Miliband’s empty energy promise

Though not quite up there with history’s great political texts, Ed Miliband’s letter this week to the director of the ESO, which runs Britain’s national grid, is a rather important document. It reveals – or confirms – that Labour has committed itself to decarbonising Britain’s electricity system by 2030 without really having any idea of how that can be done. Miliband described this letter as a ‘formal commission… to provide practical advice on achieving clean power’.

That is all very well, except shouldn’t Miliband have sought this advice months ago, before pledging to achieve net zero on domestic energy by 2030? This week was supposed to be the big reveal: we would learn how this target – considered unreachable by many – is going to be hit. But Miliband, it seems, doesn’t have the first idea as to how the country can decarbonise the grid, still less by 2030. His agenda and the decarbonisation deadline are starting to look like a ludicrous bluff.