The UK could unlock £70 billion (US$87.4 billion) every year by generating enough clean electricity to become a major exporter of energy to mainland Europe, a former government economist said.
A new report has found that by increasing Britain’s clean electricity generation 50 percent above its current projections for 2050, it could become a clean energy superpower capable of exporting £17 billion of green electricity to Europe a year.
The ambition to generate more green electricity than needed to meet the UK’s climate targets could also create an additional 279,000 British jobs and support a total of 654,000 British jobs across the UK’s clean energy industries, the report said.
The analysis by former government economist Chris Walker for the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development found that it was “plausible” that the UK could transform from a net importer of energy to an exporter of green electricity by taking a lead in the global race to “net zero.”
By going “beyond net zero” the UK’s economy would attract trillions of pounds of global private investment and double the £35 billion a year economic benefit forecast for its current path, Walker said.
However, Britain could miss the “once in a lifetime opportunity” unless government policymakers remove the barriers holding back the UK’s green energy ambitions, the report said.
“The UK’s strong competitive advantages in clean energy generation mean it is uniquely well positioned in the race to net zero which can deliver significant and sustained economic growth, raised productivity and increased exports,” it said.
“Other advanced economies will undertake similar journeys to the UK at the same time. For the UK to cement its leadership in tackling this challenge, crucial public policy decisions need to be taken, backed up by investment from private sector organisations to ensure that the UK makes and captures the necessary investment to capitalise on its strengths,” it added.
The report said the National Grid was struggling to cope with the number of new clean energy projects applying to connect to the grid, which have surged to 50 a month from 50 a year over the past decade, leaving many projects with a 10 to 15-year wait to provide the UK energy system with clean electricity.
The government should also intervene to make sure that the UK has enough batteries to store its renewable electricity and create a market for producing green hydrogen. In addition, the UK’s drafty housing stock and commercial buildings must be retrofitted to improve the UK’s energy efficiency.
“We have the potential to generate huge amounts of clean energy, which would turn the UK from a net importer of energy to a nation exporting vast amounts of clean power, worth £17 billion a year, to mainland Europe,” UK Business Council for Sustainable Development chair Jason Longhurst said.
“We believe this paper delivers an evidence base to enable our government to drive new incentives to transition, leverage in further private sector investment and position the UK as one of the world’s most investable markets for companies tackling the challenges created by climate change,” Longhurst added.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees