Baroness Whitaker, a Life Peer since 1999 following a career in publishing and the civil service, has been a long-standing voice on human rights, environmental policy and social justice. She supports clean-energy innovation and has actively engaged with government on the strategic importance of emerging renewables, including the case for dedicated, ringfenced support where needed.
“Renewable energy is clearly one of the critical issues of our time. Living in the British Isles, we are an island surrounded by water. There are always waves. They are non-stop, year-round, and it seems quite natural to tap that source of energy if we can. There’s a fair amount of research funding. The universities are doing a lot and there are a lot of good models for wave energy. What there is not is the sort of thing which really comes from the government to support the move from research to scaling up. What you need is a ring fenced fund to support scaling up of the best prototypes.”
