Aberdeen, Scotland, has been named the headquarters of Labour’s new flagship energy company, Great British Energy (GB Energy).
Revealed by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer yesterday (24 September) at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, the UK government said Aberdeen had been selected due to the city’s “world-leading engineering expertise to kickstart a UK-wide clean energy revolution”.
GB Energy has been keenly awaited by the UK’s energy industry. Currently, GB Energy will have a mandate to develop, own and operate clean energy assets—generating power in its own right but not functioning as a retailer.
The government confirmed that two additional sites alongside GB Energy’s headquarters will open in due course in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The company will initially be located in government buildings across the cities, while permanent bases will be established.
Professor John Underhill, director of the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Energy Transition, believes the announcement is “fantastic news” for the city, and will help establish it as Europe’s energy capital.
“This is fantastic news for the Aberdeen city region, the natural home for GB Energy providing as it does a wealth of knowledge and experience, a world-leading technical, commercial and academic skills base, and the expert supply chain honed over 50 years as Europe’s energy capital that is vital for delivering the energy transition,” Underhill said.
It could be argued that by making Aberdeen home for GB Energy, the Labour government is helping facilitate the energy transition in the North Sea, a region famed for offshore wind farms and oil and gas.
Indeed, critique of Labour’s climate policy often centres around the potential job losses associated with closing down the oil and gas industry in the North Sea. This is partly due to its promise not to award new oil and gas licenses and raise the windfall tax on companies profiting from fossil fuels.
The transition to renewable energy generation could certainly benefit the affected communities. For instance, UK oil and gas production has been lower than demand for roughly 20 years, and much of the North Sea’s output is exported.
