Labour Would Create ‘Office of Net Zero’ to Push Green Agenda: Report

LONDON, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 07: Labour Party leader Keir Starmer looks at some of the syste
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The left-wing Labour Party will reportedly establish a new bureaucracy to push forward the ‘net zero’ green agenda if it wins the July 4th general election.

In the mad dash towards eliminating carbon emissions in Britain, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s transition team, headed by former top bureaucrat and Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray will look to establish an “Office of Net Zero”, Sky News reports.

Gray — known for leading the investigation into the lockdown party scandal which contributed to the collapse of the Boris Johnson government before controversially jumping ship and joining the Labour Party — will reportedly seek to draft a group of civil servants dedicated to speeding up the green transition.

While Labour has tried to make the green agenda a point of differentiation with the governing Conservatives, in reality, there is little room between the two Westminster establishment parties on the issue.

Indeed, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak already established the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnez) last year, although the office only has an oversight role while Labour’s reported plans would make their office more active in policy.

Further demonstrating the similarities between the two establishment parties, Labour set out its leftist vision of decarbonising the power system by the end of the decade, while the supposedly conservative party has promised to do so by 2035.

Under the “Conservatives”, the government also banned fracking, meaning that the country was more susceptible to international price shocks such as those sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This uniparty approach has been challenged by the pro-energy approach of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has vowed to cut all green subsidies, which they claimed could save the taxpayer £30 billion per year over the next 25 years.

“Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single-use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets,” the Farage-led party argued.

Reform also called for “fast-track licences” for companies to drill for natural gas and oil in the North Sea. The party would also open up shale gas fracking test sites for two years and then pursue major production after the safety and local compensation schemes are implemented. Farage’s party went on to call for a push towards “clean nuclear energy”, particularly with the creation of new small modular nuclear reactors in Britain.

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