Renewable Energy: Job Creation

Delivering good jobs is the driving force behind our growth and clean energy missions. Great British Energy and the national wealth fund will crowd in private sector investment to spread jobs across the country through investment in clean energy. I am delighted that the Prime Minister has today launched the clean industry bonus, which will incentivise developers to invest in the UK’s industrial heartlands, coastal areas and oil and gas communities, boosting jobs and delivering on another of our manifesto promises.

I am also delighted with my hon. Friend’s commitment to delivering clean energy jobs. It is important to constituencies such as mine in Peterborough, which could be the King’s Cross for a new core hydrogen network—as recommended by the National Infrastructure Commission—thanks to National Gas’s Project Union. National Gas has its hydrogen-ready gas compression site in our city and we are about to open a new green technology centre to develop new green jobs and apprenticeships. Will the Minister commit to working with local authorities such as mine, colleges, and businesses such as National Gas, to deliver new jobs across the supply chain and in all parts of the country?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment and commend the work that he is doing in his constituency. Low carbon technology will of course play a critical role in our future, from hydrogen to carbon capture and to renewable energy. I am pleased that, in the Budget, we saw the funding of 11 hydrogen projects, which will drive jobs and growth. I am really keen to talk to him about his plans for Peterborough becoming the King’s Cross for a hydrogen network and applaud the work that is going on in his constituency around green jobs.

I call Jim Farron.

Me or him, Mr Speaker? [Laughter.]

Mr Speaker, perhaps if I start, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) could finish. In order to safeguard renewable jobs and to create new ones, will the Minister consider a specific project that has hydro-turbine manufacturers such as Gilkes in Kendal, and many others around the country, working alongside our farmers to make use of streams, becks and rivers that go through farmland to create renewable industry and, indeed, new jobs?

We are ambitious to create all the jobs that we want to see in the green technologies of the future. I would be very interested to hear more about what the hon. Gentleman has to say. The Climate Change Committee estimates that up to 750,000 net jobs could be created by 2030. Opposition Members have decided that they do not support that path. The question is: why are they objecting to all these new jobs that we will be creating across our country?