New PM urged to accelerate roll-out of renewables

The new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is being urged to roll-out renewable energy projects as fast as possible, which will have the triple benefit of helping bill payers, support Net Zero and strengthen the UK’s energy security.

The call from RenewableUK, a trade body which represents companies across the renewables sector, comes as the new government is expected to announce new measures to help with soaring energy bills.

Dan McGrail, the chief executive of RenewableUK said:

“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.”

McGrail added that Prime Minister Truss should also move quickly to recognise the importance and potential of green hydrogen – where the UK could become a world leader in the nascent technology.

“The Energy Security Strategy sets a target of 10GW of hydrogen capacity by 2030 – at least half of which will be green hydrogen,” he said.