Jayne Kirkham

Absolutely—scaling up and providing the skills that are required need to be done extremely quickly. It is a race against time to remove the barriers and kick-start those projects; then, the Crown Estate, the Government and GB Energy must work together to provide a feasible timeline of contracts for difference and leasing rounds, as well as doing the groundwork by investing in the surveys and the infrastructure, such as cabling and the grid, so that investors will come on board. Our Cornish ports and harbours, such as Falmouth, are well placed to support floating offshore wind, with well-established marine engineering solutions, servicing, assembly and maintenance. They also have a huge role to play in decarbonising shipping and defence. This Government have already ended the de facto ban on onshore wind, and have plans for doubling onshore wind, trebling solar and quadrupling offshore wind, as well as reforming the planning system. With Cornish Lithium’s Hard Rock plant recently designated a nationally significant site of strategic infrastructure, planning could be streamlined and fast-tracked. GB Energy has been working with the Crown Estate to invest in the infrastructure that will make floating offshore wind happen and provide the certainty to draw in investment. Our new local power plan will provide £3.3 billion for grants and loans for those local energy projects—the biggest expansion in community-owned energy in history. This will enable communities to own—in the realest sense—the energy they rely on and allow local authorities, such as Cornwall, to exploit the energy sources on our doorstep, like the geothermal assets on council land that could be heating homes.