What Do Brexit Campaign Groups Have to Say on Energy and Climate Change Policy?

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Manyย are trying to answer the question of what the UKโ€™s energy and climate change policy might look like if we leave the EU. So, what do those behind the Brexit campaign have to say on thisย subject?

As it turns out, there appear to be only two relatively clear strategies on energy and climate policy put forward by the groups campaigning to leave the EU.

One of these was published in August 2014 by Business for Britain. However, this document has since quietly disappeared from the groupโ€™sย website.

Meanwhile, the scenario proposed by Fresh Start, a group of about 100 Eurosceptic MPs, was published inย 2012.

As such, both proposals are, at the very least, outdated as neither of them have been updated to take into account the Paris climate deal which the UK is signed onย to.

Business forย Britain

Taking a closer look, Business for Britainโ€™s โ€˜Energy Policy and the EUโ€™ briefing paper aims to offer โ€œpractical solutionsโ€ for decision makers in the lead up to theย referendum.

However, the URL (businessforbritain.org/BFBEnergyPaper.pdf) for this paper simply re-directs you back to the homepage. (You can find a copy archived here.) So, itโ€™s worth asking to what degree any energy policy is a priority for theย group.

In โ€œnot taking a stance on the climate change debateโ€ the 2014 paper argues that EU policy and regulations have driven up the cost of energy in the UK.

โ€œExpensive European regulation has become a serious problem for British businesses,โ€ it reads. Itโ€™s worth noting, however, that a recent analysis of the impact of Brexit by Energydesk shows that leaving the European Unionย could add billions to the cost ofย fuel.

โ€œIn short,โ€ Business for Britain concludes, โ€œEU lawmakers need to show that they are using evidence when they are devising policy and demonstrate that, for all future energy policy proposals, the EU is considering affordability, international competitiveness and security of supply, not justย sustainability.โ€

It also argues that the EU should not set any new renewables targets for member states, and that future targets should be for โ€œemissions overallโ€ โ€“ it calls for a re-assessment of the EUโ€™s 2030 climate targets in which the various goals for emissions and renewable energy would simply be stated as oneย emissions reductionย target.

The paper also calls for a review of the EU emissions trading scheme to allow it to become โ€œmore flexibleโ€ and for Britain to consider opting out of the scheme, as well as EU renewables targetsย generally.

Meanwhile, the group Economists for Britain, also laments the cost of EU climate policies in a paper on Brexit and the economy.

Writing on โ€œtoo much regulationโ€, Tim Congdon, professor at the University of Buckingham (which is known for its connection to the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation) is critical of the โ€œzealโ€ with which the EU has adopted climate targets and the knock-on effectย leading to coal plantย closures.

Freshย Start

A similar theme of โ€˜keeping bills downโ€™ and โ€˜cost efficiencyโ€™ can be found in Fresh Startโ€™s environment briefing paper.

And like Business for Britain, it is careful to state โ€œwe have deliberately not challenged the science of anthropomorphic [sic] climateย changeโ€.

The paperโ€™s metadata shows that it was drafted by โ€˜graystonelโ€™ โ€“ likely Luke Graystone, a member of Energy Minister Andrea Leadsomโ€™s staff. Leadsom co-founded Fresh Start in 2011.

Among the manifestoโ€™s proposals includes ditching current and post-2020 targets for renewable energy and instead investing in shale gas, new nuclear, and carbon capture and storage, in order to ensure the UK can meet its climate goals at a lower cost. (Soundย familiar?)

As Leadsom said in a speech last month: โ€œLeaving the EU will give us freedom to keep bills down, to meet our climate change targets in the cheapest way possible, and of course, keep the lightsย on.โ€

As the Fresh Start environment strategy concludes, โ€œin order to tackle the risk of increased fuel poverty, while simultaneously tackling the challenge of building a low-carbon economy for the 21st Century, the UK should explore any possible short-term scope for re-negotiation of the 2020 renewable energy targets. If such moves prove unfruitful, the key battle will centre on what targets will be setย post-2020.โ€

โ€œWhilst the business case for government support for learning and innovation in a range of promising low carbon energy technologies is clear,โ€ it continues, โ€œthe need to meet the EU2020 renewable targets constitutes a burdensome and most unnecessarily expensiveย policy.โ€

Voteย Leave

The main Vote Leave campaign on the other hand, mostly just critiques EU energy policy on its website. Among its links for more information is the Business for Britain briefingย paper.

Vote Leave offers just one sentence suggesting what it might do should Britain leave the European Union: โ€œIf we Vote Leave, we will have the power again to cut the cost of energy, repeal harmful regulation and help ensure that essential power plants stay open, fending off the risk of widespread powerย cuts.โ€

A bit more clarity on this statement is found higher up in the energy section on the Vote Leave website, which reads: ย โ€œThe EU, by contrast, has created problems for energy security, tied our hands on decarbonisation, and risks making us more dependent on Putinโ€™sย Russia.โ€

Like Congdon, it also laments theย closure of coalย plants.

Brexit Climateย Deniers

Of course, there are other scenarios too. And given the deep-rooted Brexit-climate denier connection, none of these seemย optimistic.

As mapping by DeSmog UK revealed, Vote Leave can count several climate sceptic individuals among its members including Matt Ridley and Lordย Lawson.

And as Green MP Caroline Lucas and the UKโ€™s former top climate diplomat John Ashton recently warned in the Guardian, right-wing Tories may go so far as to try and repeal the UKโ€™s legally binding 2008 Climate Changeย Act.

โ€œThe record of the leading Brexiters, in whose image a post-referendum government would be shaped, offers no reassurance that they would resist any of this,โ€ they write.

Indeed, at the centre of the Brexit debate sit politicians who have long been part of the countryโ€™s climate sceptic fringe โ€“ from Justice Secretary Michael Gove who once pushed for global warming to be removed from the national geography curriculum to Boris Johnson whoโ€™s flirted with climate scepticism in his Telegraph columns, and Owen Paterson who sought to slash climate change spending as environmentย secretary.

Even Leadsom, upon entering her role as Energy Minister, had to ask whether climate change wasย real.

Should a post-Brexit government be made up of these individuals and led by Johnson, as some have speculated, itโ€™s not difficult to imagine the direction the UKโ€™s energy and climate policy mightย go.

Photo: Back Boris 2012 Campaign viaย Flickr

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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