Key stakeholders in the Humber have urged incoming Prime Minister Liz Truss to speed up the roll-out of renewables.
Offshore wind has developed at world-leading scale in the region - with the largest projects generating on the globe matched by the biggest operations and maintenance cluster. And having welcomed David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, Grimsby and the wider estuary is gunning for more time in the political spotlight.
A key ask is to ensure the Energy Security Strategy remains intact, with the spotlight on a hotly anticipated early intervention in the cost-of-living crisis triggered by spiralling prices.
Read more: World's largest offshore wind farm Hornsea Two is now fully operational
Hull & Humber Chamber of Commerce has strongly endorsed a study released by Offshore Energies UK calling for urgent action to tackle the planning problems delaying even faster expansion of offshore wind.
In April, Mr Johnson’s strategy announced plans to make the UK “the Saudi Arabia of wind power” with a four-fold expansion of offshore wind by 2030.
Dr Ian Kelly, Chamber chief executive called for “action this day” from the new Prime Minister and Business Secretary - currently Kwasi Kwarteng - “to push this vital agenda forwards by removing this unnecessary planning red tape at this vital time for UK energy security”.
“We will certainly, as a Chamber, be taking this forward to all our Humber MPs in the coming days,” he said.
“Whilst we accept the challenge of such an expansion is huge and we will need to install an estimated 3,200 new, and much larger wind turbines by 2030, the key is to rip up the red tape associated with Boris Johnson’s energy security strategy produced in April this year.”
He has called for planning consent times to be cut from four years to one, a streamlining of the environmental assessment process and a cut in red tape using the government’s Offshore Wind Acceleration Task Force, while creating a fast-track planning process for non-controversial projects.
Trade body RenewableUK is also urging Ms Truss to speed up the roll-out of new renewable energy projects to help bill payers and boost the nation’s energy security.
Chief executive Dan McGrail said: “We’re looking forward to working with the new Prime Minister and her team to take forward new measures to reduce energy bills, both in the short term and the long term.
“Firstly, it’s vital that she should re-commit to the ambitious targets set out in the Government’s Energy Security Strategy, which will move us further and faster towards energy independence. That means more than quadrupling our offshore wind capacity to 50GW by 2030. We need to remove the barriers in the planning system which are unnecessarily delaying offshore wind development, and upgrade our grid so that we can connect new offshore projects more quickly.”
Calling for an end to the block on onshore wind development in England and a new target - armed with the knowledge such projects could be up and running in a year, Mr McGrail added: “Industry wants to work with Government on our plans to break the link between the exorbitant cost of gas and the price of electricity. This will enable bill payers to benefit more from the vast amounts of low-cost electricity being generated by wind and other renewables, by no longer allowing gas to call the tune in the energy market.”
Proposals were revealed last week, with green hydrogen’s endorsement is also sought - with major plans to produce from offshore wind energy on the Humber too.
“Green hydrogen generated by electricity from wind is set to be a key technology in our future energy mix, as it can be stored to give us flexibility to use it whenever we like,” Mr McGrail said.
“The Energy Security Strategy sets a target of 10GW of hydrogen capacity by 2030 – at least half of which will be green hydrogen. We’re calling on the Prime Minister to recognise the importance of this new technology which offers us the chance to build up a whole new green hydrogen industry, as we’re a world leader in this cutting-edge technology.”
Read next:
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