Schools and hospitals get £180 solar investment from Great British Energy
Hundreds of schools and hospitals across the UK are set to receive £180 million for solar panels from the government's new state-owned energy company.The first major investment from Great British Energy was announced on Friday as part of government efforts to reduce the country's planet-warming emissions.The move was welcomed by the school leaders union and NHS providers who said it would also help to manage the "enormous financial pressure" of energy bills.But Andrew Bowie, shadow energy secretary, said the government's net zero plans would make the country "poorer".
"Right now, money that should be spent on your children's education or your family's healthcare is instead being wasted on sky-high energy bills," said Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on Friday. "Great British Energy's first major project will be to help our vital public institutions save hundreds of millions on bills to reinvest on the frontline," he added.The government also hopes that the project, to provide solar panels for 200 schools and 200 hospitals, will reduce the use of fossil fuels across public property and help achieve its long-term climate goals.This is not the first time such a project has existed - the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, launched under the previous Conservative government, has been running for more than four years and distributed close to £3bn for green technologies. This project in the first instance will target less than 1% of schools.But Alex Green, head of Let's Go Zero - a national campaign to reduce the climate impact of schools - said it was a welcome first move. "It is tough economic times, and to see this progress is a big step. [Whilst] acknowledging that 200 schools is a small starting point, to achieve this in one year is a good pace," she said.The announcement has been strongly welcomed by schools, unions and NHS estate managers who have previously warned of the pressure of high energy bills.In 2022, The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) had said that a third of its leaders were predicting a budget deficit following a spike in energy costs.Paul Whiteman, NAHT general secretary, said schools wanted to install solar panels as they provided cheaper energy than paying for gas, but the upfront cost could often be prohibitive. "This announcement is therefore welcome and a step in the right direction. In the longer term, this should also help schools manage energy bills, which have been a source of enormous financial pressure in recent years," he said.
But the acting shadow energy secretary disagreed that the government's approach would save money. "Labour's Net Zero zealotry is still set to make us poorer. The government is putting our very energy security at risk with their attacks on North Sea Oil and Gas - surrendering our energy independence to foreign powers like Russia," he said.However, energy experts have said that investing in renewable energy could reduce this reliance on imports. Jess Ralston, energy analyst at the think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said: "This GB Energy funding is an investment into energy security as solar panels lower the amount of gas we need to import from people like Putin."The first solar panels are expected to be installed by the end of the summer and the government said it would focus them in areas of "highest need".
Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC's Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Labour must put energy security ahead of net zero ideology
British Government ministers appear to enjoy nothing quite so much as interfering with complex systems they don't entirely understand. Research commissioned by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has highlighted one set of clearly unintended consequences that could soon come about as a result of Energy Secretary Ed Miliband's fanatical pursuit of his 2050 target. Interactions between high temperatures, solar panels, heat pumps and the transmission network may result in a greater likelihood of 'electricity shortfalls and loadshedding', a polite euphemism for controlled blackouts. The driving mechanisms are straightforward: heat pumps, soon to be mandatory in newbuilds, and highly incentivised in older properties, offer cooling capabilities that are likely to increase electricity demand during hot periods. At the same time, Britain's distributed renewables grid will be more exposed to degradation of performance due to these same high temperatures as solar panel efficiency falls and transmission networks are pushed to their limit as carrying capacities fall, increasing 'the likelihood of widespread blackouts'. It is a fascinating combination of incentives and outcomes, particularly for a department with 'energy security' in its title. It is also an excellent illustration of why we should be deeply sceptical of government schemes that seek to remake society on a grand scale: the choices to push certain approaches has created this pathway to instability. It is far from the only way in which net zero puts energy security at risk. There are the dark, windless winter days where neither solar nor wind provide significant inputs into Britain's grid, potentially leaving us reliant on backup power sources – an additional source of capital costs – or on interconnectors to European countries, which may also find their generating capacity limited. At the other end of the spectrum, a report into Spain's April blackouts has highlighted that particularly sunny days may drive prices negative, causing producers to switch off in a cascading failure. Britain does at least seem to have learnt this lesson ahead of time, taking steps to prevent a similar incident here. As the UK report has highlighted, however, it would be foolish to assume perfect foresight of future risks. It is surely time the Government put energy security ahead of net zero ideology.
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Diane Abbott is both an old Leftie and a true Tory
Whenever MPs legislate some monstrosity, we are often assured that the debate reflected 'the House of Commons at its best', as though an odious bill is rendered less odious by everyone having observed parliamentary niceties. Anyone seeking such solace after the approval of Kim Leadbeater's Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will have a search on their hands. Friday's debate only confirmed what a wretched, incurious and insubstantial Parliament we have, with few exceptions. One of them is Diane Abbott, the Mother of the House. She used her allotted time to make one final plea to her colleagues not to take the NHS into the killing business. It was a speech both practical and humanist but marked above all by scepticism. Abbott lodged no religious objection. She is not, she pointed out, implacably opposed to assisted suicide; she simply could not vote for such a dangerously flawed piece of legislation. Abbott spoke a language Leadbeater displays no fluency in: doubt. She told MPs she 'would not put my life, or the life of anyone dear to me, in the hands of a panel of officials'. As for those who asserted that assisted suicide would always be voluntary, she accused the Bill's supporters of failing to consider people primed to defer to authority, who would 'think that, because their doctor raises it with them at all, they are being guided in that direction'. Pro-suicide MPs might not 'take seriously' such concerns but 'anyone who knows how institutions work should be watchful of it'. Here was a socialist warning against excessive deference to public sector bureaucrats and sainted NHS doctors. She showed an up-close understanding of the state's flaws that could only come from someone who has spent a career advocating state intervention. There is no conservative like an old Leftie. The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington says she came into politics with hopes of being 'a voice for the voiceless'. Who, she asked her colleagues to imagine, 'could be more voiceless than somebody who is in their sick bed and believes that they are dying?' We all probably know someone who doesn't want to make a fuss or be a burden on their loved ones. 'Within the family,' Abbott said, 'the most powerful coercion is silence: it is the failure to answer when a question is put'. How many people will fall silent and go along with what they imagine to be in the best interests of the people around them? We are about to find out. What we can take a guess at is the demographic profile of those who will respond in this way. It will be older women, socialised to put their husband and children first. Women from minority religious and ethnic backgrounds, communities where it is traditional for men to do the talking and the decision-making and for women to be talked to and have final decisions presented to them. Such people exist beyond the ken of a House of Commons populated by privileged graduate professionals, those who, in Abbott's words, 'have for the entirety of their adult life been confident in dealing with authority and institutions'. What about those who don't share that confidence? When you legislate with only Esther Rantzen in mind, you're going to overlook a lot of people. Diane Abbott didn't just give a good speech. MPs give good speeches all the time. She took a stand at an hour of great moral failing and made the case for social conscience at a time of personal vanity. When a future Parliament comes to reckon with what this Parliament has done, it will look back with contempt upon a fit of callousness posing as compassion.
The Independent
6 hours ago
- The Independent
Keir Starmer accidentally admits his first year has been a failure
It is the sort of thing a backbencher who is trying to be loyal would say. Which is damning, and particularly so from the prime minister himself, because a core part of his job is communicating the government's 'story'. He was asked in Canada on Wednesday what his biggest mistake had been in his first year in government. 'We haven't always told our story as well as we should,' he said. Most politicians would have bristled at the obvious trap laid by Beth Rigby of Sky News, but Keir Starmer is a surprisingly low-ego politician. No other British prime minister would have bent down to pick up the trade deal papers that Donald Trump dropped. Most other prime ministers would have ignored Rigby's invitation to criticise themselves, especially as the second half of a two-part question, but Starmer came back to it willingly after answering the first part (what are you most proud of? 'Three million extra appointments in the NHS'). He is not self-important, which I admire about him, but he is ruthless and confident. Confident enough not to notice or care that the photographers are recording him scrabbling at the president's feet, and confident enough to give a serious answer to an obviously silly question. Unfortunately for him, it was a bad answer. Communication is not an optional add-on to democratic politics; it is the essence of it. Poor communication is usually an excuse not an explanation. It is the code to be used when a government becomes unpopular but people do not want to imply that the leader is the problem. Poor communications and bad advisers get the blame. It was ever thus: when parliament criticised Charles I's advisers; when Margaret Thatcher was told to get rid of Alan Walters, her economic adviser. Charles I was urged to get his message across better to MPs by denouncing popery; Thatcher was urged to sell the poll tax better by calling it the community charge. In both cases, it wasn't the advisers or the communications that were the problem. So it is with Starmer. MPs grumble about Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister's chief of staff. They blame him for the 'right-wing' policies that they don't like. They have all read Get In, the book about how Labour won the election by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, which portrays McSweeney as the mastermind and strategic genius behind a campaign for which Starmer is often the passive figurehead. This is often developed, by MPs who 'didn't come into politics to cut support for the disabled', into a fairytale in which Starmer, a proper socialist who shares Ed Miliband's politics (like them), has been taken prisoner by his Blairite chief of staff. If that is an attempt to avoid direct criticism of their leader, it fails, because it makes him look weak and dishonest. But it is also wrong. In the end, the leader always takes responsibility for decisions. Nor is Starmer simply McSweeney's puppet. A telling report in the Financial Times on Wednesday revealed that the plan to treat Nigel Farage even more publicly as the real leader of the opposition came from Starmer himself, and not McSweeney: it was the prime minister's idea to travel to St Helens to deliver a speech as a direct response to Farage's pitch for Labour votes. Farage is the main threat to Labour at the next election, but it may be that McSweeney has doubts about the prime minister himself saying so in public. The 'poor communications' line is just as bad – and it is a defence that Starmer deploys himself. What does he mean when he says 'we' could have 'explained our decisions in the way that might in retrospect have been better'? Could he have said to pensioners on modest incomes, 'We're going to take away your winter fuel payment, but don't worry, next year we will pretend that the economy is getting better and give it back to you'? The reason his government's decisions have not been explained better is that they were bad decisions. In retrospect, as he put it, he should have stopped Rachel Reeves cutting the winter fuel payment. Looking back, he shouldn't have promised to ' smash the gangs ' with no idea how to do it. Looking further back, he should have put someone with his full authority in charge of preparing for government. These are not examples of failing to tell the government's story 'as well as we should': they reveal a government with no story to tell, or even, quite often, with the wrong story to tell. Starmer has shown that he can learn, and he seems to have no fear of U-turning from the wrong policy to the right one. So maybe he can recover from the false start of his first year – but it will be achieved by making better decisions, not by 'telling a better story'.
