ways of controlling bovine tuberculosis, including by investing to produce workable vaccines.

• Improving standards of animal health and welfare in agriculture, including a ban on caged hens, and preventing unnecessarily painful practices in farming.

• At least matching the EU’s stricter rules on preventative use of antibiotics, and introducing a comprehensive plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance in farm animals.