As part of the UK government’s new rapid action plan to establish a Mission Control to deliver clean power by 2030, the Prime Minister and Energy Secretary today announced a new partnership between Great British Energy and The Crown Estate, to leverage up to £60 billion (USD$77 billion) of private investment to make Britain a clean energy superpower.
The Crown Estate has a £16 billion portfolio of land and seabed and estimates the partnership will lead to up to 20-30GW of new offshore wind developments reaching seabed lease stage by 2030. That is estimated to be enough power for the equivalent of almost 20 million homes. It will also help boost new technologies such as carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, wave and tidal energy.
The partnership, with accompanying reforms to policy, is expected to cut the time it takes to get offshore wind projects operating and delivering power to homes by up to half.
The company formed by the partnership will be owned by the British people and based in Scotland.
Chief Executive of the Crown Estate Dan Labbad said, “The Crown Estate exists to serve the national interest, including stewarding our natural resources to deliver a decarbonised, energy secure and sustainable future. With new powers and by partnering with government, we can drive greater investment into this future for our country, and with it support nature recovery and job creation.
The Crown Estate has already helped the UK to become a global leader in the offshore wind sector, and is currently running one of the world’s largest commercial scale floating wind leasing programmes in the Celtic sea. This partnership will accelerate that leadership even further.”
