Well how about the lunatic net zero policy where they are going to destroy farms and help to cut food production? It will cost a gigantic amount to the tax payer yet expect us to swallow the lies that bills will come down? What happens when there is no sun or wind? The laws of physics prevent batteries storing power with degradation. Roll on May for the bye elections. Labour are as bad as if not worse than the tories.
The net zero policy is not lunatic, and of course destroying farms and helping to cut food production are not parts of it. I can only assume that that's a reaction to the fairly moderate increase in solar provision. The size of that is and always will be pretty tiny as a proportion of agricultural land. We already have at least that much land lying fallow or underutilised because the flood protections aren't in place to keep it viable.
Furthermore, solar technology has come in wildly in the last few years to the point where modern tech can produce significant multiples of the amount of power which could be produced even 5 years from the same amount of land, and can be done using much cheaper solar panels to boot. The current trend is even towards mounting the panels vertically, which leaves huge amounts of space in-between for grazing and growing various crops. This not only cuts land-take, but also means that the energy can be produced economically at normal tariffs rather than needing some of the subsidies which have been required in the past.
Obviously solar doesn't provide baseload generation, and we can't depend on it as our only source of power. We need backup power, which is why nobody is actively cancelling nuclear projects in spite of the eye-watering costs, and we continue to build gas-fired power stations. It does mean though that we don't need to run gas power stations for a large proportion of the day, and accordingly don't need to buy so much expensive gas from difficult-to-deal-with regimes.
The laws of physics aren't terribly interested in battery degradation tbh, but while battery technology has got a lot better in the last 20 years, progress is definitely slower than it is in solar generation. Batteries in cars and homes do provide a valuable contribution to having a sustainable energy supply in the coming years, but nobody is particularly planning on using them in gigantic power factories as was perhaps envisioned in the past - nuclear, gas and ever-improving energy efficiency should see to that.
Personally I'm not a huge fan of the haste with which the Tories eliminated coal in UK supply - I think we'd have been much safer if we'd continued to have it as part of the mix for longer. That isn't on the table anymore though - the plants have gone, the coal supply has gone, and the knowledge has gone to the point where it would probably be nearly as expensive to build new coal as new nuclear.
Basically, nobody has actually come up with an energy policy which provides more security or lower cost than net-zero. The alternative is mostly just to sit on our hands and hope for the grid to get fed by some kind of divine lightning, so until you actually have a better idea there's really no value in trying to prevent net-zero from happening
