Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has praised a business for leading the way in tackling the climate crisis during a visit to North Staffordshire last week.

The Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero was speaking as he was given a tour of GivEnergy's new manufacturing site.

He was also lending his support to Adam Jogee, Labour's Parliamentary candidate in Newcastle, as the campaign trail steps up ahead of the next General Election.

GivEnergy is a national leader in battery storage for domestic and commercial use, supplying almost 40 per cent of units installed in the UK market. While most renewable infrastructure is manufactured in China, GivEnergy wants to move more to the UK.

It has set up a new manufacturing site in Chemical Lane and talks are underway with both Newcastle Borough Council and Stoke-on-Trent City Council to identify future sites.

GivEnergy is a national leader in battery storage for domestic and commercial use (Google).

Mr Miliband praised the company for its efforts in combating the energy crisis. He said: "I'm here to support Adam. He would work so hard for the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme if he's the MP after the next election.

"I'm also here to visit a Great British success story which is GivEnergy. The two things come together because what GivEnergy is doing is creating good jobs in Britain. They are cutting people's energy bills and tackling the fuel poverty we face as a country.

"If Labour gets in and we need to get Adam elected for Labour to get in, we will drive forward at pace the kind of plans that GivEnergy has – batteries in people's homes.

"I'm honestly just wowed by what GivEnergy is doing, this is a vision. We think of power stations and power being a big kit and of course you need the big kit but what GivEnergy is showing is we can put batteries in people's homes. It will save them huge amounts of money in their energy bills. It's also good for our energy security because it takes the pressure off the grid. It's like a total no brainer and you've got it happening here in this constituency."

Mr Miliband continued: "We've been through a terrible cost of living crisis, people are still going through it and the reason we're going through that is because we're so exposed to gas. What this battery storage offers and the whole drive for clean power is not only tackling the climate crisis, which obviously people care about but cutting people's energy bills, leaving us less exposed as a country and creating good jobs.

"GivEnergy is absolutely at the centre of this, it's absolutely leading edge, the vanguard of this happening. I'm genuinely I'm bowled over by what they're doing."

GivEnergy is expanding across the globe, including into South Africa and Asia. Although the company operates a model where all the tech support is done locally in the country, all of the software is ultimately backed up in North Staffordshire.

GivEnergy CEO Jason Howlett said: "So one of the first things we want to do is bring manufacturing here in the UK. The factory down the road is building our commercial systems for officers, factories, hotels and also all the way up to grid scale.

"That's being done here and and we're trying to expand and we're just going through a process at the moment of contacting local suppliers who can potentially be part of our supply chain. We're looking at more land to develop at the moment. We're working with the councils to look at land to develop in this area to bring mass manufacturing here."

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