Great British Energy: Public Sector Renewable Energy Use

6. What steps Great British Energy is taking to help public services use more renewable energy.

11. What steps Great British Energy is taking to help public services use more renewable energy.

19. What steps Great British Energy is taking to help public services use more renewable energy.

Earlier this month, Great British Energy jointly funded 46 new community energy projects in Scotland, including an island solar farm, a community ice rink and a small community wind farm. Great British Energy is also helping public services in England with their energy bills through its solar for all programme, which benefits schools and hospitals. In this way, GBE is transferring money from the pockets of energy companies to local communities and frontline services.

Many leisure centres, such as the Tryst in Cumbernauld, which was built and opened in 1973, are desperate to decarbonise, but face huge costs and the practical challenge of retrofitting renewable technologies into older buildings. Will my right hon. Friend set out how Great British Energy will support vital community facilities of that kind in making the switch to clean energy, and in reducing their bills?

My hon. Friend speaks very well about these issues. GB Energy is already taking advantage of the huge potential of clean energy, and hundreds of schools, hospitals and NHS sites across the country are already benefiting. The statement of strategic priorities made it clear that GBE will work collaboratively and in partnership with Scottish public bodies and the Scottish Government to increase investment in the local community energy sector in Scotland. Organisations such as my hon. Friend’s leisure centre sound like ideal candidates.

Thanks to Great British Energy and this Government, Queen’s hospital in Burton will get solar panels, which will save the trust money that can be ploughed directly into the frontline and be spent on patients. Does the Secretary of State agree that there is significant opportunity to expand that programme to other public buildings, and is he exploring that with his Department?

My hon. Friend is right, and I hope that the massive expansion to schools and hospitals that we have already ensured in 15 months is welcomed across the House.

They did not need GBE to do it.

The hon. Gentleman says that we did not need GB Energy to do that, but the Conservatives never did it—not in 14 years. It is precisely through a publicly owned energy company that we are doing this, to the benefit of citizens across our country. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) that there is huge opportunity here, and we intend to expand the plan.

I for one welcome the announcement that the publicly owned Great British Energy will roll out solar panels to more schools and hospitals in the coming year. What benefits will that bring to our communities, and what can places such as Luton South and South Bedfordshire do to take advantage of the clean power transition?

This is really important. Public institutions face significantly high energy bills because of the legacy of the last Government. GBE, with its programme, is cutting those bills. That is a transfer of resources from energy bills to frontline public services. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) is chuntering from the Front Bench. He should visit some of the teachers and NHS staff who think that this is a brilliant programme.

My constituency of Esher and Walton is home to the UK’s largest floating installation of solar panels; there are 23,000 on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir, helping to support public services by powering a Thames Water treatment plant. It is a fantastically innovative renewables project, but very few of my constituents know about it. How will the Government use Great British Energy to argue more effectively for the benefits of renewables for communities and public services across the UK?

The Energy Minister says that he went on a profile-raising visit to the programme two weeks ago, so many more people now know about it, thanks to that. Indeed, even more—thousands, millions—will know about it as a result of watching this question time. The hon. Lady makes an important point about how GB Energy can roll this out across the country, and floating solar has real potential as well.

Over a year ago, the UK Government promised that there would be hundreds of jobs for GB Energy in Aberdeen. A year on, the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen is haemorrhaging thousands of jobs and we are barely into double figures for GB Energy jobs. When will that promise be kept?

I have to say that I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman about the work that GB Energy is doing. When I talk to industry representatives, they say that GB Energy now plays a crucial role. There is investment coming into the supply chain—a supply chain fund of £1 billion, thanks to the spending review, which the Conservatives would abolish because they do not seem to want jobs in Britain. There is £1 billion in the supply chain and GB Energy is rolling out community energy projects in schools and hospitals in England, as well as the ones in Scotland that I have talked about. GB Energy is partnering with the private sector. This is all part of the clean energy workforce plan, which we will publish soon, for 400,000 extra jobs as a result of our clean energy mission.

By prioritising partnerships with schools, we will help to protect their budgets. I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to schools in Maidenhead, and specifically Furze Platt senior school—where I happen to be a governor—which recently partnered with MaidEnergy to install solar panels on the school’s building, thereby doing right by its budgets and by the environment, and setting a great example for the students taught there.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being a school governor and on the work the school is doing. We can talk about the tangible benefits, but the wider point is that young people want us to act on these issues, and that is part of having an education system that teaches them about the benefits of moving towards clean energy. When I go into schools, there is massive enthusiasm for that kind of initiative.