Labour’s public ownership plan would mean a future of clean, affordable energy
How can Britain achieve 100% clean energy by 2030? Yesterday, Keir Starmer set out an answer: a new publicly owned clean energy generator. Great British Energy would own, run and invest in new, clean energy infrastructure, from offshore wind to tidal and solar. Operating as a generating company, not energy retailer, it would have the potential both to reduce our household fuel bills and create a future of clean, affordable, abundant energy.
The full scale and details of Great British Energy are yet to be determined. But though Labour’s proposal may appear novel in Britain, public ownership of renewables is already commonplace. Indeed, nearly half of the UK’s offshore wind capacity is publicly owned – just not by the British public. Instead, it is owned by foreign governments.
At Common Wealth, the thinktank I lead, we recently analysed ownership of Britain’s offshore wind and found UK public entities own just 0.03% of total energy-generating capacity– less than the Malaysian government (0.1%), and far less than Denmark (20.4%) or Norway (9.2%). Even the city of Munich (0.85%) owns more than the UK government. Overall, 82.2% of all current and pending UK offshore wind capacity is foreign-owned; after foreign state-ownership, multinational and private equity companies dominate this sector.
Wealth generated from our common resources is accumulating steadily, but not for our common benefit. Money from our energy bills and public subsidies currently flows to foreign governments and wealthy shareholders. The profits from our clean, publicly owned energy assets should be generating income for people in Britain. A recent TUC report found that private ownership of electricity generation means the government will miss out on up to
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