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Energy: Infrastructure

Asked by Alex BrewerLiberal DemocratDepartment for Energy Security and Net ZeroTabled Answered 9 September 2025UIN 73973

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department is taking to provide support for communities that host (a) battery storage facilities and (b) other energy infrastructure.

Answered by Michael Shanks

The Government believes that communities are providing a service to the country when they host clean energy infrastructure, so there needs to be benefit for them. On 21 May, the Government published a working paper on community benefits and shared ownership of low carbon energy infrastructure and is the process of reviewing responses. We will consider the appropriate technological scope of a mandatory scheme for community benefits, including whether such a scheme should cover grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS).

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