By Susanna Twidale
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s new state backed power company GB Energy will work with the Crown Estate to boost investment in and help develop clean energy projects, the government said on Thursday.
Under the terms of the agreement the Crown Estate will create a new division to work with GB energy and for the first time help develop new offshore wind farms, which the government says has the potential to attract between 30 to 60 billion pounds ($77.48 billion) of private investment.
The Crown Estate estimates the partnership will lead to up to 20-30 gigawatts of new offshore wind developments reaching seabed lease stage by 2030, enough power for the equivalent of almost 20 million homes.
“The agreement with the Crown Estate will lead to more investment, cleaner power … and is a statement of intent that it will be a permanent and transformative institution for our country,” said Ed Miliband, the minister for Energy Security and Net Zero said in a statement.
The new Labour government has a target to decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030 which will require a huge and rapid ramp up of renewable power capacity such as wind and solar.
The government will on Thursday put forward legislation to enable the creation of GB Energy, which will be its main tool drive investment in energy, backed by 8.3 billion pounds ($10.73 billion).
The Crown Estate, which comprises of tracts of land and most of Britain’s sea bed and is an independently run, commercial business, whose profits go to the Treasury.
It has auctioned leases for sea beds to host offshore wind projects but has not previously been involved in their development.
Profit from the Crown Estate are also used as the benchmark for the level of public funding for the Royal Family, currently set at 12%.
Britain is already the world’s second largest offshore wind market by capacity, after China, but the sector has been hit by spiralling costs amid high inflation and bottlenecks in the supply chain.
Last week the government proposed changing rules to allow the Crown Estate to borrow money to invest which the Estate said would give it greater flexibility in the way it supports renewable projects.
The Crown Estate on Wednesday reported record profit due to revenue from offshore wind sea bed leases.
($1 = 0.7744 pounds)
(Reporting By Susanna Twidale and Andrew MacAskill; editing by David Evans)
