General Election 2019: Comparing Energy & Environment Policies

The Green Room: What happens when you put two energy experts in a room and ask them about the upcoming UK general election. James, Nick and Harri are today discussing the political agendas of all the main political parties, and getting to the bottom of what we’re being promised. How soon can we be carbon neutral? How many trees should we be planting? How much should we be investing on improving the energy efficiency of our buildings?

 

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WHAT ARE THE BIG ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT ISSUES FACING US IN THE 2019 UK GENERAL ELECTION?

 

Cutting emissions

All the main parties want the UK to move toward being carbon neutral, but they have very different timelines on when they think we can achieve this.

 

Improving UK housing stock

A huge number of buildings in the UK are woefully underinsulated, making them very inefficient with energy. Politicians are aiming to tackle this in many different ways, with wildly different levels of priority and expenditure, and significantly different focuses.

 

Transportation

Whether it’s investing more in cycle lanes and buses, or ending the sale of petrol and diesel car in favour of electric vehicles, the future of the British transportation and how it affects the environment is a policy for all the parties.

 

Renewable energy

There’s a lot of variation between the party positions here, including policies on nuclear power, wind farms, fracking, and more. Where does our energy come from and what should we be investing in?

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Read the Party Manifestos:

Conservatives

Labour

Liberal Democrats

Green Party

SNP

Plaid Cymru