Powering Progress: How international investors benefit from the UK’s Renewable Transformation.

In an era marked by unprecedented global challenges, the imperative for renewable energy transformation has never been more evident.

Climate change, energy security and affordability concerns underscore the need to transition towards more sustainable energy generation.

The UK's journey stands as a testament to the feasibility of renewable transformation when guided by clear governmental signals and empowered businesses.

Fifteen years ago, the UK found itself among the lowest in Europe in renewable energy adoption. Today, we proudly lead the world in this transformative endeavour.

This achievement shows the potential when governments provide clear signals and businesses respond with innovation and determination.

Recent announcements by our Prime Minster, and the passing of the Energy Act into legislation reaffirm the UK’s ongoing and unwavering commitment to renewable transformation.

This provides huge opportunities - and grounds for confidence - for international investors, and I regularly speak to European businesses who are making great use of that.? I frequently hear from them about the attractiveness of the UK as a place to invest because of our readiness to adapt policy and regulation in the light of market need. CEOs rate the UK as the best place to invest, and we are working to make it even more attractive...

Let me give you two examples on how we are responding to major renewables bottlenecks:

1)??? Offshore Wind cost pressures.

The UK government is lifting support levels to achieve our target of deploying up to 50GW by 2030 of offshore wind, with up to 5GW from floating offshore wind. We are doing this with two critical updates to the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme:

• The maximum prices available for offshore wind are to increase by 66% for offshore wind projects, and by 52% for floating offshore wind projects for the next Allocation, Round 6.
• Looking further ahead towards Allocation, Round 7, we are now consulting on the introduction of a CfD Sustainable Industry Reward - commonly known as “non-price factors”.

This provides further clarity and confidence for investors across the offshore value chain to tap into the project pipeline of around 77GW across 80 projects.

2)??? Grid developments and grid connections.

These come up as the #1 challenge for renewables in almost every country I visit. The UK is taking action to set-up our grid to enable a secure and net zero future. This will also help enable further uptake of EVs and the phasing-out of combustion engines by 2035. Specifically

• Setting out the UK’s first-ever spatial plan for infrastructure to give industry certainty and every community a say.
• Speeding up planning for the most nationally-significant projects and ending the first-come-first-served approach to grid connections by raising the bar to enter the queue and making sure strategically important projects, or those ready first, will connect first.

Investors in the UK can take further confidence from the National Grid accelerating grid connections across the UK. This will fast-track 200 projects including battery storage to enable a further 20GW of clean energy to come to grid earlier. A further milestone in building our future energy system.

And the opportunities don’t stop there...

Introducing the new Advanced Manufacturing Plan and the Green Industries Growth Accelerator

As part of the ￡4.9bn Advanced Manufacturing Plan, announced this week, the UK committed ￡960m for a Green Industries Growth Accelerator.

This will support investments across clean energy supply chains, including carbon capture, utilisation and storage, electricity networks, hydrogen and nuclear. Our ambition across these areas is high – e.g. increasing deployment of nuclear form 7GW today to 24GW by 2050; our support for solar PV could see installed capacity grow from 14GW today to 70GW by 2035; and we have doubled our ambition for hydrogen up to 10GW by 2030.

To make the transition work, the Advanced Manufacturing Plan and UK battery strategy covers ￡2 billion of capital and R&D funding for zero emission vehicles, batteries and their supply chains to 2030.

I have the privilege of regularly seeing for myself how European businesses are thriving from partnering with the UK and I met many of them at the Global Investment Summit this week.

We’ve already attracted ￡200 billion in low carbon investment since 2010, with another ￡100 billion expected by 2030. And European businesses are drawing on the UK’s world-leading goods and service-providers in the industry to grow renewables across the continent.

As emphasised to leading investors at the Global Investment Summit this week, you can be assured: our commitment is as strong as ever and there are many reasons to be positive about the UK’s support for European businesses looking to sustainable net zero growth.

My teams across Embassies and I are ready to help your business prosper from tapping into the opportunities provided by this transformation.

Find UK opportunities: ?? https://www.great.gov.uk/campaign-site/Innovating-Energy-Europe

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