Energy Developers Levy - 25th February 2026

15:59 Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour)

It is not just me saying this. The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee report, “Gridlock or growth? Avoiding energy planning chaos”, highlighted the need for more strategic co-ordination in environmental impact assessments. It warned of “unnecessary costs and delays” from that “project-by-project approach”. The environmental impacts are assessed separately rather than cumulatively at habitat or seascape scale. In other words, communities in Suffolk Coastal are experiencing a national problem playing out locally, and that is exactly why I am calling for legislation to fix it.

[Source]

Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour)

Suffolk Coastal must not become the unmanaged frontier of energy development. So many in my constituency are pro-net zero, pro-investment and pro-growth, but we are asking the Government to be pro-co-ordination. What we have now is a fragmented planning system and eroding trust in the energy transition that we all support. If we are serious about delivering clean energy power at pace, we must treat host communities as partners, not afterthoughts, in that transition. We must do more to bring communities with us.

[Source]

Michael Shanks (Labour)

It is worth remembering that since this Government came to power we have sought to tackle the energy trilemma: how we bring down bills and make the cost of living more affordable—today’s decision on the price cap is an important statement of how seriously we take that mission; how we deliver our long-term energy security in an uncertain world and how we move away from the volatility of fossil fuels, which have cost us so dearly in recent years; and how we build infrastructure that sets the country up for the future. This is about connecting not just renewable energy but the demand projects that will stimulate economic growth across the country. If we do not do these things, all we will do is harm that economic growth. Those decisions are incredibly important.

[Source]

16:24 Michael Shanks (Labour)

Let me also speak to the broader point about how we plan the future energy system. My hon. Friend made a correct observation: while the previous Government now want to run a mile from all the renewable energy projects that they developed, which we would support— I think I am the only person still cheerleading the previous Government’s drive for renewable energy, because they certainly are not—they did not design and co-ordinate the system such that we were not building unnecessary grid to connect all those projects. My hon. Friend’s constituency is a good example of where better co-ordination at a strategic level would have got the same outputs from the system, but with much less local impact.

I reiterate what I said at the beginning. My hon. Friend rightly made the case that all the polling that we have seen points to the country being in favour of the energy transition. Every piece of research points to the importance of tackling the climate crisis, which is not a future threat, but a very present reality. Infrastructure, which for too long has been held up in this country, is necessary to do that. It is necessary to get clean power, cheaper power, to people’s homes and businesses, and to bring down bills, but it is also absolutely necessary to unlock the economic growth that this country needs. There is no shortcut to doing that. We have to build the infrastructure that the country has been crying out for, for many years.

[Source]