Letters / Energy is a public good
Labour’s choice proves it: they care more about investors than communities.
This week, the Labour government ditched plans for zonal electricity pricing across the UK – a move that could have finally started to right some of the worst injustices in our broken energy system. Instead, they’ve chosen to protect the profits of investors over the needs of people.
Zonal energy pricing scrapped by UK Government in ‘disappointing outcome’
Zonal pricing would have acknowledged a simple fact: where lots of energy produced, energy should be cheap.
Here in Shetland we produce a lot of wind power. Yet household and business bills are through the roof. It’s not wind that’s making energy expensive.
Renewable power is cheap to produce. What’s broken is the UK energy system – a mix of market distortions that lead to massive waste.
This decision by Labour locks us into that system. Westminster has once again chosen to prioritise “investor confidence” over tackling poverty, fairness, or basic common sense.
This was a lost opportunity to align with Nordic countries – who treat energy as a public good for communities.
Labour is fuelling poverty in Scotland. Not just through failure to act, but through deliberate choices like this one.
Scotland has the energy. What we need is the power to use it fairly.
Hannah Mary Goodlad
Parliamentary candidate for the SNP
