There is a huge amount of potential for clean energy production in the UK.
Today’s Observer looks at why turbines that float could be the new wave in British wind power | Energy industry and Will Hutton says Britain could be a sci-tech superpower – if the Treasury stopped holding it back.
At LBC, entrepreneur John Caudwell is saying pretty much the same: that Britain as a clean energy superpower: but bridging the gap between rhetoric and reality is the issue:
Here’s the challenge: while Britain excels at research and development, and our universities make groundbreaking discoveries for the green transition, these brilliant ideas often get stuck in the lab and fail to translate into the large-scale businesses and solutions we need. This leaves a big gap between this potential and real-world application.
Perhaps rhetoric and reality might be coming together, as the UK Prime Minister and Welsh First Minister declare: Together we will “supercharge” mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower, “by investing in homegrown energy to grow the economy, create jobs, boost skills, and strengthen our energy independence”.
There are all sorts of policies to unpack and it sounds quite promising – although the Guardian was warning before the election that whilst Labour wants to make UK a clean energy superpower. Will this help those stuck in fuel poverty? Which is echoed this week in the Mirror, pointing out that turning the UK into a clean energy superpower won’t cut bills, say a majority of the public.
And yet, despite scepticism from the New Statesman (Britain will never be an energy superpower) and the Telegraph (austerity may kill Labour’s green superpower ambitions at the first hurdle) this week’s announcement by the government is clearly a step in the right direction.
To finish, a video from the government body Energy UK: How Britain could be a clean energy superpower
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