Boss of Miliband’s GB Energy Admits No One Knows What It Is
The £350,000-a-year boss of Ed Miliband’s GB Energy has admitted that hardly anyone knows what the quango is or why it exists. The Telegraph has the story.
Dan McGrail, GB Energy’s £350,000-a-year Chief Executive, told energy executives at a dinner: “The most popular question that I get asked is, ‘So what is GB Energy?’”
According to industry publication Energy Voice, he added: “That is both a challenge and my opportunity to create some shape for this.”
The admission will be an embarrassment for Mr Miliband, who promoted the body as Britain’s answer to European state-owned energy companies such as France’s EDF, Norway’s Equinor or Denmark’s Ørsted. Companies like these currently own nearly half the UK’s offshore wind farms.
GB Energy has been given a budget of £8.3 billion, but this is a tiny amount compared to the assets and investments of similar companies on the continent. Its main project to date has been a £200 million investment in rooftop solar for public sector buildings like schools and hospitals.
Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary, labelled the quango “a total farce”. She said: “Ed Miliband is spending an astonishing amount of taxpayers’ money on an energy company that won’t even produce any energy.”
Richard Tice, Reform’s Energy Spokesman, said: “It should be scrapped along with Net Zero. That’s the only way to bring bills down and lower the cost of living.” …
Setting up GB Energy was one of Mr Miliband’s key election pledges. He told voters the body would “bring cheap, clean and secure energy” to UK consumers and businesses.
“We have a simple proposition: if it is right for the Danes, the French, the Norwegians and the Swedes to own British energy assets, it is right for the British people to do so as well,” the Energy Secretary said last autumn.
However, the quango has attracted scrutiny over its delivery record to date. Jürgen Maier, GB Energy’s Chairman, admitted earlier this year that it could take two decades to deliver on Labour’s manifesto pledge to create 1,000 green energy jobs in Aberdeen.
Worth reading in full.
