This article is the product of a POLITICO roundtable hosted by Photovolt Development Partners.

LIVERPOOL, England — It was the moment a new government tried to stamp its green credentials on Westminster and the country.

Labour Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a little more than a week into the job, announced that developers could go ahead and build three vast solar farms, consent decisions which had been quietly delayed by the previous government.

Developers said the projects have the collective potential to power 400,000 homes.

But industry experts argued at the Labour Party conference that the Conservative government may have missed a political opportunity in its approach to the massive Sunnica project in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, one of the solar farms later greenlit by Miliband.

“There is an angle you could take that [Claire Coutinho, Miliband’s Conservative predecessor] actually saved Sunnica,” one figure told POLITICO at a roundtable Tuesday evening.

That individual, like other people quoted in this article, was granted permission to discuss political decisions under the Chatham House Rule, meaning they would not be identified.

“The Planning Inspectorate recommended refusal,” they continued. “She could have just refused it. She would have been perfectly within her rights.” 

But Coutinho let the moment pass, along with the chance to win favor from highly skeptical backbench Conservative MPs. As soon as Miliband replaced her at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, he overruled inspectors to approve Sunnica. 

Labour has committed to decarbonizing the U.K. energy system by 2030 — considered an “impossible” goal by some industry commentators. 

But ministers should now focus intensely on getting these sorts of renewables projects built, another expert told the event, rather than getting too caught up in questions about exactly what the energy mix will look like as the country gets closer to that date.

“Just fix the basics, right?” they said. “Let’s just start getting all those renewables built. In some ways that [worrying about the energy mix in 2030] is trying to run before you can walk.”

They added: “If we end up with too much [renewable power], we will find useful things to do with that energy.”

This article is the product of a POLITICO roundtable sponsored by Photovolt Development Partners and held under the Chatham House Rule at the Labour Party conference on Sept. 24. It was written and produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.