Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to engage his counterparts in other countries bordering the North Sea on energy cooperation in the North Sea.

The North Seas cooperation, as laid out by Government in its British Energy Security Strategy, will accelerate the development of offshore windfarms with links to continental power grids. This will unleash hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy into North Seas countries’ electricity systems.

The Government has strong, cooperative relationships with North Seas partners and has recently concluded a Treaty with Norway on interconnection and a Memorandum of Understanding with Belgium on offshore cooperation.

The Government has also been working with Denmark to agree to formalise cooperation on the energy transition and is currently negotiating the terms of cooperation on North Seas Energy Cooperation with the European Commission.