Sarah Wollaston
Main Page: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Amber Rudd
The investment in renewable energy over the past six years has been £7 billion a year. We are committed to ensuring that the UK is the leading country in developing renewable energy. We have been particularly successful in offshore wind—we have more offshore wind than the rest of the world put together and hope to become a serious exporter of it. Renewable energy is important for jobs and important for building on our commitments.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement and it is great to hear that we are on course to meet 30% of our electricity generation from renewables. She is right to divert the resources into less mature technologies, but can she reassure my constituents that that will not mean that we see a further expansion in very large-scale field solar across south Devon? Perhaps we will see more support for community energy schemes, and I hope that she will take me up on an offer to visit Totnes to see how those work in action.
Amber Rudd
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, and her constituents sound very similar to mine. We share the desire to make sure that we address the issue of climate change: the problem is that we do not want large-scale solar. In fact, large-scale solar has already been taken out of the renewables obligation, but we are trying to support solar so that we have as much as possible through community energy, on people’s houses and on other buildings. There is a great opportunity there.