Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to supply all households in Britain with electricity from offshore wind farms by 2030.
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The coronavirus pandemic should be used as a catalyst for a green energy revolution, Johnson said in a speech to an online conference of his Conservative Party on Tuesday.
"There is one area where we are progressing quite literally with gale force speed and that is the green economy - the green industrial revolution that in the next 10 years will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs," Johnson said.
"Your kettle, your washing machine, your cooker, your heating, your plug-in electric vehicle - the whole lot of them will get their juice cleanly and without guilt from the breezes that blow around these islands.
"As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the UK is to wind - a place of almost limitless resource, but in the case of wind without the carbon emissions and without the damage to the environment."
Britain currently produces just under 10.5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind, about 10 per cent of its total power generation, Britain's Press Association reported on Tuesday; Johnson now plans to raise the previous 30GW target to 40GW by 2030 to meet his homes pledge.
The government has come under fire in recent months because it has not yet presented a detailed plan for how it intends to achieve its climate emissions targets by 2050.
Britain is due to host the UN climate conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
It had to be postponed to November 2021 due to the pandemic.
Australian Associated Press
