What is the UK's new publicly owned Great British Energy firm?

Sir Keir Starmer says he's confident that household energy bills will come down, although he admitted it would "take time" - as he gave more details of the Government's new publicly owned Great British Energy firm.

Sir Keir set out plans to roll out new offshore wind farm developments on seabed owned by the Royal family, in partnership with the Crown Estate.
-----------------------
Follow us:

[Loppy]

£8 billion investment is still less than the £10 billion that the Tories were planning to waste on the Rwanda scheme, and this is going to generate returns for taxpayers. We cannot let the Tories back in charge otherwise they will sell it off just like they sold our water companies and railways and destroyed those industries.

[lforleee]

people: we need lower energy bills and green energy
also people: NoT iN My bAcKyaRd

[anitaj.bartley]

The problem we have is because most people always taught that " You only need a good job to become rich. These billionaires are operating on a whole other playbook that many don't even know exists.

[twistedsteeltv]

Way I see it is the national infrastructure & public services should always be owned by the state. It's for the the people & the country not for shareholders pockets. It's a security risk to not nationalise public utilities.

[montedaestrada]

Bringing ownership of utilities back into public ownership is something Ive wanted for decades.

[Liam.Bellamy]

Not a Labour voter but this is one policy I liked from Labour. You don’t need to own the whole energy production but they just need to have a piece of the pie to be a competitor in the open market and be competitive to keep others competitors prices down so they stay competitive. Also in periods of high demand the governments energy can be used instead of higher cost energy producers.

[mike.B.]

Natural resources belong to everyone. Not just to few private companies

[XxKPxX]

British culture is so skeptical about these sorts of projects. That’s probably why we’re so behind every other developed country in so many aspects

[loading]

A state-owned company will not betray u like a company run by overseas owners.

That's how I learned from Thames Water which sells to an overseas owner.

Can the UKer have clean and safe water is never their priority.

Some critical infrastructures e.g. water/power must be controlled by a UK company or UK gov. U will never know who will start a war with you tmr and look for windfall during wartime.

I still remember petrol stations are empty as the imported supply cannot catchup.

[arseniyonline]

This is excellent news. Finally a government that cares about UK becoming energy independent. If the tories bothered to invest into renewables 14 years ago, we'd hardly notice a cost of living crisis.

[JT-nrss]

9:40 no lies were told. God it's so nice to see an actually sensible person in charge of something so important

[AlexMageethefirst]

Its so refreshing to finally have a government that's not sold its soul to big oil, and is actively taking sensible steps to make peoples lives better.

Its also worth mentioning that the cost of this scheme is two billion pounds less than the Tories where planning to spend on shipping a few migrants to Rwanda.

[olivercarter]

Finally government doing things that will help our future generations.

[Chevy-jordan]

Thank you Ed Milliband for getting on with the job and thrusting us into the future of self ownership of energy.

People who think fossil fuels are going to be here forever are woefully naive. How many of us still burn lumps of coal to heat our homes like my grandparents did?

Also the NIMBYs saying it’ll cut down food production, we import most of our food anyway.
There are few countries to import energy from and the majority of them are either unstable or antagonistic to our nation. We can import food from a practically any country. Energy is in the hands of only a few nations.

[mikecohen]

There is nothing wrong with running solar in pasture land, raise the panel supports high enough off the ground so that the animals can graze under them. The real key to large scale solar is battery storage, they go hand in hand, the batteries can soak up excess energy and release it into the grid when needed.

[freethinker]

Last year the amount spent by the UK on energy imports topped £100bn for the first time on record, with DeSmog's analysis indicating that the UK spent more than £125.7bn on fossil fuel imports in the year beginning February 2022. Producing Renewables and changing to EVs means this money doesn't leave the UK. About time we have politician not bending the knee to the fossil fuel industry.

[patrickkeating]

In Ireland, we have a state energy company that pays hundreds of millions back to the Irish State in annual profits every year Main land should Wake

[philipbroggio]

As a cooperative investor in a Ripple Energy wind farm I am now getting 4200 kWh of electricity at a discounted rate via octopus energy for next 25 years. This will hopefully encourage more investments of this type. I also generate 4200 kWh of electricity per annum from roof top solar which saves significantly and further reduces cost via export payments. This needs to be encouraged by the government to reduce dependancy in fossil fuels. Labour are in the right track.

[carmadme]

What did he say? It's going to take land out of food production.... all I saw was an empty field with a few cows...

[MikeyLove]

No new oil fields in the North Sea will make people far better off … tell that to the thousands employed in that area once the current fields are exhausted.