The press release from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy describes the Strategy as setting out “Bold new commitments to supercharge clean energy and accelerate deployment, which could see 95% of Great Britain’s electricity set to be low carbon by 2030”. As well as a significant acceleration of nuclear the plans include:

  • Offshore wind: A new ambition of up to 50GW by 2030 – more than enough to power every home in the UK – of which we would like to see up to 5GW from floating offshore wind in deeper seas. This will be underpinned by new planning reforms to cut the approval times for new offshore wind farms from 4 years to 1 year and an overall streamlining which will radically reduce the time it takes for new projects to reach construction stages while improving the environment.
  • Oil and gas: A licensing round for new North Sea oil and gas projects planned to launch in Autumn, with a new taskforce providing bespoke support to new developments – recognising the importance of these fuels to the transition and to our energy security, and that producing gas in the UK has a lower carbon footprint than imported from abroad.
  • Onshore wind: Consulting on developing partnerships with a limited number of supportive communities who wish to host new onshore wind infrastructure in return for guaranteed lower energy bills.

Guardian leads with ‘Major misjudgement’: how the Tories got their energy strategy so wrong. There are huge opportunities – for example, just 40% of UK homes have sufficient loft insulation. But there is nothing new in the strategy beyond an advice website. Former Tory energy minister Charles Hendry calls this a “major misjudgment” that will “force large numbers of very vulnerable people to be cold next winter when they need not be”.

The next priority should be renewable electricity, now six times cheaper than that from gas-fired power stations. There are 649 wind and solar projects that already have planning permission. These would save more gas than the UK imports from Russia. But the strategy promises nothing to cut the planning regulations that David Cameron used to strangle onshore wind development and large-scale solar farms.

BBC reports that environmentalists and many energy experts have reacted with dismay at the failure of the government’s energy security strategy to cut emissions and bills in the short term. They welcome the long-term target to secure low-carbon home-grown energy supplies click here.

The British Energy Security Strategy can be read here

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