Local Power Plan

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Taken together, this is the most comprehensive package of support to grow local and community energy that our country has ever seen. It builds on the Pride in Place programme, the community right to buy and our world-leading commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector. We know that the local power plan will be delivered not from Whitehall, but place by place and community by community. Today, I issue an invitation to local and community groups: if they come forward with proposals, we will support those groups to help make them happen. This Statement is about a stake for the British people in our energy system, generating returns for local communities and local people, with power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few, and I commend it to the House”.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, although I have no outside interests which impact directly on solar farms and onshore wind, I declare my interest in having worked in the wider field of energy transition since my time as Minister for Energy.

I start by reflecting that we all want clean energy, we all want full engagement with local communities, and we all want to work towards an energy policy based on energy security, sourced from trusted supply chains and, above all, delivering affordable energy. This announcement should be tested against these criteria, for we support community energy enthusiasm where it makes economic sense. Does the Minister agree that reducing energy bills comes only by increasing reliable generation and decreasing costs, yet the local power plan does not come with a generation target nor an analysis of the extent to which it will contribute to reducing bills? If these are not central factors within the policy, I am afraid that it will for sure be time and money misspent.

In the Government’s own press release, they rely on “internal analysis” to claim that additional solar and onshore wind procured through AR7 could lower bills in the early 2030s, but that analysis has not been published. It looks only at a narrow scenario, it seems to exclude wider system costs, and it does not give a full picture of future bill levels. Does it include the load in grid costs to get the power to market, given that many of the wind projects being considered are in Scotland? How does the plan impact on Labour’s promises to cut energy bills by £300, not least given that they have risen by £190 since Labour came to power? How does this initiative change that?

I had a good look at the map of all the proposed projects in the CfD allocation round 7a. There were only two small wind projects in England, some in south Wales, and the vast majority of the other wind projects were in Scotland. Given that there were only two wind projects in England, can the Minister comment on whether this will lead to further increases in the already staggering bill for curtailment—paying wind farms not to produce—because of the grid constraint from Scotland to the south, the B6 boundary, and the cost of debottlenecking that, which is estimated to be north of £50 billion?

Can the Minister comment on whether this initiative is good for employment? There has been real concern recently, which the Minister will be aware of. The OEUK talked a lot about his policies and the redundancies in the offshore sector, and fears that the industrial contagion will spread to onshore supply chain and manufacturing communities. To put this in context, on average, 1,000 direct and indirect jobs are being lost each month from the oil and gas sector. Without intervention, this rate of job losses will continue to 2030. RenewableUK has said that these initiatives being proposed for renewables may create 4,000 more jobs from now to 2030, as against the 50,000 losses of jobs in oil and gas. How does that help employment in the UK? The GMB union’s Scotland secretary, Louise Gilmour, gave the same warning:

“There is a human cost to these decisions that goes beyond the bottom line of this year’s budget and impacts workers, families and communities in Scotland and across Britain. The economic case for easing the financial pressures on our offshore industries is clear and compelling but so too is the moral argument for slowing the rushed and needless abandonment of workers and their communities”.


Does the Minister agree?

I turn to an exceptionally important point. This announcement is principally about solar energy, and solar imports come from China. The Minister of State, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, stated in a debate initiated in this House recently that

“human rights are a non-negotiable part of this Government’s approach to China”.—[Official Report, 2/2/26; col. 1301.]

This is an initiative to import Chinese goods. Well over 80% of PV modules used in the UK have significant Chinese content, and the true figure is very likely to be above 90% when you include panels made by Chinese-headquartered manufacturers—for example, Jinko, Trina, LONGi, JA Solar and Canadian Solar, all of which are Chinese in origin—and the non-Chinese brands whose wafers, cells or polysilicon is sourced from China. Some 80% to 85% of the global polysilicon that is needed comes from China, and the UK imports almost all its PV hardware. Installers and trade bodies routinely report that Chinese supply chains dominate the UK market because of price and scale. In the map for AR7, we are talking about a widespread, historic, major increase in solar imports from China. This local power plan depends on Chinese goods.

I simply ask the Minister whether he can tonight guarantee that no imported polysilicon, no panels being installed in our schools at the moment under GBE’s first initiative, and no solar content on any of the panels that is foreseen by this particular measure will come from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A very large share of the world’s solar grade polysilicon has recently come from China, and a significant part of that comes from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

It is a simple question and I hope the Minister can answer it by saying that there is absolutely no polysilicon that comes from that autonomous region. If he cannot answer it, it would have been wise and sensible to consider that question first. When comfortable that the Government could answer it in the affirmative, he could then come to the Palace of Westminster and bring forward this initiative for a historic increase in the import of solar panels.

In conclusion, can the Minister also say in this context why the Secretary of State, who is fast becoming a night manager, went to China a year ago, signed an MoU and locked it in his safe, marked “secret”, to be hidden from the public and not to be scrutinised? Why did the Government not publish it? They have published all the other MoUs that the Secretary of State has signed but not the one he negotiated with China a year ago. Why is it secret? Is there a reference to solar supplies from Xinjiang? Is there no reference to human rights? The Prime Minister has recently called for open government and honesty with the public. Surely, by locking it away out of sight, this is doing exactly the opposite; above all, to the local communities which are going to benefit from these solar initiatives. What is there to hide?

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, on these Benches we very much welcome the publication of the local power plan. This is a landmark moment: up to £1 billion of funding from Great British Energy for local community energy. This is the largest public investment to date. Our communities stand ready to generate their own power, cut bills and keep wealth circulating locally. They have been waiting for the Government to back them with serious funding and a level playing field.

We, and many others across the House, campaigned to secure community energy on the face of the Great British Energy Act 2025. We are pleased to see that commitment transformed into this concrete plan. Our communities should rightly be able to partner in, and directly benefit from, the renewable revolution. The vision is one we support.

Great British Energy aims to support an initial 1,000 local and community projects by 2030. However, I would like to see these plans going beyond programmes that the private sector can deliver itself; for example, a programme of community wind energy for our coastal communities. I would also like to see a broader range of technologies used, and greater integration with the warm homes plan. The four pillars—direct funding, expert advice, market innovation, and regulatory reform—are what community groups have asked for.

Delivery is where this plan will stand or fall. Although the plan is launched this month, the first grant schemes will not open until the spring and the new Great British Energy local products will not be piloted until the summer. There are hundreds of shovel-ready projects just waiting for capital finance. Will the Minister commit to an early fast track for schemes that can demonstrate that they are ready to build this year?

We welcome the commitment of up to £1 billion, but there is a clear gap between this figure and the £3.3 billion previously promised for community energy. Has this ambition been scaled back? How much of this fund is expected to go to actual deployment and how much on facilitation, advice and central programme costs? We recognise the importance of help with these processes but want reassurance that this will not become a scheme where too much is swallowed by planning and too little reaches the projects themselves.

The Government acknowledge that a lack of fair routes to market has held back community energy for too long. Without a genuine right to local supply, underpinned by statute, community groups will remain disadvantaged. The local power plan refers to developing new local energy supply models and a local energy platform, including smart community energy and virtual PPAs. When will the Government bring forward the regulatory changes needed to make them a reality? Can the Minister also confirm that legislation to create a clear right to local supply remains part of the Government’s programme?

The Government are right to recognise that delays and the cost of connections to the grid are among the principal reasons why community schemes have failed. The plan speaks of obligatory response times from DNOs, and of working groups with network companies, but what concrete powers will Ministers use to ensure that these things happen in practice? This matters especially when the technical and regulatory thresholds are already stacked against smaller schemes.

We strongly welcome the intention to introduce a mandatory shared ownership offer for larger renewable developments, and the indication that shared ownership templates and guidance with be published this spring. This could enable fairness into the next generation of large-scale infrastructure. What minimum stake will communities be guaranteed? How will the Government ensure that the offer is genuinely attractive rather than nominal? When will the Government publish the full community benefits framework, so that communities are not left at the mercy of voluntary schemes and of whatever crumbs are left over from the big companies? Will the framework include clear criteria on what counts as meaningful benefit, and will it be underpinned by statutory guidance?

One of the most promising elements of the plan is the commitment to build up local community capacity through expert teams and a “community energy in a box” toolkit, providing standardised documents and advice. Our most underserved areas have previously had the least spare capacity. Communities facing high deprivation, or with small and overstretched councils, lack the volunteers and technical skills needed even to begin. What criteria will Great British Energy use to define these underserved areas? Will they benefit from higher grant-to-loan ratios and more proactive outreach so that they do not miss out?

In the June 2025 spending review, £2.5 billion was allocated for small modular reactors—almost a third of Great British Energy’s existing budget of £8.3 billion. That decision pre-dated the finalisation of the local power plan and of GB Energy’s strategic plan for local energy. Does the Minister accept that the Treasury’s raiding of the Great British Energy budget has constrained what could otherwise have been a more ambitious and better-resourced programme for local power? It may have delayed the scaling up of exactly the projects the Minister is now bringing forward.

The local power plan has the potential to be transformative. Local, community-owned energy is one of the most powerful ways to cut bills, rebuild trust and take people with us on the journey to net zero. To realise this promise, we must move swiftly from plan to practice, getting money out of the door quickly, cutting through grid and regulatory barriers, and ensuring that every community has a fair chance to generate, own and—crucially—sell its own energy locally.