From left: Labour politicians Ed Miliband, Sarah Boyack, Keir Starmer, Anas Sarwar, and Ian Murray on a visit to Peterhead’s clean power mission with Great British Energy will take back control of our destiny and invest in cheap, clean homegrown energy that we control” – Sir Keir StarmerJobs for bankers, not engineers.
The key phrase is “crowd in investment” from the private sector. In other words, GBE is a lever to subsidise marginal private projects.LABOUR say it will “capitalise Great British Energy with an initial £8.3 billion in the first Parliament, investing in clean power in partnership with the private sector”.
ACCORDING to Labour, GBE “will make the UK a world leader in floating offshore wind, nuclear power, and hydrogen”. Labour promise that GBE will invest in community projects. Labour’s policy document says GBE will partner with “local authorities and cooperatives to develop 8GWs small-scale and medium-scale community energy projects. Profits will flow directly back into local communities to cut bills, not to the shareholders of foreign companies”.
By comparison, the current Scottish offshore energy workforce is around 79,000 – though many of these workers are not Scottish. Given it then takes several years to negotiate the first investment projects and do due diligence, it is difficult to see GBE having any impact before 2028-29.