UK's Miliband vows to lead in clean energy, demand corporate net zero strategies

By Virginia Furness and Simon Jessop

LONDON (Reuters) -Cutting emissions and investing in the green economy put Britain on the right path, energy secretary Ed Miliband said on Wednesday, as he pledged to push large companies to detail exactly how they plan to align their businesses with the shift.

The government is under pressure from opposition parties over the perceived costs of the shift to net zero emissions at a time when energy costs remain high following Europe's shift away from Russian energy imports over Moscow's 2022 Ukraine invasion.

Speaking to a gathering of climate investors, scientists and civil society groups at London Climate Action Week, however, Miliband reiterated its commitment to decarbonising the economy and stimulating green business growth.

"Our mission is to make Britain a clean energy superpower by accelerating to net zero across the economy," he told the flagship conference at the climate festival, which brings together over 45,000 delegates, attending more than 700 side events.

Central to the plan will be requirements for large companies to set out detailed plans for how they will cut their carbon emissions to align with a target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees of over pre-industrial levels.

The government is also seeking to position London as a global sustainable finance hub. In a statement on Wednesday, it said it was weighing new sustainability reporting standards, which set out the information companies must provide to investors on sustainability-related financial risks and opportunities.

Miliband said while increasingly severe weather events showed the urgency of the climate crisis, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising energy prices highlighted the need to deliver energy security from cheaper renewable sources.

"Ours is ... a hard-headed determination to get off the roller coaster of fossil fuel markets with cheaper, clean, home-grown energy that we control," he said.

Britain's plans to reach net zero by 2050 depend on its ability to slash energy prices to speed up the adoption of emission-curbing technology, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, independent advisers to the government on climate change said on Wednesday.

"By far the most important recommendation we have for the government is to reduce the cost of electricity both for households and businesses," Piers Forster, interim chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said at a briefing on its annual progress report.

Miliband's comments on green growth followed the publication earlier in the week of Britain's new industrial strategy, which laid out plans to invest more than 30 billion pounds ($40.84 billion) a year by 2035 in areas such as renewable energy.

New analysis overnight from the Energy Transitions Commission and consultants Systemiq found that 40% of the solutions needed to move the economy to net zero - for example twinning solar power and battery storage - were already more cost-effective than fossil fuels or would be by 2030.

"We now need the right policies to enable other sectors of the economy to reach that tipping point, and to enable all countries to share in the economic opportunities created," said Energy Transitions Commission's chair Adair Turner.

($1 = 0.7346 pounds)

(Additional reporting by Susanna Twidale, Will James and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Joe Bavier)