It is always mildly amusing to speculate upon which parts of the speech the monarch is obliged to read out are delivered through gritted teeth. VAT on private school fees? Finally getting rid of hereditaries from the House of Lords? Dangerous precedent, King Charles might have mused.

On the whole however, I think he would have been sympatico with the words in front of him, and in at least one respect, positively enthusiastic though he isn’t allowed to give a thumbs up from the throne.

“My government”, he intoned, “recognises the urgency of the global climate challenge and the new job opportunities that can come from leading the development of the technologies of the future”. To be fair to Charlie, he has been saying that kind of thing for a very long time when few others were.

“A Bill will be introduced to set up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power company headquartered in Scotland”, he continued. “Legislation will be brought forward to help the country achieve energy independence and unlock investment in energy infrastructure”.

 

The statement of intent could not be clearer and now the world awaits a route map. Most immediately, it is important to know what Great British Energy is actually going to do. There is no shortage of options and the costs involved, in the grid alone, are astronomical.

We know that funding for GB Energy will come from the increased windfall tax on oil and gas. This is expected to deliver around £8 billion a year which is substantial but, in terms of impact upon the renewables revolution, might be considered more a breeze than a gale. Focus is required and it will be better to do a few things very well than spread the promise too thinly.

A reasonable question which some will ask is: “What’s it going to do for our energy bills?”. On that point, Labour should not over-promise. The transition to renewables will not come cheaply. It was therefore sensible to caveat the promise of lower bills with the words “over time”. What can certainly be guaranteed is that the more we rely on generation from domestic sources, the less risk there will be of shocks from global events.

I hope GB Energy will become an investor in offshore renewables as a matter of course in order to secure ongoing returns for the public purse. This is what the British National Oil Corporation was doing in the 1970s, not just in the North Sea but also – like Norway’s Statoil – around the world, before being cut off in its prime. There is no reason why the UK should not become a global investment player in the renewables industry.

Where I sit in the Western Isles, the state-owned companies of Ireland, Norway and France are among those investing in massive projects, not out the goodness of their hearts but in order to secure profit for their countries from these investments. It is beyond absurd that, until now, no such vehicle has been brought into being by either UK or Scottish governments (though I see the Welsh have just created one). And the rules are simple. If there is no investment, there is no share in the dividends.

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Neither should the public interest be restricted to state entities. It should be a basic premise that communities have an entitlement to participate in exploitation of their own natural resources rather than having massive industrial developments imposed upon them without statutory rights of return. There is plenty evidence of how cheaply these rights have been sold until now and this is the chance to correct that imbalance.

It is an under-reported piece of history that the original intention of Crown Estate Scotland, which operates as a wing of the Scottish Government, intended to cap income from the sale of ScotWind leases at the grand total of £70 million. Fortuitously, the Crown Estate in England and Wales went first and raised a vast sum as big energy companies piled in. Even Edinburgh then admitted its scale of error, suspended the process and came back with a capped figure of £700 million – ten times the original but still very cheap.

It's an incredible story which begs the question – who on earth was advising them? Then, once the successful bidders handed over the £700 million, not a penny of it was ringfenced for the infrastructure required to support a transition to renewables. None of this gives confidence that Edinburgh has much of a clue about how to play hardball with Big Wind or maximise supply chain benefits.

It’s time they did and the two governments must work together. Community rights and public participation represent a hitherto neglected area of policy that GB Energy can take the lead on. The ground rules and driving forces have to be in place soon if ambitions for delivery are to be met and a genuinely just transition secured.

The UK is a leader in offshore powerThe UK is a leader in offshore power (Image: free)

One specific focus I recommend is on wave and tidal which have tended to be neglected in deference to the power of wind. These are technologies in which the UK does still have world leadership and the costs involved in giving them a serious push are relatively modest. They should not be competing against more established technologies but deserve a serious impetus from public funding which will, once and for all, establish their potential to contribute to the energy mix.

Returning to the question of lower bills, while renewables will not come cheap, the equally indisputable truth is that they will be generated from different locations than in the past. The generation map of Britain is shifting rapidly towards places where the wind blows strongest. These also tend to be parts of the country where fuel poverty is at its highest. That is an unsustainable paradox which is capable of being fixed with relative ease.

That will do to go on with. I have every confidence King Charles would endorse my wish list even if there are plenty vested interests which take a different view.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Energy Minister