Hundreds of thousands of jobs in energy plan, says Boris Johnson
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In a social media video to promote the plan, the Prime Minister said: “In the country that was the first to split the atom, the first truly to harness its power to light our homes and drive our factories, we will once again lead the way. “Nuclear is coming home. So instead of a new reactor every decade, we will have a new reactor every year.” And during a visit to an underconstruction nuclear site, he said the energy strategy would provide “hundreds of thousands” of new jobs.
Dressed in full high-vis protective clothing, Mr Johnson toured reactors being built at the Hinkley Point C power plant in Somerset, which is not expected to start feeding into the National Grid until 2026.
He said: “This is an amazing site here and there are 22,000 jobs and they are bringing people in from the whole of the UK, not just in Somerset.
“The jobs we will be creating with the energy security strategy will number in the hundreds of thousands, because you are looking at loads of new nuclear plants, you are looking at a colossal amount of offshore wind and you are looking at a big, big project to fix our networks.
“One of the most important things we have got to do is make sure, when we get the juice coming in from the North Sea, that it is handled properly, there is no wastage, and it is done in a way that is efficient.
“All of that is going to involve high-wage, high-skilled jobs for a long time to come.”
Mr Johnson denied the Government was doing nothing in the short term to help families facing rising energy costs.
He said: “We are really doing a huge amount for the immediate cost of living.
“This (energy strategy) is about tackling the mistakes of the past and making sure we are set well for the future and we are never again subject to the vagaries of the global oil and gas prices.
“And we can’t be subject to blackmail, as it were, from people such asVladimir Putin. We have energy security her in the UK.
“It is a massive strategy for delivering 50GW – almost half the total energy capacity of this country – from offshore wind by 2030, totally reviving the nuclear industry which, I am afraid, has been more or less moribund in this country.”
Mr Johnson added energy bills had been going up all over the world but had “absolutely soared” as a result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He added: “We just can’t carry on like this.”
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