Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (): Cheap, abundant and
reliable energy is a foundation stone of a thriving economy. We
rely on it to power our homes, our infrastructure, and industry.
Affordable and plentiful energy makes businesses more
competitive, generating growth, jobs and prosperity. It keeps the
cost of living down, and will help bring down inflation.
A global pandemic, Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine, and Britain’s
continued reliance on imported oil and gas have pushed up energy
prices to unprecedented levels over the past year. The Government
has stepped in to pay half of the typical household’s bills over
winter and around half of wholesale energy costs for some
businesses. This was the right thing to do, but this approach is
not sustainable.
The creation of a new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
in February was a clear statement of intent by this Prime
Minister and this Government. Energy security and net zero are
two sides of the same coin. Cheaper, cleaner, domestic sources of
energy can break our link with reliance on imported fossil fuels,
meet our long term energy needs, bring our bills down and keep
them down.
We are in a strong position to drive the energy transition. We
have seen huge investment in our renewables sector since 2010. We
currently have the world’s largest operational offshore wind farm
project, Hornsea 2, and the second, third and fourth largest
operational offshore wind farm projects in the world. We have
delivered the second highest amount of recorded low-carbon
investment cumulatively across Europe over the last 5 years and
estimate that since 2010, the UK has seen £198 billion of
investment into low carbon energy, through a mixture of
government funding, private investment and levies on consumer
bills. Now is the time to go further.
‘Powering Up Britain’ announces the Government’s plans to
diversify, decarbonise and domesticate energy production. The
plans launched today will set out a blueprint for the future of
energy in this country – boosting the UK’s energy security and
energy independence – and help to achieve wholesale UK
electricity prices that rank amongst the cheapest in Europe by
2035. It will underpin the UK’s clean energy transition, create
new jobs and investment, protect consumers and businesses from
volatile international energy markets, and drive us towards net
zero by 2050. To meet this ambition, the Department for Energy
Security and Net Zero will deliver:
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Energy security: setting the UK on a path to
greater energy independence.
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Consumer security: bringing bills down, and
keeping them affordable, and making wholesale electricity
prices among the cheapest in Europe.
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Climate security: supporting industry to move
away from expensive and dirty fossil fuels.
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Economic security: playing our part in
reducing inflation and boosting growth, delivering high skilled
jobs for the future.
Our plan contains significant new policy and Government
investment across different sectors of the economy, including:
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Delivering Great British Nuclear (GBN): We are
matching the global competition and scaling-up our nuclear
programme by having launched GBN, responsible for driving
delivery of new nuclear projects, backed with the funding it
needs. The organisation will be initially led by an interim
Chair and CEO and will be based in or around the Greater
Manchester area. This body will support our ambition to ramp up
nuclear capacity in the UK to up to 24GW by 2050. The first
priority of GBN is to launch a competitive process to select
the best Small Modular Reactor technologies. This will commence
in April with market engagement as the first phase. The second
phase – the down-selection process - will be launched in the
summer, with an ambition to assess and decide on the leading
technologies by Autumn. The Government is committed to a
programme of new nuclear projects beyond Sizewell C, giving
industry and investors the confidence, they need to deliver
projects at speed.
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Making a world-leading commitment to Carbon Capture,
Usage and Storage: We are announcing the eight
projects to progress to negotiations to form the first two CCUS
clusters, in Wales, the North West and the East Coast of
England, and that we will launch a process to enable expansion
of those Track-1 clusters later this year. We are also
launching the process for confirming the next clusters for
deployment in Track-2. Our initial view is that Acorn and
Viking are the leading contenders for Track-2 Transport &
Storage System.
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Delivering a Hydrogen economy: Our 2030
hydrogen production ambition could generate enough clean
electricity to power all of London for a year. We are
announcing a suite of developments that get that ambition
underway: confirming the first winning projects from the £240
million Net Zero Hydrogen Fund, naming the two CCUS-enabled
hydrogen projects moving forward on the Track-1 clusters,
publishing a shortlist of 20 projects we intend to enter due
diligence with for the first electrolytic hydrogen allocation
round (HAR1); and announcing our intention to open two further
hydrogen funding rounds in 2023.
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Accelerating deployment of renewables: Our
goal is to develop up to 50GW of offshore wind by 2030 and to
quintuple our solar power by 2035. We are opening the latest
allocation round of the UK’s world leading Contracts for
Difference (CfD) scheme to incentivise investment in renewable
energy. UK levy funded support for renewable power since 2010
has totalled around £80 billion. The UK is a world leader in
offshore wind and floating turbines represent the next
frontier. We are launching £160 million of funding for pilots
of the Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme
to build UK port infrastructure to further reduce the cost of
offshore wind.
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Reducing household bills by increasing energy
efficiency: We are confirming plans for our new Energy
Company Obligation scheme the Great British Insulation Scheme,
extending help to a wider group of households. This will mean
that around 300,000 of the country’s least energy efficient
homes could save £300-£400 each year as part of a £1 billion
energy efficiency programme by March 2026. This will form part
of our work to meet our 15% demand reduction target by 2030
which will not only help lower bills, but also support our net
zero objectives.
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Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels to heat our
buildings: The Government has an ambition to phase out
all new and replacement natural gas boilers by 2035 at the
latest. People's homes will increasingly be heated by British
electricity, not imported gas. The Heat Pump Investment
Accelerator will mean heat pumps are manufactured in the UK at
a scale never seen before. We want to make it as cheap to buy
and run a heat pump as a gas boiler by extending the Boiler
Upgrade Scheme by three years.
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Decarbonising transport: We are signalling our
long-term plans for decarbonising road and air travel -
continuing to provide strong market signals and incentives to
drive supply chain development. We are publishing a final
consultation on the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate: requiring
that from 2024 an increasing percentage of manufacturers’ new
car and van sales are zero emission. We are announcing more
than £350 million investment in electric vehicle charging
infrastructure. We are also consulting on a long-term
trajectory for Sustainable Aviation Fuel uptake in the UK
through a mandate to be introduced from 2025.
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Speeding up planning and networks: We will be
publishing a revised set of energy national policy statements
for consultation, covering overarching energy, renewables,
electricity networks, gas generation, and pipelines. On 23
February 2023 the Government published our Nationally
Significant Infrastructure Project Action Plan, which sets out
how the government will reform the consenting process to ensure
the planning system can deliver for the future, to meet the
demands of a greater number and complexity of cases and deliver
against government's ambitions. The Electricity Networks
Commissioner, Nick Winser, has been tasked to advise government
on what more can be done to accelerate grid delivery, and will
present recommendations to Ministers in June. We will respond
with an action plan this year.
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Mobilising private investment: Our updated
2023 Green Finance Strategy will strengthen the UK’s
position at the forefront of the growing global green finance
market while supporting the investment needed to meet our
targets. This includes maximising the impact of the UK’s public
financing institutions, for example through the UK
Infrastructure Bank with its £22 billion of financial capital.
It also sets out our pathway for the UK to become the world’s
first Net Zero Aligned Financial Centre – equipping the market
with the information and tools necessary to meet this goal.
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Supporting industry through the transition:
The government is exploring a package of potential carbon
leakage measures to mitigate this risk at all stages of the
UK’s net zero transition. Doing so will give industry
confidence to invest in the UK in the knowledge their
decarbonisation efforts won’t be undermined. We are also
announcing a new phase of the Industrial Energy Transformation
Fund to support the development and deployment of technologies
that enable businesses with high energy use transition.
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Building on our COP26 Presidency: The UK will
continue to lead internationally, building on our COP26
Presidency. Two of the documents we are publishing today – the
2030 Strategic Framework for International Climate and Nature
Action and the HMG International Climate Finance Strategy –
show what this leadership will look like in practice. We are
delivering on our commitments – including our £11.6 billion
contribution from 2021/22 to 2025/26 to the $100 billion per
year global climate finance goal for developing countries. Our
international work delivers on the UK’s domestic agenda –
improving energy security by accelerating the energy
transition, bringing down costs of new technologies for our own
net zero plans, and opening up huge economic opportunities for
trade and investment.
Detail of these announcements is included across a suite of
publications, notably:
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Powering Up Britain – The Energy Security
Plan: which sets out the steps
the Government is taking to achieve our vision to power the UK
through affordable, home-grown, clean energy.
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Powering Up Britain - The Net Zero Growth
Plan: which builds upon the plan
laid out in the Net Zero Strategy, strengthening delivery by
focussing on the action we can take to ensure the UK remains a
leader in the net zero transition, and meets our carbon
budgets. We are also responding to the Independent Review of
Net Zero, led by my Right Honourable friend , and partly or fully
acting on 23 of his 25 recommendations for 2025, demonstrating
that this Government is committed to delivering our
decarbonisation targets in a pro-growth way.
The importance of this Department is clear. The aims of this
Department are clear. We will deliver for amongst the cheapest
wholesale electricity prices in Europe, powered primarily by
renewables, domestically sourced, ensuring the security of our
energy supply. We will maintain our position as a global leader
on the net zero transition, ensuring we bring the world with us
to meet this global challenge. Making Britain an energy secure,
net zero nation, is one of the greatest opportunities of our time
– this Department, and the plans we have outlined today, lay the
roadmap to get us there.
I will place copies of the Powering Up Britain – The Energy
Security Plan, Powering Up Britain – The Net Zero Growth
Plan, the 2023 Green Finance Strategy, 2030
Strategic Framework and International Climate Finance
Strategy in the Libraries of the House.
I will continue to update parliament on progress towards these
aims.
Full list of publications
- Powering Up Britain – The Energy Security Plan
- Powering Up Britain – The Net Zero Growth Plan
- NZGP annex – Technical Annex
- NZGP annex - Carbon Budget Delivery Plan
- NZGP annex - Government response to the CCC Progress Report
- NZGP annex - Government response to Net Zero Review
- 2030 Green Finance Strategy
- 2030 Strategic Framework for international Climate and Nature
Action
- UK International Climate Finance Strategy
- Consultation on addressing carbon leakage risk to support
decarbonisation
- Net Zero Research & Innovation Delivery Plan
- National Policy Statement
- Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme
announcement
- Launch of floating offshore wind manufacturing investment
scheme
- Consultation on the Clean Heat Market Mechanism
- Heat Pump Investment Accelerator Competition
- Launch of the draft scheme guidance and expressions of
interest in the competition
- Patrick Vallance’s Pro Innovation Regulation of Technologies
Review: Green Industries report and HMG response
- Government Response on Secure, Smart Energy Systems
- Strategy and Policy Statement for Energy
- Consultation on the draft SPS
- Power Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)
Government response to consultation on the power BECCS business
model Cluster Sequencing Process Phase-2: Track-1 Project
Negotiation List
- Cluster Sequencing for Carbon Capture Usage and Storage
(CCUS): Track-2 guidance
- Notice on gov.uk announcing the shortlist for the first
electrolytic hydrogen allocation round (HAR1)
- Notice on gov.uk announcing the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF)
strands 1&2 competition winners
- Consultation on Community Benefits for Electricity
Transmission Network Infrastructure
