UK's Labour pledges to hike green investment to win power

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's main opposition Labour Party would invest 28 billion pounds ($38 billion) every year until 2030 to tackle climate change and grow new green jobs and industries if it wins the next election, its finance policy chief Rachel Reeves said on Monday.

With no national poll due until 2024, Labour wants to carve out an alternative agenda to the governing Conservative Party, which has adopted many of the opposition's policies, to win back its traditional supporters in northern and central England.

But Labour has often struggled to make its voice heard with the party's leftist and more centrist wings still waging war against each other, and leader Keir Starmer hopes the party's conference will take a step forward in forging more unity.

Reeves, who pitched herself as becoming Britain’s first green Chancellor, called on the Conservatives to match her capital investment commitment to build giga-factories for electric vehicle-batteries and create a hydrogen industry.

"As Chancellor (finance minister), I will not shirk our responsibility to future generations and to workers and businesses in Britain," she told the party's conference in Brighton, southern England.

"No dither, no delay. Labour will meet the challenge head on and seize the opportunities of the green transition. We will provide certainty and show leadership in this decisive decade."

($1 = 0.7311 pounds)

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; editing by Michael Holden)