In a speech aimed at regaining a grip over the political agenda after months of negative headlines over his handling of the coronavirus, U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson will say renewable energy can help drive Britain’s economic regeneration.
He will announce 160 million pounds ($208 million) for infrastructure at ports to support companies building turbines off the British coast.
“As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the U.K. is to wind — a place of almost limitless resource, but in the case of wind without the carbon emissions and without the damage to the environment,” Johnson will say, according to extracts of his speech released by his office in London. “This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country — and help us to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
Johnson is seeking ways to rebuild the Covid-ravaged U.K. economy and to tackle a surge in joblessness once government employment support falls away at the end of the month. Helping the environment is a key part of his agenda to drive growth and return to the agenda he set out before his decisive election victory last December. Since then, his ratings in polls have collapsed.
Tuesday’s remarks are a forestaste of a 10-point program for green industries the prime minister is planning for later this year. Those will include support for innovation and infrastructure, his office said, without giving a specific date for the announcement.
“We need to give people the chance to train for the new jobs that are being created every day,” he will say. Investment in green technologies “in the next 10 years will create hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs.”
The speech also will:
- reaffirm an aim to generate 40 gigawatts of power from offshore wind by 2030, more than four times the current capacity
- endorse floating wind turbines
- pledge to double the support for renewable energy in the next year in an auction for contracts-for-difference, a mechanism used to ensure payme nts to power generators
The commitment to wind power marks a change in approach for Johnson, who as recently as 2013 said the U.K. would be better relying on energy production from shale gas and nuclear power plants.