The UK government is gradually unveiling details about Great British Energy, a new publicly owned energy company. So what might it look like?
We already have public ownership of energy in this country,” argued Ed Miliband, the UK energy secretary at the launch of Great British Energy on 25 July. But, he added, it is owned “by foreign governments”.
The creation of Great British Energy (GB Energy) was one of the Labour Party’s key manifesto commitments. And since coming to power, they’ve wasted no time in setting the company up.
In July, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero released a founding statement, confirmed that the company would be headquartered in Scotland, and named Juergen Maier, a former Siemens chief executive, as its chair. It would be capitalised with £8.3bn of public money over the coming parliament. Its first big announcement was a partnership with the Crown Estate, which owns large swathes of the seabed around the British Isles, to develop offshore wind.
For the...