Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to increase the development of renewable energy to support a green economic recovery following the covid-19 outbreak.

Through my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution and our Energy White Paper we have set out concrete steps to build back greener from the pandemic and reach net zero emissions by 2050.

The Ten Point Plan announced our ambitious target to quadruple the capacity of our offshore wind to deliver 40GW, including 1GW of floating offshore wind by 2030. To help deliver this, we announced in March that two new ports on the Humber and on Teesside will build the next generation of offshore wind projects –part of an up to £95 million investment to boost the UK’s world-leading industry and create 6,000 new jobs in the North. Alongside this, UK Government also launched the Offshore Wind Investment Programme on 22 February to support the delivery of manufacturing investment in the offshore wind supply chain across the whole of the UK.

We have also announced that our next Contracts for Difference scheme to support the deployment of renewable energy will be held in December this year and will be our biggest auction to date – including a pot for established renewable technologies to ensure technologies such as onshore wind and solar can play their full role in meeting net zero.

Meanwhile, we are investing £320m to accelerate the growth of the UK heat networks market through the Heat Networks Investment Project and are preparing to launch the Green Heat Network Fund in April 2022. A new Clean Heat grant scheme will also support the deployment of heat pumps and, in limited circumstances, biomass boilers. Further information will be set out in the Government response to the consultation later this year and the scheme is due to open in April 2022. The Green Gas Support Scheme is due to launch in autumn this year and aims to increase the proportion of green gas in the grid. The Green Gas Support Scheme will be funded by the Green Gas Levy and will provide tariff-support for new biomethane produced via anaerobic digestion and injected into the gas grid.