RenewableUK urges PM to take bold action to boost green economic growth on Energy Security Day

Today is ‘Green Day’ aka Energy Security Day, when the Government will announce its response to Biden’s game-changing Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Green Deal.

In advance of this, RenewableUK’s Chief Executive Dan McGrail wrote to the Prime Minister, saying: ”there has been a range of unhelpful interventions from Government in recent months, coupled with ambitious new reform packages from other countries to attract investment in clean energy.

‘Taken together, these circumstances mean that Government will not achieve its ambitions for the sector. Without new measures, the UK risks not only losing the future jobs and investment in technologies like offshore wind, but it may also sleepwalk into a crisis that imperils the socio-economic benefits the sector has delivered to date’

RenewableUK supports over 450 member companies from the renewables sector: business leaders, technology innovators, and expert thinkers from across industry who between them employ over 250,000 people. 

Referring to the incentives already in place in competing markets, Mr McGrail warned that: ‘intensifying global competition for renewables investment, supply chains and skills means that we cannot keep relying on the toolbox that got the sector where it is today – we need to innovate and outsmart our competitors’.

He also made the observation that our current planning system and the pace of grid development need urgently  addressing, suggesting that Ofgem be given a new mandate ‘which puts net zero at the heart of its decision-making process to enable vital new grid infrastructure to be installed faster.’

Other involved parties contributed to the letter including Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy’s UK Managing Director Clark MacFarlane, who said: ‘We need the UK government to fully recognise that renewable energy, especially wind generation, is now on the same level of importance as oil and gas and requires similar levels of support to ensure it delivers what the UK needs to reach crucial Net Zero targets’.

Vestas Wind System’s Senior Vice President, Offshore, North & Central Europe, David Rooney said: ‘Offshore wind is at a critical juncture in the UK. It’s an established market with a world-class resource and significant further potential, but investor confidence is at risk. Policymakers need to act decisively to ensure projects remain viable in the face of significant supply chain inflation and that the UK remains an internationally competitive place to invest. Otherwise, we’ll miss out on the clean, affordable and secure electricity as well as jobs that a major build-out of offshore wind will deliver’.

Hitachi Energy UK & IE’s CEO Laura Fleming said: ‘We will play a leading role in delivering the infrastructure for the energy transition globally.  In order for the UK to remain at the forefront of delivering affordable, secure and green energy we need definite plans to tackle issues such as planning reform and making investments attractive and we need them now. To make the UK an attractive place to develop our supply chains we need a long term industrial strategy for green growth, especially as the US and the EU have raised the stakes through their plans for green investment’.