Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’

Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.

Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regions of the UK and comes from a mixture of UK companies and overseas sources including the EU and Japan.

Energy specialists say abandoning net zero and increasing oil and gas drilling would cause more instability for Britons

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Abandoning net zero and drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea would be a massive setback for the UK and would not help the economy, leading experts have said in response to claims by the former prime minister Tony Blair.

“This is a bizarre intervention to make during the worst May heatwave on record and when the Iran crisis is providing yet more evidence of the enormous costs of oil and gas,” said Ed Matthew, the UK programme director at the E3G thinktank. “Clean energy is cheaper energy – it protects our bills from prices skyrocketing, its running costs are virtually zero, and it doesn’t cause climate change which threatens economic collapse ... The government should ignore Blair’s ideological nonsense and focus on what works.”