UK energy secretary defends record and lays into Labour plans as polls predict she has weeks left in job
Claire Coutinho slams opposition's flagship GB Energy scheme and warns over Chinese reliance as election clock ticks down to predicted defeat
British energy secretary Claire Coutinho has hit out at opposition Labour Party plans to launch a national clean energy company while speaking at the RenewableUK Global Offshore Wind conference in Manchester – while also warning about sector dependence on China.
“What I don’t think helps” challenges faced by the UK’s energy sector is an “underfunded, maybe state-backed company that is not very clear in what it is trying to achieve but yet is promising that it will cut people’s bills by £300 ($380) and create 650,000 jobs,” she said.
“I don’t think that helps anybody,” she said.
“If everyone in this room was thinking about the things that they needed unblocked or that they needed help with, they probably wouldn’t come up with GB Energy.”
Despite this, Coutinho said the UK is in “pole position” in a range of clean tech sectors, including hydrogen, carbon capture and fusion.
This leadership will be crucial in what she described as a “global race for energy,” with the rise of artificial intelligence and data centres among factors that she said will mean the UK needs more energy going forward despite efficiency savings.
Coutinho said one of the things she is “most proud of” is the UK’s leadership in offshore wind. She compared the commissioned offshore wind capacity of countries like Norway on 96MW, Sweden on 191MW and Denmark on 2.3GW with the UK, which has around 15GW.
“That’s more than France and Germany put together.”
Offshore wind is important, she said, as the world has now seen what happens when countries like Russia have “weaponised oil and gas and caused huge amounts of challenges in the supply chain.
“You cannot be complacent,” she said, adding that the government has been looking at where there are constraints in the offshore wind sector, “because you cannot wean yourself off Russian oil and gas only then to be dependent on China for critical minerals.”
Ahead of the result of the UK’s upcoming renewables auction AR6, Coutinho also took the opportunity to stress how the government has “reset the parameters” for this edition.
Labour’s shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband will address the RenewableUK summit in his own keynote address tomorrow.
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