05/09/2022

New Prime Minister urged to accelerate roll-out of renewables to help billpayers

05 September 2022 - RenewableUK press release


RenewableUK is urging the new Prime Minister Liz Truss to speed up the roll-out of new renewable energy projects to help billpayers and boost the nation’s energy security.


RenewableUK’s CEO Dan McGrail said:


“We’re looking forward to working with the new Prime Minister and her team to take forward new measures to reduce energy bills, both in the short term and the long term.


“Firstly, it’s vital that she should re-commit to the ambitious targets set out in the Government’s Energy Security Strategy, which will move us further and faster towards energy independence. That means more than quadrupling our offshore wind capacity to 50GW by 2030 - including 5GW of innovative floating wind. We need to remove the barriers in the planning system which are unnecessarily delaying offshore wind development, and upgrade our grid so that we can connect new offshore projects more quickly.


“Now is the time to end the block on onshore wind development in England and set a new target for the sector. We know onshore wind projects can be up and running within a year of approval, providing the country with much needed low-cost clean energy, so we’re urging Liz Truss to pull out all the stops to encourage new projects to go ahead in areas where they have local support.


“Industry wants to work with Government on our plans to break the link between the exorbitant cost of gas and the price of electricity. This It will enable billpayers to benefit more from the vast amounts of low-cost electricity being generated by wind and other renewables, by no longer allowing gas to call the tune in the energy market.  


“Green hydrogen generated by electricity from wind is set to be a key technology in our future energy mix, as it can be stored to give us flexibility to use it whenever we like. The Energy Security Strategy sets a target of 10GW of hydrogen capacity by 2030 – at least half of which will be green hydrogen. We’re calling on the Prime Minister to recognise the importance of this new technology which offers us the chance to build up a whole new green hydrogen industry, as we’re a world leader in this cutting-edge technology”.


(ends)

Notes


RenewableUK’s members are building our future energy system, powered by clean electricity. We bring them together to deliver that future faster; a future which is better for industry, billpayers, and the environment. We support over 400 member companies to ensure increasing amounts of renewable electricity are deployed across the UK and to access export markets all over the world. Our members are business leaders, technology innovators, and expert thinkers from right across industry.


More on the plan to reduce electricity bills by breaking the link with gas prices is available here.


RenewableUK’s events programme is available here.


For further information, contact