Great British Energy Bill
“A Bill will be introduced to set up Great British Energy, a
publicly owned clean power company headquartered in Scotland,
which will help accelerate investment in renewable energy such as
offshore wind.”
- The Bill establishes Great British Energy – a new,
publicly-owned energy production company which will own, manage
and operate clean power projects up and down the country.
- Great British Energy will be owned by and for British people,
helping to make our country energy independent and so ensure
British taxpayers, bill payers and communities reap the benefits
of clean, secure, home-grown energy and lower bills for families.
In this way, Great British Energy will help us take back control
of the country's energy, achieve energy independence, create new
jobs, save money for households and tackle climate change.
What does the Bill do?
- The Bill establishes Great British Energy which will:
-
develop, own and operate assets, investing
in partnership with the private sector. It will have a
capitalisation of £8.3 billion of new money over the
Parliament. Through these investments, Great British Energy
will take a stake for the British people in projects and
supply chains which accelerate technologies of the future,
reaping benefits at home in cheap clean power and securing
Britain at the front of the global race for technology which
has major global export potential.
-
facilitate, encourage and participate in the
production, distribution, storage and supply of clean energy,
the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from energy
produced from fossil fuels as well as measures for furthering
the transition to clean energy and improving energy
efficiency.
- The Bill gives the Secretary of State the ability to provide
Great British Energy with the financial backing needed for it to
meet its aims and ambitions. The Secretary of State will be
required to prepare a strategic priorities statement for Great
British Energy, to ensure it focuses its efforts on Government
priorities.
- The Bill builds on the immediate work by the Energy Secretary
to deliver the Government's mission to achieve clean energy by
2030, including scrapping the ban on onshore windfarms and
appointing Chris Stark - the former chair of the Climate Change
Committee - to lead the Mission Control for 2030.
Territorial extent and application
- The Bill will extend and apply UK-wide. We will work closely
with the Northern Ireland Executive on the scope of Great British
Energy's functions and opportunities for Northern Ireland.
Key facts
- Already a global leader in renewable energy, Scotland will be
the home of our clean energy mission, with Great British Energy
headquartered there.
- Significant private sector investment is required to deliver
a decarbonised power system, which public sector investment and
institutions can stimulate through partnership.
- It is highly unlikely that this scale and pace of investment
could be delivered by the private sector alone within the current
institutional and policy landscape. While the exact generation
capacity make-up of a decarbonised power system could take a
variety of forms, it is likely to require at least a doubling of
current onshore wind capacity, and a three to fourfold increase
in current offshore wind and solar capacity. Leveraging the
capabilities that only the public sector has, a public energy
company, in combination with additional electricity market
reforms, could help mitigate existing market failures, and
therefore increase the speed and reduce the cost of deploying
renewable generation capacity.
- Decarbonising the power system will increase energy security
by reducing the UK's dependence on imported oil and gas, which
will in turn reduce the exposure of consumer bills to volatile
international prices. Currently the cost of electricity tracks
the cost of gas because gas generation sets the marginal
wholesale price. Decarbonising the power system would break this
link and in turn the exposure of UK electricity prices to global
gas prices.
- From January 2022 to January 2023, the Ofgem energy price cap
more than tripled (from £1,277 to £4,279) as a result of the
spike in gas prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with
bills in summer 2024 still over £400 higher than before the
crisis in 2021. This required government intervention in the form
of the Energy Price Guarantee, at significant cost to the
taxpayer, to limit the substantial impact of this price increase
on consumer bills.
