With this record wind power auction, we’ve proved the rightwing doubters wrong | Ed Miliband

In the 18 months since I became Energy Secretary, the Government has made a simple argument: if we want to cut our energy bills for good, Britain needs to get off the fossil fuel roller coaster and instead develop clean, local energy that we control.

We know that bills skyrocketed when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, because in international fossil fuel markets Britain is a price taker, not a price maker. Renewables and nuclear power, on the other hand, offer Britain a chance to stand on its own two feet in the world – by producing and pricing its own energy.

Over the past year and a half, a well-funded right-wing network has waged a bitter war against this argument. When Keir Starmer set out our mission for clean energy by 2030, he said it couldn’t be achieved, or even if it could, it would be the wrong choice.

Today’s historic auction for offshore wind power proved the skeptics wrong. The government has secured a record 8.4GW of offshore wind capacity, enough to power the equivalent of more than 12 million homes, the largest amount of offshore wind purchased at an auction ever in Britain, or indeed Europe. Particularly given the challenging global context the industry finds itself in, this is a hugely important milestone for offshore wind in Britain and around the world.

The billions of pounds of private investment unlocked by this historic auction will lay the foundations for a new era of energy sovereignty and abundance for our country. This ensures that the next generation of Britons will grow up in a country that controls its own energy destiny and produces enough to meet our growing demand for new homes, new towns and new industries.

There is a lot of nonsense said about the cost of renewable energy. The key fact from our auction is this: the average price we have achieved for fixed offshore wind projects is £90.91 per megawatt hour, significantly cheaper than the cost of building and operating a new gas plant.

The inevitable problem we face is that for years there has been insufficient investment in the UK energy system, while at the same time demand for electricity is expected to more than double by 2050. Those who want us to stop building renewables need to take into account that there is no alternative to building new energy infrastructure in Britain. And it’s clear that offshore wind remains significantly cheaper to build and operate than new gas.

Today’s auction includes fixed offshore projects in all parts of Britain: Dogger Bank South off the coast of Yorkshire and Norfolk Vanguard off East Anglia, two of the largest offshore wind farms in the world; Berwick Bank in the North Sea, first new Scottish project since 2022; and Awel Y Môr, the first Welsh project to win a contract in over a decade.

We have also secured pioneering floating offshore wind projects in Scotland and Wales, putting Britain in pole position to play a leading role in the emerging technologies of the future.

This is testament to an industry that is coming back strong under this government after the 2023 auction fiasco under the Conservatives, who failed to deliver a single offshore wind project. These results put us on track to deliver the clean energy system we need for 2030 and beyond.

And as we make these long-term decisions, we’re also cutting short-term bills – cutting an average of £150 in costs on annual energy bills from April and extending the Heated Homes Discount to give six million of the poorest families an extra £150 off their bills.

This record result also represents a major step forward for our industrial strategy, as we seize the opportunities offered by clean energy to meet the British people’s demand for the good jobs of tomorrow. These projects will create thousands of jobs for engineers, technicians and factory workers and unlock £22 billion of investment in Britain, as we move towards the 100,000 offshore wind jobs our mission will support by the end of the decade.

These results are part of a new central dividing line in British politics. Britain’s reformers and Tories want to wage a war on clean energy, leaving Britain attached to the fossil fuel rollercoaster, destroying the clean energy jobs we create and betraying our young people and future generations by giving up on tackling the climate crisis.

Labor is brave enough to take on the naysayers because clean energy is the right choice to cut bills, deliver energy security, good jobs and protect the climate. Today, we have once again proven the skeptics wrong – and we will continue to do so.