Responding to the King’s Speech, Energy UK’s chief executive, Emma Pinchbeck said:
“Today’s speech underlined the Government’s welcome commitment to hit the ground running with its clean energy mission – one that can drive economic growth, secure our future energy independence, revive our world-leading progress in reducing emissions and bring a host of benefits to customers.
“Key to this is attracting the private sector investment that will provide the lion’s share of the funding for the clean energy revolution and bring greater prosperity to all parts of the country.
“The establishment of GB Energy can help support this aim through investments which can then attract additional private sector funding as well kickstarting the development of newer technologies and supporting community projects – and so complement the continued expansion of larger and established sources like wind and solar.
“The sense of purpose and ambitious action articulated by the Government sends an important message to investors at a time of increased international competition for funding and with the UK in danger of falling to the bottom of the G7 for the growth of clean energy generation by 2030.
“The job now is to back this up with decisive and swift action to unleash all this potential and remove the barriers that are hindering our progress. So the early moves to remove the onshore wind ban and approve critical solar projects, pledges on planning reform and formation of a National Wealth Fund are all steps in the right direction.
“We also hope to see the Government take steps to maximise the output from the upcoming renewables auction while the importance of speeding up the connections process and the building of infrastructure to actually deliver this expansion of clean energy cannot be overstated.
“And while delivering big projects is vital, we must also keep focussing on improving things for the customer – whether that be support to help make bills affordable for all, making more of our homes energy efficient and helping the switch to cleaner and ultimately cheaper ways of heating and travelling.”