The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in a rare bit of good news has unveiled a “massive” investment deal in the UK’s Dogger Bank wind farm at COP28.
Speaking at a press conference in Dubai, the PM confirmed UAE state-owned firm Masdar and German-based renewables firm RWE will join the project, investing up to £11 billion in creating the world’s biggest offshore wind farm in the North Sea.
Mr Sunak who told reporters that the deal was “massive”, said: “I’m pleased to announce a new deal between Masdar and RWE, which includes a commitment to jointly invest up to £11billion into the UK’s new wind farm at Dogger Bank – which will be the biggest in the world.
“This is a huge boost for UK renewables: creating more jobs, helping to power three million homes, and increasing our energy security.
The Prime Minister added: “And, by the way, this comes just days after we announced £30 billion of investment at our Global Investment Summit… and £21 billion of investment from South Korea.
“We’ve quite frankly never seen a week like it.”
The Dogger Bank wind farm will be completed in 2026 and is predicted to generate up to 3.6 gigawatts of power, enough to supply six million of homes.
Built in three phases, Dogger Bank A and B will each have 95 wind turbines, while Dogger Bank will have 87. Each of the three phases is predicted to add 1.2 gigawatts of energy to the UK’s renewable capacity.
The electricity from the wind farm will come ashore via giant subsea cables at Ulrome, in the East Riding area of Yorkshire, connecting to underground cables for a further 30km to the Creyke Beck substation near Cottingham, where the electricity will join the national grid.
However, despite these good news announcements, the Conservative Party’s and PM’s own personal poll ratings remain dire.
A new poll of 2019 Conservative voters by J.L. Partners for Bloomberg shows the PM is less popular than his predecessor, Liz Truss. The study also reports that Reform UK is partly to blame for the Party losing, 15 per cent of 2019 Tory votes, roughly 1.5 million votes, triple the number who say they are planning on backing the Lib Dems at the next election.
While a separate Conservative Home on the relative performance of Cabinet Ministers, know as the “Cabinet League Table” put Mr Sunak on -25.4, the lowest rating of anybody in the Cabinet. By comparison, second worst performer going to the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt on -13.4 and third went to Andrew Mitchell, -6.9. In total just five member of the Cabinet had negative ratings, while Kemi Badenoch, tops the league table moving from second place to first, with a plus rating of 63 points.
In rare bit of good news for PM, he unveils a “massive” £11billion boost to create world’s biggest wind farm, writes Alistair Thompson
