Green energy magnate to switch support from Just Stop Oil to Labour

Dale Vince, the green energy magnate, has said he is to stop funding direct action climate groups such as Just Stop Oil and instead funnel money towards getting the vote out for Labour at the next general election.

The Ecotricity founder, who has funded a string of disruptive environmental protest groups, has supported Just Stop Oil since its inception, and has previously said his funding for the group has totalled “some hundreds of thousands”.

This summer, Vince took to the streets with the climate protesters, joining their campaign of slow marches in central London.

He said that even though he was still “comfortable with their methods”, Just Stop Oil’s tactics had not worked fast enough and it was time for a new strategy.

“The next general election will be the most important of my lifetime, perhaps any of our lifetimes,” he wrote in the Guardian.

“If we are to reverse 13 years of relentless damage to our economy and our environment, then we need a new approach. That’s why rather than fund protest, I’m going to concentrate my support wholeheartedly on the British electorate voting the Conservative government out of power at the next election.

“Currently, Labour is the only party realistically equipped to reverse the current regime’s most damaging policies and has demonstrated commitment to both do so and embrace vital tenets of the green economy.”

As well as funding direct action protest groups, Vince has given at least £1.5m to Labour over the past decade. His funding for both had led to accusations from the prime minister that “eco-zealots” were writing the opposition’s energy policies.

Labour has said that if elected it would grant no new licences for oil and gas projects, a key demand of Just Stop Oil, as well as begin a programme of retrofit insulation for 19m homes, which was a key demand of the environmental activist group Insulate Britain.

A green policy offering led by Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change and net zero secretary, also includes plans to quadruple off-shore wind, change planning rules to ease the way for more on-shore wind projects and an upgrade to the electricity grid, create a new public-private energy company and reach £28bn in green investment by the end of the second half of a Labour-led parliament.

By contrast, Rishi Sunak las month announced U-turns on a number of green initiatives, pushing back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers, in an effort to draw populist dividing lines between the Conservatives and Labour as his party trails in the polls.

Just Stop Oil has been contacted for comment.