Motion #06
Consolidating the Energy IPPs agreed at Spring Conference into the PSS.
1 ADDITIONS TO THE ENERGY CHAPTER
A To change the Energy chapter as follows.
EN070 now reads: Fuel poverty will be addressed by a comprehensive range of policies, including home energy improvements and related policies on income, health, and housing as well as and energy pricing and regulation.
After improvements insert “and grants” so that it reads.
EN070 Fuel poverty will be addressed by a comprehensive range of policies, including home energy improvements and grants, and related policies on income, health, and housing as well as and energy pricing and regulation.
B To add a new short-term policies section at the end of the Energy chapter. The current chapter states policies at a high level and we think it would become unbalanced if we inserted detailed polices of the sort found in the IPPs.
Short-term polices
EN130: The ‘green levies’ currently added to electricity bills will be moved to gas bills.
EN131: The Supplementary Tax on the profits of North Sea oil and gas producers will be raised.
EN132: The price of low carbon electricity will be decoupled from the price of gas through market reform.
EN133: The five largest energy supply companies will be nationalised. See also IN604.
EN134: Emergency grants will be provided to homeowners, landlords and councils to fund immediate insulation improvements to those at risk of fuel poverty.
2 POLICIES NEEDING NO CHANGE TO THE PSS
a) Renewables
IPP policy: Invest in domestic energy security by massively ramping up onshore and offshore wind and solar.
This is covered by EN010:
• EN010 In line with the move from fossil fuels, clean electricity generation will be substantially increased, based primarily on renewable, very low carbon sources with offshore wind as a major source, supported by onshore wind, marine, solar photo-voltaic, biofuels, hydro power and geothermal.
b) Retrofit
IPP policy: Introduce a massive publicly funded programme to insulate all homes, matched with other measures to reduce energy demand.
This is covered by EN020 and 021:
• EN020 Large-scale refurbishment programmes will be carried out to greatly increase the energy efficiency of existing buildings.
• EN021 Heating of buildings will be transformed by the use of solar thermal, heat pumps, biofuels, stored heat, hydrogen and relevant derived synthetic fuels, electricity and geothermal. The use of natural gas for heating will be phased out entirely.
c) Regulation
IPP policy:
• Regulate all energy supply companies to facilitate the transition to a fully renewable domestic energy system.
• This regulation will support rather than undermine smaller energy companies and energy cooperatives.
Covered by:
• EN094 Fair competition will be ensured to encourage diversity of ownership of the energy system including public, municipal and community schemes.
• EN095 Energy regulation will be aimed at helping to achieve environmental and social objectives, and a fair and accountable energy sector.
d) Universal Basic Income
IPP policy: Introduce Universal Basic Income payments to support everyone with the rising cost of living. This would be taxable but not counted when calculating benefits to ensure impact is proportionate to need. Covered by EC730 to EC734: • EC730 Universal Basic Income sufficient to cover an individual’s basic needs will be introduced. Universal Basic Income is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income payable to each individual as a right of legal residence in the UK. It will not be • subject to means testing and there will be no requirement to be either working or actively seeking work.
• …..
• EC734 We appreciate that introducing Universal Basic Income as a sudden single change is probably not feasible. Instead we would propose to gradually introduce its main features into the existing social security system, beginning with removing conditionality, reducing the number and complexity of payments, and reducing withdrawal rates.