Remaking the home of the first MRI machine
The East Midlands has a proud history of innovation and industry. It is the birthplace of the traffic light, running water, and Ibuprofen.
Manufacturing is at the heart of the East Midland’s economy, with the sector accounting for a sixth of the region’s output – significantly above the national average of 10%.
But access to well paying, secure jobs isn’t what it once was.
We need to return to an economy that delivers well-paying jobs in our towns and communities, and to unleash the East Midlands’ potential with the infrastructure it deserves.
Since the campaign launched, we’ve visited the East Midlands to hold a roundtable in Leicester.
25
Actions to make Britain Energy secure by 2030
A playbook for energy security
From 2020 to 2022, international gas prices surged by 400%. This led to a 235% rise in household electricity bills. In other words, every £1 rise in international gas prices led to a 58p rise in the electricity bills paid by British families.
We recently published The Powerbook which includes 25 actions for energy security to stop this from happening in future.
The challenge
The price of solar, onshore wind, and offshore wind have fallen by 62%, 55%, and 75% in under a decade. The main obstacles to generating more energy from wind and solar now are a broken planning system and archaic regulation for grid connections.
It is not inevitable that it should take 12 years to build a new wind farm, 4 years to build a new solar farm, or 8 years to build a new transmission line to take energy to where it is most needed.
Let's get building
To make Britain energy secure, we will need to more than triple the amount of energy generated from offshore wind, connect two new nuclear power stations to the grid, and build more grid infrastructure in the next seven years than was built in the last 32. It will mean accelerating the development of technologies such as hydrogen, batteries, and small modular reactors.
The challenge is massive – it will require genuine political will, major investments in new technologies, and innovation from industry – but so is the reward.