It is a vast undertaking. The total cost, in private and public investment, is expected to run to hundreds of billions of pounds. And, whatever the eventual success of the Apollo space program, experts doubt Starmer can easily replicate Kennedy’s success.
Starmer and his Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are promising to transform the energy supply so that people flicking switches in their homes will know their electricity likely comes from a clean power source such as wind or solar.
But to do that, the new government will need to bulk up the U.K.’s creaking grid, overhaul the planning system to get infrastructure up and running, and reduce emissions from the squadron of gas plants using carbon capture, a technology largely unproven in the U.K.
It will be “very difficult,” said John Gummer, former chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the watchdog tasked with scrutinizing the government’s progress. “I personally don’t think it is achievable,” Chris Skidmore, a Conservative former energy minister, said last year.
Neil Golding, head of market intelligence at trade body the Energy Industries Council, expects Labour to miss its goal. Greater ambitions from the party are welcome but “the same issues remain in terms of hitting the targets,” he said. Gary Smith, head of the GMB labor union, one of Labour’s largest donors, has called it “impossible.”
Starmer and Miliband disagree. And that’s where “mission control” comes in. It’s a new delivery unit sitting inside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), focused squarely on the 2030 goal and headed up by Chris Stark, former CCC boss and a highly respected figure in energy circles. “If it can be done, Chris Stark is the one to do it,” Gummer said.