Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what information her Department holds on the year in which the highest level of private sector investment into renewable sources of power generation was recorded.

Based on data from BloombergNEF, total investment into UK offshore wind, onshore wind and solar PV was £143bn over 2009-2023 (converted to real 2023 prices, nearest £bn). For these technologies, a record £19bn was in 2023, helping the renewable share of total UK electricity generation increase from 7% in 2010 to nearly 50% in 2023.

In the UK, renewables receive levy-funded support through legacy schemes (Renewables Obligation [RO] and Feed-in Tariffs [FiTs]), and our Contracts for Difference (CfD) mechanism. The OBR regularly publish estimates of levy spend for the prior financial year across the RO and CfD schemes, and Ofgem publishes estimates for FiTs, aggregated for all renewables. For the CfD scheme only, the LCCC publish data at a technology and plant level.