The Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has launched a consultation on its Clean Energy Strategy and it wants responses from Cumbrian residents, community groups and businesses.
The blueprint says the region has the potential to deliver up to 9GW of clean energy generation by 2040. It proposes:
• Advancing offshore wind: Cumbria’s specialist manufacturers supporting the expansion of offshore wind, already forming over 10% of the UK’s offshore capacity.
• Driving the growth of low-carbon hydrogen: Building on opportunities to generate green hydrogen using renewable electricity.
• Delivering new and advanced nuclear power: Including securing investment in new nuclear technology, including SMRs and the chance to site the first STEP fusion plant at Moorside.
• Investing in Carbon, Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS): Using the depleted Morecambe Bay Gas Fields to capture and store carbon emissions, helping decarbonise our industries.
• Positioning Cumbria as a test bed for new technologies is also an ambition of the strategy, with investment in Research and Development underpinning energy innovation in the county.
Consultation on the strategy is open until 22 June. Comments can be submitted via an online survey here, and interested parties can join a video workshop on the strategy on 20 June. Sign up for the workshop here