RenewableNI has pulled out the key points in each of the manifestos on climate, energy, planning and transport. Members may find this useful, particularly in terms of their own lobbying.
For further information, please contact Steven.Agnew@RenewableNI.com.
Alliance
Climate and Biodiversity:
- Create a new Department for Energy and Climate Change.
- Require all Executive departments to consider climate and the energy transition in policy development, to ensure all of government is working together towards our zero-carbon energy future.
- Deliver an improved Northern Ireland Climate Change Act.
- Establishing citizens’ assemblies to inspect policies tackling the climate emergency and make recommendations.
- Establish an independent Environmental Protection Agency.
- Legislating for carbon-neutral local government and incentivising renewables.
- Deliver an ambitious afforestation programme to increase Northern Ireland tree cover and achieve the current target of 19% cover by 2050.
- Introduce carbon audits for farms to support farmers to embrace environmentally beneficial farming practices.
- Expand the Environmental Farming Scheme to promote habitat restoration, including linking areas of high value by wildlife corridors.
- Delivering a Peatland Restoration Programme to support the climate mitigation plans through peatland and carbon stores conservation, restoration and improved management.
- Promoting biodiversity initiatives within education, and ensure that schools, colleges, and universities across the country play an active role in providing areas to promote biodiversity, including funding biodiversity degrees.
- Introducing a native Bee Strategy to address the drop-off in the number of bees, the consequence of which will be profound for the ecosystem.
Energy/Utilities:
- Introduce comprehensive support and incentives for renewable generation
- Fund necessary investment in the grid, including the second North-South Interconnector
- Invest in making Northern Ireland a world leader in emerging hydrogen technologies.
- Resource research and development and utilising our local university expertise regarding strategic future energy challenges such as energy storage, geothermal projects, carbon capture, storage and use, district heating solutions, and off-shore technologies.
- Implement an immediate statutory ban on all current and future fossil fuel exploration, including fracking.
- Oppose applications for the development of storage of non-renewable energy sources.
- Ensure the retrofitting of all social housing for renewable energy sources and insulation, creating many new jobs.
- Promote and offset costs for air and ground-source heat pumps, high-efficiency boilers, and other low or zero-emission technologies for the rapid decarbonisation of domestic heating.
- Roll out smart meters to electricity consumers, as has been widely done in Great Britain.
- Bring home heating oil within the remit of the Utility Regulator.
- Introduce a home heating support grant voucher scheme, targeted at low-income households.
- Pushing expedited investment in energy efficiency within housing to mitigate exposure to rising energy costs.
- Alliance is calling for the UK Government to: Temporarily finance green levies on energy; Expedite investment in green energies; Levy a Windfall Tax on energy firms that have made super profits during the period associated with post-pandemic recovery; Issue Green Bonds to enable the financing of some of the above proposals, facilitating a redistribution of some debt liabilities into the future.
Planning:
- Prioritise the passage of planning applications that propose increasing the renewable energy capacity of Northern Ireland.
- Create an independent infrastructure commission with a 30-year vision to prioritise, report on and drive delivery of infrastructure projects.
- Ensure statutory consultees in the planning process are correctly resourced so that 21- day response deadlines are met to consider critical environmental considerations.
- Review how the planning system can incentivise the greening of our towns and cities.
- Assist councils in preparing their Local Development Plans, ensuring consistency with the Regional Development Strategy
- Explore further permitted development rights for green energy infrastructure
- Introducing a qualified third-party right of appeal in planning decisions.
- Trial introduction of processing agreements and statutory timeframes for determining applications, focused initially on applications which have a positive impact upon tackling the climate crisis, most specifically renewable energy applications.
- Reform the Pre-Application Community Consultation process, including a tighter timeframe and provision for physical and virtual consultations.
- Putting pre-application discussions and checklists for all major applications onto a statutory footing, providing councils with the powers to reject poor quality and incomplete applications or the submission of late information.
Transport:
- Require new builds to make provision for electric vehicle charging and active travel.
- Significantly increase spend per capita on Active Travel.
- Develop a modern, all-Ireland rail network through a new 5-year plan for rail investment.
- Create an independent Sustainable Travel Commissioner for Northern Ireland to increase uptake and address barriers.
- Develop all-island transport connectivity, including high-speed rail between Belfast and Dublin, and onto Cork and Limerick.
DUP
Climate & Biodiversity:
- Promote substantial investment to deliver on the aims and provisions of the Climate Change Act
- Support the re-wetting of our peatlands
- Design farming with nature policies and support outcome-based payments.
- Invest in research and development to identify green and clean solutions
Energy/Utilities:
- Increase efficiency of our windfarm network.
- We are supporting calls for a Windfall Tax on energy firms
- Financial support for small-scale energy generation for householders, for example solar panels and heat installation measures
- We want to see an Energy Support Payment to help hard-pressed families as well as more help with energy efficiency schemes for householders
- Through investment in new technologies such as hydrogen, we aim to be a global leader in clean energy.
- We will deliver a programme of energy efficiency schemes, in both public and private housing
- Develop strategies and incentives to address excess farm nutrients via the production of green energy
- Ensure the green economy is at the heart of the Executive’s future skills strategies.
Planning:
- Press for an urgent and fundamental appraisal of the planning system, including a review of the Strategic Investment Board and its functions.
- Streamline the delivery of key infrastructure, including scoping the potential for a specialised procurement and delivery unit to take forward major projects that have been approved.
- Promote an end to lengthy delays in determining in major applications.
- Oppose policies that further constrain development in the countryside.
- Ensure the planning and design process includes green solutions such as electric vehicle charging points as default.
Transport:
- Deliver a regular high-speed train service between Belfast and Londonderry as envisaged by the Union Connectivity Review.
- Deliver on action 18 of the Department for the Economy’s Path to Net Zero Strategy to publish an electric vehicle infrastructure Action Plan.
- Maximise drawdown of funding for electric and ultra-low emission vehicles and make grant opportunities available to consumers.
- Promote greater investment in active travel routes and greenways, codesigned with communities and service users.
- Improve cycling networks across Northern Ireland.
- Support the shift to alternative energies and away from diesel.
- Support ongoing plans to reduce emissions on the Rathlin and Strangford to Portaferry ferry services.
https://s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/my-dup/029311-DUP-Manifesto.pdf
Green Party
Climate & Biodiversity:
- Establish an independent Environmental Protection Agency
- Declare the Rights of Nature
- Work with local authorities to identify appropriate land for reforestation and fund native broadleaf woodland creation where nature and recreation are prioritised. We will increase the overall planting of trees to 2,500 hectares a year by 2035.
- Encourage the planting of protective forests bordering rivers and lakes to protect water quality and as part of an integrated flood prevention and mitigation strategy.
- Implement an immediate cessation of all peat extraction on public land. Ban new or extended peat excavation, ban the importation of peat products, and implement a scheme for peatland restoration. Bring nitrogen deposition levels under control to enable peatland restoration to carbon sequestration status.
- Impose a moratorium for planning approvals on any project which proposes to increase ammonia pollution until such time as ammonia levels in Northern Ireland are legally compliant.
- Introduce a complete ban on the use of glyphosate-based herbicides including in local authorities.
- Promote the retention of hedgerows and their enhancement with appropriate species and the protection of existing mature broadleaf trees.
- Fully implement an ecologically coherent network of Marine Protected Areas around the coast of Northern Ireland to act as ‘no-take’ reserves, closed to commercial fishing and other extractive activities.
- Back the creation of national parks in Northern Ireland.
Energy/Utilities:
- Move to end Northern Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels quickly, investing in renewable electricity.
- Provide more financial support to households in fuel poverty.
- Ban all types of fossil fuel extraction and cease the granting of exploration licences including those for precious metals.
- End the development of the natural gas grid and focus on the electrification of heating and transport on our route to a net-zero future.
- Incentivise energy conservation, insulation and retrofitting to renewable energy sources in domestic, public and commercial planning policy.
- Ensure that large-scale renewable projects engage with and benefit local communities, including ‘community benefit’ payments for onshore wind.
- Develop grid technology to support the growth of renewable sources of energy to tackle intermittency and increase development of interconnectors to continental Europe, ensuring supply during periods of low production.
- Continue to campaign for divestment from fossil fuel industries, including all public sector pensions and investments from the financial sector.
- Ensure all new public buildings are energy efficient and decarbonised, with all existing public buildings being modernised and refurbished to meet the same standard.
- Support the use of Green Hydrogen to replace existing uses for fossil fuels.
- Advocate for smart metering in domestic and business properties.
- Introduce a new, responsibly-run and environmentally-focused renewable heat incentive scheme that reflects lessons learned about the mistakes of the past and the successful schemes run in other European countries.
- Support small-scale, local and co-operative schemes, especially community-owned and state owned schemes, ensuring any privately owned renewable installations are sensitive to the environment and heritage of the area.
Planning:
- Reform the Planning Act 2011 to ensure it is fit for purpose.
- Introduce Equal Rights of Appeal in planning.
- Improve tree preservation by creating automatic protection of trees.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/100X89Zk0t-BcIcotAFEzD5jvCUpZq4Or/view
Transport:
- Continue to phase out the current bus fleet to be replaced by electric & hydrogen-powered vehicles and begin the electrification of rail.
- Expand public transport, especially in rural areas AND explore reopening railway connections, to ensure that towns and cities across NI are adequately serviced and connected to each other.
- Ensure that by 2032 at the latest, every new car and van sold in NI is zero-emission.
- Make walking and cycling a realistic and safe alternative to the car through the creation of segregated cycle lanes and the expansion and connection of greenways.
- Suspend new road building projects with a focus on better maintenance of existing road infrastructure and the introduction of wildlife corridors.
People Before Profit
Climate & Biodiversity:
- A Just Transition and Workers’ Superfund which offer re-skilling/retraining on full pay for migration to green jobs.
- Climate Mitigations: such as tree planting, rewilding, woodland creation, nature conservation, and protection of biodiversity.
- Legislate to tackle the extinction crisis and for nature’s recovery: recognise the rights of nature.
- Urgent action to deliver carbon neutrality by 2035.
Energy/Utilities:
- Impose emergency price controls: The Stormont Executive should impose price controls on energy, fuel, and food where necessary.
- Ban companies imposing extra charges on payment metre users
- Take the private energy companies back into public ownership
- Energy strategies that are exclusively renewable, clean, and green.
- Renewable Energy Storage: to create a buffer against supply shocks and end the reliance on a “just-in-time” supply system.
- Oppose blue hydrogen, extraction licenses, harmful dredging, gold mining and fossil fuel industry permits
- Oppose Water Charges
Planning:
- No mentions.
Transport:
- Oppose privatisation of Translink and expand free public transport
- Restore the £15m a year Fuel Duty Rebate to Translink
- Transition to electrification of public and private vehicles.
https://www.pbp.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Election-Manifesto-2022-Final.pdf
SDLP
Climate and Biodiversity:
- We will ensure the NI Executive declares a climate emergency
- We will ensure a just transition
Energy/Utilities:
- Provide a direct £200 payment to all households and extend the £100 Emergency Fuel Payment Scheme.
- Press the British Government to introduce a one-year VAT holiday for domestic energy charges.
- Press the British Government to introduce a windfall tax on energy companies.
- We will build a Green Economy: We support investing in renewable technologies and we will incentivise greener energy production to position NI as a leader in green technologies. We believe that financial incentives, such as the rates system, and utility regulation can assist with the transition to net zero. We have urged the British Government to eliminate VAT on building materials that will contribute to improved home energy efficiency.
- We are committed to increasing renewable & clean energy supplies: The SDLP believes we should move beyond the Single Electricity Market to a Single Energy Market for all of Ireland. We will protect and restore our environment: We will introduce a Biodiversity and Nature Restoration Bill. We remain fully committed to the moratorium on fracking in Northern Ireland. The SDLP has stood strong against the exploitative gold and mineral mining taking place in some of our communities and would permanently ban fracking in the North.
- Continue to prevent water charging and price hikes for people across the North
Planning:
- Progress the establishment of the first ever Infrastructure Commission
- Transform the planning system to end delays and enable the creation of jobs and the protection of our environment
- Strengthen all-island partnership working to deliver enhanced local investment
Transport:
- Tackling the climate crisis through the increased use of zero emission vehicles and increased funding for councils for e-charging networks
- Driving active travel change with further cycle and greenway networks across the North
- Finishing the job of expanding our all-island rail network to better connect communities
Sinn Fein
Climate and Biodiversity:
- Ensuring Climate Action Plans are developed in partnership with farmers, workers and sectors and are economic, social, and rural proofed.
- Putting in place the structures provided for in climate legislation including; Just Transition Commission – to ensure a fair and just transition; Just Transition Fund for Agriculture – to support farmers in adopting more sustainable practices; Climate Change Commission.
- Work on an all-island basis to meet climate, environmental and biodiversity objectives.
Energy/Utilities:
- We need to develop our abundant solar, tidal, and onshore and offshore wind resources across the island and off our coast and develop the potential of green hydrogen.
- Bring forward legislation in the Assembly to ban petroleum licensing, drilling, and extraction– including fracking.
Planning:
- A new economic strategy for the North must be located within a wider strategy to integrate and develop the all-island economy post-Brexit. This includes work on all-island development, investment, and infrastructure strategies.
Transport:
- We need to reduce dependency on private cars by improving our public transport network including all-island rail links such as connectivity in the North West and the Dublin to Belfast corridor.
- We also need to prioritise active travel infrastructure such as cycle lanes and greenways to encourage people to take up healthier forms of travel, such as the Sligo-Enniskillen Greenway.
- The electric vehicle charge points network must be made fit for purpose in order to support electric vehicle usage.
https://vote.sinnfein.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/A4_MANIFESTOenglish.pdf
TUV
Climate and Biodiversity:
- Reject punitive green taxes and rushing headlong into supporting economically damaging policies for the sake of ‘political correctness.’ Hence, TUV’s opposition to the Green Party’s Climate Change Bill which would have devastated our agri-food industry.
- The centrality of our farming and food sector to Northern Ireland’s economy means its future must not be jeopardised by pursuit of an anti-farming ideology associated with climate change activists.
- TUV repudiates the contention that farmers are the enemy of good environmental practice. Thus, TUV will continue to vigorously oppose extremist demands by misguided climate change activists to wipe out much of our farming industry.
- Handing on our planet in as good condition as possible should be a common goal, but devastating food production and related industry is utter folly. Virtue signalling is no substitute for reasoned and pragmatic solutions.
Energy/Utilities:
- TUV will not pretend that the Stormont Assembly can do much in face of a global rise in energy prices or international inflation trends, but we will press for all available help, especially for the most vulnerable.
- The crippling and astronomical rise in fuel prices demands urgent government action.
- Her Majesty’s Government could and should cut the VAT rate on fuel for the duration of the present crisis.
- Viable green energy opportunities certainly deserve promotion.
- The whole RHI mess shows the folly of rushing to embrace any policy which gives the impression of being “green.”
- We are not impressed by the large-scale wind farm craze. Wind energy is an expensive form of energy. Further, there has been wholly inadequate preparation of the electricity grid to even accommodate all the wind turbines that have been encouraged.
- Stormont’s preoccupation with the all-Ireland single electricity market has served us ill.
- Following the mismanagement of the RHI scheme, genuine RHI farmers have been treated most shabbily both in terms of breach of promise by the Department and regarding the derisory tariffs which are now paid. TUV will continue to campaign for equity with Great Britain.
Planning:
- Respect for safety issues regarding Battery Electricity Storage Systems and proper application of planning laws.
Transport:
- For electric cars to become more viable there must be provision of sufficient charging points.
- TUV has long supported the development of hydrogen buses by Wrightbus.
- TUV supports major infrastructural projects like the Enniskillen bypass and upgrades on the A1, but we wish to see strategic steps to promote economic and tourism growth. We urge a rail link to our International Airport and further extension of the duelling of the A26.
- the ‘active travel unit’ has lost the run of itself with absurd pursuit of projects at the expense of essential provision for non-cycling traffic.
- Rationalising the operating hours of bus lanes to ensure they do not operate outside peak periods would assist traffic flow.
https://tuv.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/TUV-manifesto2022.pdf
UUP
Climate and Biodiversity:
- We will continue to target an 82% or better reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 for Northern Ireland as part of our ongoing climate mitigation strategy.
- New Green industrial Revolution
- Ulster Unionists will plant more of the right trees in the right places and do more to look after the trees and woods we already have.
Energy/Utilities:
- Review Energy Security and Prices – the island of Ireland is too small and isolated to conduct an independent energy market and Ulster Unionists will launch a review of energy security and prices with the view to creating an All-Islands energy market whereby Northern Ireland’s energy supply and prices are connected to the much bigger, cheaper and more secure energy markets in Great Britain.
- Northern Ireland’s utilities are currently regulated separately from Great Britain, but Ulster Unionists will consider merging the NI regulator with the UK’s Ofgem and Ofwat regulators as an All-Islands energy market is created. We are also concerned at reports of long delays in gaining permission for grid applications and that fees are much greater than in Great Britain. Ulster Unionists will be asking the Regulator to investigate this and to take urgent, remedial action
- Develop Hydrogen as a Fuel
- Mutualise NI Water
Planning:
- Establish an independent Infrastructure Commission
- Overhaul the Planning System: Ulster Unionists will introduce a statutory requirement for pre- application discussions for major and regionally significant applications, put PAGE 16 in place statutory timeframes within which statutory consultees must respond to major and regionally significant applications and give planning authorities the right determine an application without further delay if statutory consultees do not respond, or fail to respond substantively, within the timescales that all parties have previously agreed to.
Transport:
- Prioritise the EV Charging Network
- We remain committed to our cycling vision and in the next Executive we will implement the Strategic Plan for Greenways and fund the development and improvement of urban and rural Greenways and the National Cycle Network across Northern Ireland.
