Andy Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid - BBC News
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Burnham to unveil public body to invest in electricity grid
Image source: Jeff Overs/BBC
By Paul Seddon and Jennifer McKiernan
Published 6 minutes ago
Andy Burnham is expected to announce a new government body to invest in Britain's electricity grid in his first party conference speech as Labour leader on Tuesday.
The prime minister will tell party activists in Liverpool that the new publicly owned company, branded Great British Grid, will speed up grid hook-ups by driving up competition for connection projects.
He is expected to put the proposals at the heart of a new goal to bring UK energy costs in line with other nations in Europe within ten years.
He has also promised to use the address to give details of how he intends to pay for the new NHS-style social care system for England he announced over the weekend.
Burnham is expected to bill the creation of the GB Grid as the first significant move in his ambition to provide greater public control of utilities, which he put at the centre of his pitch for power over the summer.
He is expected to say that faster connections to the electricity grid could help fix a "cost crisis" in energy that has proved "crippling for businesses".
Full details of the new body are yet to be set out, but Labour said it would invest in and compete for transmission connection projects alongside the three private companies that currently own and manage the grid in Britain.
The party said it would also make it easier for firms waiting to be connected to the grid to finance connection infrastructure themselves, with GB Grid supporting and potentially co-investing in projects alongside them.
Labour has said that funding for the new body will be found within the existing budget of GB Energy, the public green investment company set up by Labour last year and which is now headquartered in Aberdeen.
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The transition of electricity generation from large fossil fuel stations to the more remote locations used for renewables, such as offshore windfarms, will require Britain's ageing transmission grid to undergo extensive rewiring in coming years.
Energy regulator Ofgem has estimated that £70bn of investment is required in the grid between 2025 and 2031, quadrupling the current rate of investment.
But in a report earlier this month, the National Audit Office warned that the number of projects waiting to connect to the grid had grown "significantly" whilst delays to projects were also increasing.
In his speech on Tuesday afternoon, Burnham is expected to say that GB Grid will "work with the private sector and network companies" to "reform a broken energy market".
He will add:
"It will increase competition to drive down costs and speed up delivery so businesses can connect faster and grow quicker. This is what more public control can do."
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