Great British Grid
Andy Burnham has announced a new government body to invest in Britain’s electricity grid in his first party conference speech as Labour leader.
The prime minister told party activists in Liverpool that the new publicly owned company, branded Great British Grid, will speed up grid connections by increasing competition for connection projects.
Burnham is putting the proposals at the heart of a new goal: to bring UK energy costs in line with other European nations within 10 years.
He promised on Tuesday to have an ‘honest conversation’ with the public and take on the ‘difficult issues’ that have been ignored for too long.
Burnham put greater public control of utilities at the centre of his pitch for power over the summer.
“A publicly-owned company that will challenge the private sector operators,” he told the Labour conference. “It will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections. So businesses can expand and grow more quickly.”
There are a number of reasons for the high energy prices in the UK, part of which comes from state subsidies given to private companies to modernise the grid.
This is to accommodate new wind and solar farms and transmit their power to homes and businesses – a cost which ends up being added to the bills of customers.
