Could Labour's Great British Energy firm spark a green revolution?

The author is Philippa Nuttall.

The Labour party is promising to put renewable energy at the center of its economic policy if it wins the next general election.

In the first year of a Labour government, the party will set up Great British Energy, according to the leader. The company takes advantage of clean British power. He said it would be public owned because it makes sense for jobs, growth and energy independence.

Foreign governments and companies own a lot of the UK's energy resources. The biggest wind farm in Wales is owned by Sweden and the Chinese government has a stake in a new nuclear plant. According to Starmer, five million people in Britain pay their bills to an energy company owned by France.

Would public ownership help the UK reach its legally mandated goal of net-zero emissions by the year 2050?

Industry experts have been positive about the announcement. The kind of daring plan that will be required to accelerate the transition is exactly what Great British Energy is.

Others don't think it's true. Tom Haddon is a consultant at Arcadis. Private capital is going towards renewable energy generation in the UK.

This view shows that wind and solar are all there is. It is expected that these technologies will make up 70% to 80% of the UK's electricity generation by the year 2030.

Massive investment in grid infrastructure, hydrogen, small nuclear reactor and carbon capture and storage technologies have struggled to get financial backing. The UK can reduce the risk of commercialising them by funding them through an energy company.

New green technologies will be in demand in the rest of the world once they are commercially available. Labour has a plan for an £8 billion national wealth fund to support the development of green infrastructure, including green steel plants and battery factories. The UK is likely to be the first country to build a fund from scratch using renewable energy assets.

The UK will get all of its electricity from renewable sources by the year 2030. "Achieving this goal would be a huge challenge, but we have the technologies to do it".

The previous Conservative government under Boris Johnson had set a target to have 95 per cent clean power by the end of the 20th century. The energy minister has called for oil and gas firms to get "every last drop" out of the North Sea, but the government is relaxing planning restrictions on wind farms.

Labour's goal of a green economy depends on continued action on renewable energy, as the next UK general election is two years away. Ed Matthew is a climate think tank in the UK.

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