Labour launches Great British Energy

In the King's Speech delivered today at the State Opening of Parliament, the new Labour government made good on its promise to set up a new company, Great British Energy.

GB Energy will have £8.3 billion of new money over the course of this Parliament, and will invest in projects in partnership with the private sector.

The company will be headquartered in Scotland; according to the Holyrood website, there have been calls for it to be in Aberdeen, given the city’s role in energy, but the Highlands and Edinburgh are apparently also under consideration.

The three initial priorities for Great British Energy, according to its website, are as follows:

1. Co-investing in new technologies: these new technologies will include floating offshore wind, tidal power and hydrogen.
2. Scale and accelerate mature technologies: more mature technologies, such as wind, solar and nuclear, will see accelerated roll-out.
3. Scale up municipal and community energy: increase decentralisation and resilience by partnering with energy companies, local authorities and cooperatives to develop “community energy projects”, with any profits going straight back into the community.

Offshore Energies UK, which represents over 400 organizations involved in energy production around Britain’s coast and gas, oil, wind, hydrogen, and carbon capture sectors,  has just published a new report which argues that “Achieving net zero power in Great Britain by 2030 is possible but very challenging”. 

The report sets out four key messages, one of which asserts that “For existing renewable technologies, while the framework for Contract for Difference (CfD) allocation rounds support is well-established, CfD award rates (GW/year) need to approximately double for each of offshore wind, onshore wind and solar PV” and that “7.6GW of offshore wind capacity needs to enter the planning system in 2024”.

It will be interesting to follow the path of Great British Energy as it gets to grips with what is certainly a challenging environment. I also look forward to seeing whether there will be any surprises in the results of AR6 of the CfD scheme, which opened before the General Election and will likely not conclude now until around 19 September 2024 at the earliest.