Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) I beg to move, That this House has
considered the British energy security strategy. It is a great
privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I am
grateful to Members for participating in this important debate. The
issue of energy security has never been so important. Putin’s
onslaught on the Ukrainian people, the obscene profiteering of the
oil and energy giants and the petrol retailers’ opportunist price
hikes...Request free trial
(Birkenhead) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the British energy security
strategy.
It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Davies, and I am grateful to Members for participating in this
important debate. The issue of energy security has never been so
important. Putin’s onslaught on the Ukrainian people, the obscene
profiteering of the oil and energy giants and the petrol
retailers’ opportunist price hikes have led to soaring energy
bills, with Ofgem warning that up to 12 million households could
be plunged into fuel poverty this year. Too many of my
constituents are grappling with the terrible dilemma of whether
to heat their homes or put a warm meal on the table. Meanwhile,
Putin’s efforts to weaponise Russian gas and oil have forced
Europe to reckon with the challenge of charting a course towards
energy independence. All the while, the window for avoiding
climate catastrophe is rapidly closing, with the latest report
from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stating
clearly that we must decarbonise at a speed previously thought to
be unimaginable.
The forthcoming energy security Bill is one of the most
significant pieces of legislation ever to be brought before
Parliament, but the strategy outlined by the Government fails to
come near the task of tackling the scale of the crisis we face.
The energy security strategy offered the Government the
opportunity to harness the potential of our wind, tide and sun
and deliver a greener and more independent energy system.
However, while the Government have gone beyond their manifesto
commitment and even the recommendations of the Climate Change
Committee with the target of delivering 50 GW of offshore wind
power by 2030, that scale of ambition is not matched for other
renewables. The Government’s refusal to support new onshore wind
developments is particularly disappointing, given the massive
public support for new wind farms.
(Wokingham) (Con)
What back-up would we need if we became even more dependent on
wind? There are days when the wind does not blow and then we get
no wind power.
I will try to cover that later in my speech.
Onshore wind can meet the growing demand for electricity as our
economy decarbonises, but also, importantly, it could help us to
transform the economic fortune of left-behind communities, with
the potential to boost the UK economy by more than £45 billion
and create 57,000 new jobs. By accelerating the development of
the 649 individual solar and wind farms that have already been
granted planning permission, we can eradicate the need for
Russian gas imports entirely. Putin’s ransom demands can be
safely ignored.
There are many of us who had hoped that the Prime Minister might
undo the draconian planning restrictions for onshore wind,
introduced by the Cameron Government, that have made it virtually
impossible to build new wind farms in all but a handful of local
authorities. In 2020, the Prime Minister reversed his
predecessor’s decision to exclude onshore wind from the contracts
for difference scheme. Our hopes for a repeat performance were
bolstered in the weeks running up to the publication of the
energy security strategy, which appeared to commit the Government
to tripling onshore wind capacity by 2035. That would have been a
bold, progressive policy and a sign of a Government who
understand both the needs of our country and the public mood.
However, the plans were strangled at birth by Tory Back Benchers
and their allies in the Cabinet, some of whom have happily taken
small fortunes from fossil fuel giants and so-called climate
sceptics. Now, the strategy explicitly rules out the planning
reforms that are essential to unlocking the promise of onshore
wind.
It is not just onshore wind that is being ignored by the
Government; the UK has half of all Europe’s tidal energy capacity
and many experts agree that no country anywhere in the world is
better placed to exploit the remarkable power of the tide.
(Liverpool, Riverside)
(Lab)
My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Given that we
have the amazing River Mersey separating our two constituencies,
does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to operate at
speed to support the Mersey tidal power project?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Mersey tidal project
alone has the potential to power more than 1 million homes and
produce almost as much electricity as Hinkley Point C at a
fraction of the cost, yet around 14 GW of tidal capacity has been
cancelled, lies dormant or is languishing in the early stages of
development. The strategy makes no commitment to supporting tidal
power—an omission that has rightly been described by the British
Hydropower Association as “incomprehensible”.
(Bath) (LD)
Is it not absurd that a lot of tidal power projects are rejected
on the basis of cost, yet nuclear is the most expensive way of
producing energy?
I thank the hon. Lady for that point. The Minister will point
towards the considerable up-front costs of tidal power as a
barrier to progress, but such a view ignores the fact that all
renewable technologies are expensive in their infancy, as well as
the fact that some of these installations could have lifespans of
more than a century.
(Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is to be congratulated on getting this debate
organised. My constituency of Weston-super-Mare fronts on to the
Bristol channel, which is the largest source of potential tidal
power. He is right, of course, about the up-front costs being
significant and the lifetime costs being lower. However, even
factoring that in, the total lifetime levelised costs of tidal
power are, from all the figures I have seen, dramatically higher
than anything else out there. Has the hon. Gentleman seen figures
that I have not?
I have only the information that we have received, and it has all
been fact-checked. Quibbles about the costs of tidal power look
frankly laughable when we consider the strategy’s proposals for
new nuclear capacity. The Prime Minister’s refusal to unleash the
full force of the renewable revolution has left him with no
choice other than to bet big on nuclear power, with a target of
more than tripling our current capacity by 2050. That is perhaps
the most radical segment of the strategy, requiring as many as
eight new facilities to be given approval in as many years and
calling for the roll-out of new nuclear—including small modular
reactors that are as yet commercially untested—at an
unprecedented rate.
I want to be clear: I have never been opposed to nuclear power.
It has a vital role to play in meeting new electricity demand in
the coming decades, and it is right that we begin to undo decades
of under-investment and invest again in jobs and skills in the
nuclear industry. However, we must question the viability of the
plans. The Government are calling for the roll-out of new nuclear
at a speed and scale never before seen in this country, and the
risk of falling short, without having adequately invested in
alternative forms of energy, is enormous.
Even more dangerous to our future are the strategy’s proposals
for the future of North sea gas and oil. For the UK, the question
of how we end our reliance on Russian gas and oil is critical;
however, for the millions of Ukrainians whose homeland is being
devastated by a Russian war machine fed largely by energy exports
to the west, it is truly a matter of life and death. That is why
I fully support the Government’s commitment to phase out Russian
oil imports by the end of the year.
However, we must be careful that in standing up to Putin’s
aggression we do not end up dealing a devastating blow to our
efforts to tackle the threat of climate change. It is quite
frankly absurd that instead of using the crisis to begin to end
our fossil fuel addiction once and for all, the energy security
strategy instead looks to authorise the North Sea Transition
Authority to begin a new round of licensing this autumn. It will
take an average of 28 years for these installations to begin
production, meaning that they will do nothing to improve our
energy security or reduce prices in the short term, while locking
us into new fuel consumption that the UN Secretary-General has
correctly described as “moral and economic madness”.
I warn the Minister: future generations will not forgive this
Government for failing to lay the foundations for a fossil-free
future. They will not look kindly on Conservative Governments’
abysmal record on improving energy efficiency, from the Cameron
Government’s decision to cut the “green crap”, which sent the
number of loft and cavity wall insulations plummeting by 92% and
74%, to the collapse of the green homes grant scheme, which ended
up costing precious jobs in my region of the north-west.
Our country has one of the oldest and least energy-efficient
housing stocks in Europe, and that is costing millions of people
dearly every month when they get their energy bills. The energy
strategy is totally devoid of any credible solutions to make mass
insulation a reality. I urge the Minister, in the national
interest, to reach out to the shadow Secretary of State for
climate change and net zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Doncaster North (), and get to work to
implement his proposals to insulate 19 million homes over the
next decade.
Another issue that the energy security strategy ignores is the
enormous potential for community energy to contribute to a more
secure and resilient energy supply in the UK. Had the Government
backed community energy schemes back in 2014, we could now be
producing up to 3 GW in community energy. Instead, there has been
almost no growth over the past eight years. That is the
consequence of the Government’s fundamental failure to reform
energy markets and licensing rules, which forced community energy
schemes to assume around £1 million in up-front costs if they
wanted to build renewable generation infrastructure.
(Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I agree with some of what the hon. Gentleman says and disagree
with other points. I represent a largely rural constituency in
Suffolk where many homes are reliant on heating oil. Does the
hon. Gentleman share my concern that more needs to be done to
support those homes to transition to a different type of energy,
with more incentives in the system to do that?
I agree. We need to look into hydrogen as well as oil for people
living in rural areas of the country. It is a problem, but one
that we can overcome.
There can be no more secure a form of energy than that owned and
produced by local communities and sold directly to local
residents. With the energy security strategy soon to come before
Parliament, I urge the Minister to take on the proposals of last
year’s Local Electricity Bill and to empower community energy
schemes to sell their power to local consumers.
I want to mention something that I know is anathema to the
Minister and his colleagues, but which is essential to deliver
the fundamental changes to our energy system that are so
desperately needed. We need to recognise that the sector should
be a service working for the public good. It should be taken back
into public ownership. The handover of gas and electricity in the
1980s to Sid the shareholder and his mates down the street was
always a cruel deception. The energy companies were bought and
run by corporate giants. They were privatised to provide profits
for the big stock market players, and poor Sid was bought out
before he could turn a penny. It resulted not in a shareholders’
democracy but a corporate plutocracy.
At the very beginning of the current crisis, the chaotic system
of private ownership was a serious blow to our energy security.
Not only has it meant that ordinary people are victims of soaring
energy prices in a way unseen anywhere else in Europe, but it
left the whole energy market in the hands of private monopolies
with little concern for the interests of our country or its
people. It has tied the hands of successive Governments when
developing the responses to the climate crisis that we
desperately and urgently need.
By taking energy back into public hands, we can plough profits
into driving the decarbonisation of our energy grid and funding a
state-owned renewables company to pioneer technological
innovation in the sector. We can ensure that the British people
get to decide what happens to resources that should belong to us
all. We can ensure that the pace of the green transition is
dictated by the demands of the crisis we face and not by the
whims of private shareholders.
I am looking forward to what I hope will be a lively and
wide-ranging debate. Let me reiterate that the decisions that
Ministers make in the coming months will not only have
implications for whether we can keep our country running during
the approaching winter and whether we can defeat Putin’s use of
gas as a ransom demand in his war against the Ukrainian people;
they will determine the existential question of whether we leave
future generations a planet ravaged by climate and ecological
breakdown, or one that is greener and more secure than ever
before.
2.44pm
(Wantage) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Birkenhead () on securing this debate.
I think we have all understood, intellectually, that our energy
supply is a national security issue, but that reality has smacked
us in the face this year with the way that Putin has weaponised
energy supply. We have seen that a global spike in demand causes
British families real pain in their pockets. The Government are
trying to do what they can, but those forces are ultimately
beyond their control. They can mitigate the impact, but they
cannot totally prevent the problems. I welcome a lot of what is
in the energy security strategy, not least the fact that it puts
us on track to have 480,000 clean jobs by 2030 and £100 billion
of private investment. The Government should invest in these
technologies, but we will only get to where we want to be if we
access private investment to support them.
We have been world-leading in eliminating coal. I very much
welcome the Government’s ambition to have 25% of our electricity
capacity come from offshore wind and to trial onshore wind as
long as there is local support for it. I look forward to seeing
how much local support there is, given how many complaints I get
about other planning issues. If the support is there, it is
absolutely the right thing for us to do. I have had lots of
correspondence from constituents about solar panels. Some people
have already got them up and would like to see many more of them
up. I welcome what the Government are doing to make it easier for
people to put them on top of their houses and buildings.
I have a number of great colleagues who are champions of
hydrogen. It will be very important to their local economies. It
will not be so important to mine, but I very much welcome the
fact that we will be developing new systems for transporting and
storing hydrogen. Many people think it has a huge part to play in
our energy security.
We know that a lot of our problems come from energy efficiency,
in respect of both homes and buildings. I have been campaigning
to try to get new homes to be built to the latest environmental
standard that Government set, rather than the one that existed at
the time planning permission was granted, which is often five or
six years earlier. It means that house builders are able to get
away with putting in things that they know have got to be
retrofitted in just a few years’ time. I think that once a
certain time has elapsed after planning permission, houses should
have to be built to whatever the latest standard is that the
Government have set.
I welcome the temporary relief on VAT for energy efficiency
projects for houses, but we are going to need a very large
retrofitting programme. It is important to get the new homes
right, but we need to learn from the green homes grant scheme and
put in place the right retrofitting programme; then we will not
need as much energy as we are using at the moment. Similarly, the
Government are providing welcome financial support for people to
get heat pumps, but it is still too expensive for most people.
The manufacturing competition that we will have this year can, I
hope, do something to bring down the cost of that technology. I
have a significant number of constituents who would like to put
one in if they could, but they just cannot afford it.
The Local Electricity Bill has already been touched on and I am
sure it will be mentioned by other Members. More than 300 MPs now
support it. It would be remiss of me, the lead sponsor, not to
touch on it briefly before I close. We have not done enough in
this country to support community energy projects. They are
hugely popular where I am and I am sure in a lot of other places,
but most small-scale generators of community energy are still
faced with licence agreements that are more than 500 pages long,
and set-up costs are between £250,000 and £1 million. Successive
Governments have tried to do things to help more community energy
into the market, but if we look at the Licence Lite scheme, we
see that only three such licences have been granted since 2009.
None of them have got to operation yet and none of them have
involved community energy.
I have been working with Steve Shaw and other powerful people to
try to get to a position where we can generate more community
energy. I know that the Minister believes in its potential. We
have been working with his officials. Essentially, the system is
too complex and time-consuming at the moment. We need to find a
way to get people a clearer route to market, to give them greater
certainty over the price, revenue and contract length. We
probably need a system that enables them to team up with an
existing supplier so that they can take advantage of its metering
and compliance capabilities, which the smaller-scale generators
will be unable to do.
People disagree about whether we should have nuclear, fracking
and new oil drilling. They argue about which is the best form of
renewable energy to put the most money into, but they do not tend
to disagree about community energy, because they think it is a
good thing. If we can do more to help that, it could be an
important part of our energy security strategy.
2.50pm
(Bath) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birkenhead () on securing the debate.
Energy security is as important as ever in the face of the
climate emergency and the need to get to net zero, but also in
the light of more recent events, which have seen energy prices
and household energy bills soar. There is some good news: the
less we depend on fossil fuels, the better for the climate and
household bills. It would therefore be completely wrong of the
Government to go back to more fossil fuel exploration. Instead,
an even more ambitious plan for the roll-out of renewables is the
right way forward.
The opportunities are fantastic and plentiful. I have mentioned
just one, which is floating offshore wind. I believe that Britain
could be a true global leader in this field, and the Minister
will find in me a passionate and true supporter of all efforts to
help the development of floating offshore wind in this country.
There are fantastic opportunities, and we need to help develop
them. There are some barriers as well, but the opportunities are
amazing, and Britain could truly be a leader and an exporter of
renewable energy.
Perhaps the hon. Lady will answer what the hon. Member for
Birkenhead () did not: what would the
back-up arrangements be? We have had quite a number of days this
summer when wind has generated only 2% of our energy, and we have
been using coal as back-up. What is the back-up, and is that not
part of the cost of wind?
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, because it
goes to the core of the argument. There are already models, and
they have been around for some time. The idea of having a
baseload is old-fashioned thinking, and I am grateful to the hon.
Member for Wantage () for mentioning community
energy. We need much smaller devolved energy supply and
production, rather than massive, centralised providers, and the
idea of a baseload is becoming more and more obsolete. Indeed, if
we had floating offshore wind, whereby the generation of
electricity takes place far out in the sea rather than on the
shallow seabed, there would be enough energy to meet Britain’s
demands.
I believe in going even further and exporting renewable energy.
If we do not do it in Britain, other European countries will come
forward. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for
Wokingham () has been to briefings on
floating offshore wind, but it is fascinating to see the enormous
amount of energy that such installations can produce. If we do
not take the opportunity, the technology will be used by other
countries and they will become the leaders in that technology
instead. I say to the Minister that I am a passionate and true
supporter of any Government efforts to support floating offshore
wind. It is a new technology, but it is very encouraging and
interesting.
Home installations should have been a key part of the
Government’s energy security strategy, but they were not.
Instead, the energy efficiency of our homes is among the worst in
Europe, and the Government are leaving people to suffer with high
bills and heating costs. Meanwhile, the Government have failed to
invest in more renewables, particularly onshore wind, but as I
have just mentioned, I believe that they should be seriously
looking at offshore wind and floating offshore wind. They have
instead committed to eight new nuclear power stations, and the
Minister is aware of my well-known objection to that. The
Government have not reversed the effective ban on onshore wind,
and the new nuclear power stations will add £96 a year to
people’s energy bills.
We have already discussed how expensive nuclear-powered energy is
compared with renewables. EDF previously estimated that the cost
of funding the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk will add
up to £12 a year to household energy bills for every family in
the country at its peak. The Government have confirmed that each
new nuclear power plant will add around £1 per month to energy
bills during construction. There are just over 26 million
households in England, Wales and Scotland, meaning a bill of £2.6
billion a year is set to land on households because of the
Government’s failure to plan ahead and invest more in renewables
years ago. This comes as the energy price cap has risen by just
under £700 on average, with further increases expected in the
autumn.
The Government recently passed a new law that will allow them to
add levies to energy bills to fund new nuclear plants. It is
madness, as I keep saying. The Liberal Democrats attempted to
exempt at least the most vulnerable from the additional levies,
but the Government rejected that proposal. Investing in
renewables instead would come at a fraction of the cost currently
set aside for nuclear.
There is huge potential for more community-scale renewable
energy, which has been mentioned today, and I ask the Minister to
respond on that point. We need more community energy and, as has
been said, more than 300 MPs are behind it.
The biggest advantage of community energy is in bringing people
behind the need to get to net zero. We are going to face many
disruptions in order to get to net zero by 2050, and bringing
people on board will be the most important thing we can do.
Community energy is the best place to drive the movement to get
people behind net zero. We have already heard about the
difficulties, but nothing is beyond us if we really have the
political will to achieve it. My ask of the Minister is to
respond positively on how we can remove the existing barriers for
community energy.
The measures necessary to tackle climate change will take a big
effort and cause a lot of disruption. The Government must
acknowledge that there will be disruption, but community energy
is one way of making sure that people are fully behind it.
In the past decade, community energy has seen little to no
growth. The Environmental Audit Committee has noted that, between
2020 and 2021, community energy increased by a meagre 31 MW, less
than 0.5% of total UK electricity generation. An enabling
mechanism would not only protect families from soaring energy
bill costs, but benefit the economy through job creation. It is
clear that it would open a stream of jobs and economic wealth.
For example, the 2020 community energy groups across the UK have
more than 3,000 volunteers and almost 500 full-time staff. It is
estimated that a twentyfold increase would create almost 60,000
skilled jobs, and that is at the lower end of the forecast.
Will the Government include in the upcoming energy security Bill
an enabling mechanism, such as that proposed by the Local
Electricity Bill, to protect individuals, families and the
environment at such an essential time? As we have already heard,
there is much support for such a measure. I hope the Minister
will focus on answering that question.
Several hon. Members rose—
(in the Chair)
We have four speakers left. We will start Front-Bench speeches at
3.28 pm. That gives Members seven minutes each. I will start with
.
2.59pm
(Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for
Birkenhead () on bringing this debate
before us today.
I support a great deal of what is in the energy security
strategy. The measures to diversify our electricity supply are
welcome, necessary and absolutely essential, particularly with
what is going on in Ukraine and internationally, as we have
already heard from numerous contributions. There is a great deal
to applaud and support in the document. However, the problem is
that, while most of the measures are good, necessary and welcome,
they are very long term. We cannot build a nuclear power station
or even an offshore wind farm terribly quickly. Most of them are
several years away at a minimum, and some of them a great deal
longer than that.
Of course, the energy crisis is now—today. All of us have people
in our constituencies who are struggling with their bills, which
are bad already and will be even worse this autumn because, as we
have already heard, of the expected rise in the energy price cap.
There will be another swingeing increase and people will find
that what is difficult today will be impossible by then. I urge
the Minister to consider some short-term measures in parallel
with the Bill, to ensure that we do not forget the pain. We need
measures to deal with some of that pain as fast as we decently
and respectably can.
We have already heard from pretty much everybody who has spoken
so far about the importance of insulation, so I will not belabour
that point, other than to say that it is right and we need to do
more about it. We can do something about it and the effect will
be instant for householders. There is a problem with supply and
getting enough skilled people to install the rotten stuff, but if
we can get that solved—we should start now—it is the sort of
thing that will happen much faster than the time it takes to
build an offshore wind farm. We should have begun already.
Equally, the energy security strategy has a gaping hole when it
comes to the review of electricity market arrangements, or REMA.
Onward has today published a good report on what needs to be in
that review. In summary, everybody has been saying for several
years that the cost of renewables is falling. In fact, the cost
of offshore wind is a fraction of what everyone expected it to be
today, which is excellent news. The problem is that none of that
is showing up in our energy bills because our energy market,
particularly our electricity market, is a slave to the
international price of gas. That is what it tracks and that is
what dictates the bills that we all get. We need to reform that
market and allow those lower renewable costs to feed through to
customers. The money is there. It does not require windfall taxes
or Governments to intervene through the benefits system or
council tax rebates. The money is there if we can just get the
flipping stuff to feed through a different market mechanism—an
open market mechanism—and land in the bills on people’s
doorsteps
A lot of renewable energy sources—offshore wind farms, for
example—have been built under contracts for difference, which the
Minister and his predecessors have been very good about. A lot of
those contracts for difference are now massively in the money. In
other words, they are a great deal cheaper in relation to the
power they produce than the charge that we are all getting on our
bills. We could take the green energy levies, which are already
on our bills and which add to them, and say, “Those could be
negative—they could be discounts.” Everybody could receive a
rebate on their bills if we let the negative price differential
between the contracts for difference, which have been signed up
to, and the real price today feed through to our energy bills.
That is just one example of the kind of change we could make. It
could happen fast and it would prove to people that green levies
do not always have to be expensive. In fact, they could be
beneficial and create great retail buy-in to the notion of green
power.
Finally on these short-term measures, later this year the
existing energy price cap legislation will come up for either
roll-over or renewal. I want to make an urgent and earnest plea
to the Minister: rather than just rolling the thing over, we
should instead reform it dramatically, because it was originally
introduced to do something entirely different from what it has
been doing. It was introduced originally to try to get rid of the
loyalty penalty, which penalises people who do not switch. People
were being ripped off left, right and centre if they did not
switch, and that added cost to the market overall, which is
mainly focused on people who are loyal, but it was spread across
the entire market and ultimately raised overall prices.
The cap is hideously expensive to administer and imposes enormous
complexity and hedging costs on energy market firms, many of
which have gone bust because they did not get their hedging
right. If we can simplify that cap, change it dramatically and
change how it works, we can strip out all that cost. If we strip
out all that cost, that rebate, discount or reduction in costs
can be fed through to the customer. Again, that could result in a
lower overall cost to our hard-pressed constituents, all of whom
are struggling now and all of whom will be struggling even
more.
There is a lot to admire, to applaud and to support in the energy
strategy, but an awful lot is missing. We need to address that
quickly and urgently, and it needs to happen now in order to make
a difference to all our hard-pressed constituents as soon as
possible.
3.05pm
(Bootle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. The fact is
that if we took the approach of the right hon. Member for
Wokingham (), we would not have moved on
from the use of coal. In the 19th century, coal powered virtually
everything, but then oil and then gas started to power things. We
have to move on. There has to be a short, medium and long-term
strategy. It is fine if people want to ask me, “Well, what are
your plans for next week and the week after that?” We can have
lots of plans for next week, but there also have to be plans for
the medium and long term, and that is what the energy strategy is
about.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will in a moment. The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the
alternative energy supply if wind drops off. It has to be part of
a comprehensive package—that is the issue. Energy has to be
available and one does it in a variety of ways. It is not simply
about a turbine going down and that being the end of the matter.
There are designs available out there, for example in Cape Cod,
where a company, developer, Government or state—call it what you
will—can ask about an area’s topography and then design wind
turbines to maximise the capacity, and that is built into the
strategy. That is how it is done—through technological use of the
topography, so to speak.
The hon. Gentleman completely misrepresents my views. I was an
adviser to the new electricity-generating system at the time of
privatisation, when we encouraged and designed a system that
carried out a massive switch out of coal and into gas because it
was cleaner and a lot cheaper. That was the first green
revolution. I hope he will withdraw his slur on me.
If telling the truth is a slur, I certainly will not withdraw it.
The fact of the matter is that the right hon. Gentleman has to
come into the 21st century. The system is not working. We have a
privatised, market system that, quite frankly, is not working.
The problems we are now having because of the Russian invasion of
Ukraine just reaffirm that the model is not working and that we
do not have the disparate energy supply that we actually
need.
I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare
() said on market reform, so I
will not go into that. He also raised the issue of tidal power.
My constituency is on the Mersey and overlooks a lot of turbines,
but for a long time, since I was a member of Merseyside County
Council 40 years ago, we have also been trying to get the Mersey
barrage. There are lots of examples of barrages working well
across the world—I did have a list of them, but I do not have it
to hand—and they are priced relatively well. That is also case in
other countries that are pushing the green agenda. The
Netherlands are using their topography, as are the Spanish. The
Japanese are now virtually in the position where they can have
100% efficiency with wind and a variety of other sustainable
energy plans. India, Australia, France, Germany, China and the
USA are moving ahead. Yes, the UK is doing well, but we are not
doing well enough. We have to move on as much as we possibly
can.
One of my concerns is the Government’s approach to community
energy companies. A letter from the Secretary of State for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to a colleague says:
“The right to local energy supply already exists under the
Electricity Act 1989 and Ofgem, the independent energy regulator,
has existing flexibility to award supply licences that are
restricted… Changing the licensing framework to suit specific
business models risks creating wider distortions elsewhere in the
energy system, which could increase costs for other consumers and
further unintended consequences.”
I do not believe there is any evidence whatsoever for that—quite
the contrary—so it would be interesting to hear what the Minister
has to say about it. In my opinion and that of many other people,
that letter is not factually correct. For example, in a local
network, energy loss through the system is significantly lower.
That has not been factored into the Government’s strategy, but it
should be.
The Secretary of State’s letter effectively pooh-poohs the idea
of local community enterprises on the grounds that they will
distort the market—well, if we do not have a distorted market at
the moment, what precisely do we have? We are here today to push
the Government to create an energy market that serves the
country. I do not want to go into the issue of nationalisation
and public ownership of the energy sector, because my hon. Friend
the Member for Birkenhead () has already done so, but at
the very least we have to have a good look at it, because the
market is not working. It is as simple as that, and I would
challenge anybody who tells me it is. We have to move on, and as
the coalition Government said in their July 2011 UK renewable
energy road map—we came to a bump in the road somewhere between
2011 and now—
“The nations of the United Kingdom are endowed with vast and
varied renewable energy resources. We have the best wind…and
tidal resources in Europe.”
That is as true today as it was 10 years ago, but I am afraid we
are not using all the advantages we have as a nation. We have
almost an inbuilt potential energy supply, but we are not using
it. It is about time that the Government get to grips with that
and use what we have now, not just in the future.
3.12pm
(Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome any measure to buttress our energy security. Ministers
are right to be alert to the difficulties we face. I am concerned
about this decade. Once again in this debate, we have heard many
ideas about nuclear, wind and solar—new technologies that may
make a great contribution in the next decade—but our task today
is to reinforce all the things that the Minister is doing to keep
our lights on for the next three or four years. Our more
immediate task is to see what contribution the United Kingdom can
make to getting Russian gas and oil out of the European system.
We need to make our contribution, providing more of that supply
from our domestic sources as part of our war effort. We need our
people, who want to keep the lights on and the boilers running,
to feel secure that we will make our contribution in case Russia
turns the taps off.
It is simply not true that renewable energy projects will take
until next decade to be developed. In fact, many of them are
waiting; it is just that they cannot be connected to the grid.
Can the right hon. Gentleman correct what he has just said about
renewable energy projects?
I am afraid that the hon. Lady, and other Members who have made
similar contributions, do not understand that I am dealing with
the problem of intermittency. In order for all the extra wind
they want to be useful, there needs to be a way of timesharing
the wind power. We already have days on which wind and solar
together produce less than 10% of our electricity, and most of
our constituents are not using electricity to drive or to heat
their homes, so that is a very small proportion of our total
energy.
The vision of wind requires mass battery storage—we seem to be
years away from the technology and the investment required to do
that—and/or conversion to hydrogen. Green hydrogen would be a
perfectly good answer, but again, we are years away from the
investment, the practicalities and the commercial projects that
could turn that wind energy into hydrogen. My constituents would
love it if they could get hydrogen today. They do not want to
have to rip out their gas boiler; they would quite like to be
able to route more hydrogen through the existing gas boiler and
make their contribution to the green revolution.
However, MPs have to be realistic. Our prime duty is to ensure
that our constituents can live in relative prosperity, keep the
lights on and have access to decent energy for their
requirements. At the moment, most of our constituents get to work
and to the shops using a diesel or petrol van or car; most heat
their homes and water with a gas, oil or coal boiler. Very few
use electric technology for that. If there was the great popular
electrical revolution that they have bought into, and they could
suddenly afford the electrical products and liked them, we would
have a huge problem, because we would be chronically short of
electricity generating capacity.
The true electrical revolution on the scale that the hon. Member
for Bath () would like would require an
enormous investment in new electrical capacity. If everybody went
home tonight and plugged in their car, which uses more
electricity than the rest of the home, and heated their homes
using electricity, there would need to be a big increase in
capacity. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head. She
wants to get real! Does she really want to cut off her
constituents because she so hates them using gas?
This is about choices. We cannot forever get stuck in the past,
as we have just heard. We need to look forward to the future.
Investment in renewables is the only way I can see as the right
way forward. Yes, that needs adaptation; yes, that needs our
constituents to come along. However, it is a necessity. We cannot
bury our heads in the sand.
Once again, the hon. Lady is in denial. She will not answer the
intermittency problem. Does she ever look at the hourly and daily
statistics on the grid to see, quite often, how little of our
power is renewable-generated? That is because of physics and
weather. We have to find technological answers to that. Now,
there are technological answers, but at the moment they are not
being adopted. They are not commercial and they have not been
trialled properly; there may be safety issues and all sorts of
things.
Yes, they have.
The hon. Gentleman says that they have been trialled. Why are
they not there, then? Why can I not turn on my hydrogen tap now?
There are all sorts of commercial issues and issues about how to
route it to every home and so forth.
The right hon. Gentleman is so fixed on this idea of
commerciality. There will potentially come a point when the
taxpayer—for the sake of argument—decides that the Government are
going to invest. I know that the right hon. Gentleman has an
ideological obsession with the Government not doing that.
However, in the current situation, does he not agree that the
state might sometimes have to do just that?
But that is happening. We already have one of the most
over-managed systems because successive Governments have put in
all sorts of subsidies, tax breaks, interventions, price controls
and all the rest of it to try to send those signals. That is why
we have the current mix—it is not the exact mix the market would
have produced.
I fully accept that there is often a role for Government when we
try to develop new technologies. I have no problem with that.
However, it does require agreement on what that technology is,
agreement on the scale of the effort needed and realism about how
many years it would take. It is all very well for the Members
present to say that they have a vision of everybody using an
electric car and having a heat pump. However, if their
constituents cannot afford it or do not want it, it does not
matter what Members think—they have to deal with the world as it
is. We cannot lecture our constituents into having a heat pump.
They will have a heat pump when it is affordable, when it is a
good product and when they think it makes sense, and they are
nowhere near coming to that conclusion at the moment.
The crucial question in this debate is what more the United
Kingdom can do at this critical moment. We have to help our
allies and friends on the continent who are gas short and oil
short and want to get Russia out of their supply system but
cannot do so because it would collapse their industry, while
Russia is financing a war by selling its oil and gas into Europe
as well as elsewhere. I think there is a lot more we can do.
I urge the Minister to see it as both a patriotic duty and a
crucial duty to our allies to work closely with our producers and
owners of oil and gas reserves in the United Kingdom and maximise
output as quickly as possible. Some of the output can be
increased quite quickly; for others, it will take two or three
years to get the investments in. Will the Minister do everything
he can to expedite it? We owe that to our constituents, because
gas and oil are too dear—every little extra that we can produce
will make a little difference—and confidence in markets might be
affected. Above all, we owe it to our allies, who will otherwise
be financing Putin’s war.
3.20pm
(Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you for calling me to speak in the debate, Mr Davies. I
thank the hon. Member for Birkenhead () for securing it. By doing
so, he ensured that we all have a chance to feed into the
process. Given the feedback from all parts of the Chamber, the
issue creates much interest. There might be some differences in
how to do things, but the realisation of the goal—what we have to
achieve—is clear to everyone. It is always a pleasure to see the
Minister in his place, and I look forward to his response.
Only this morning, in a Westminster Hall debate on low emissions
from vehicles— buses in particular—we had the chance to look at a
greener environment in terms of transport. Another Minister—the
Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for
Copeland ()—had responsibility for
that debate, and the interest in it was also significant. The
issues surrounding our renewable energy strategies are extremely
important.
This is certainly a “right now” issue, because it is about how to
address the situation right now. The right hon. Member for
Wokingham () spoke at some length about
the issues across the world that would have an impact on us all,
with millions affected by the rise in energy prices. As others
have said, I fear that this autumn and winter we will feel it,
and that our constituents will see something different and even
more difficult than in the past. I look forward to discussing the
progress we should be able to make on behalf of our constituents
throughout the United Kingdom.
Mention has been made of nuclear power, of which I am a
supporter. We do not have nuclear power in Northern Ireland,
although I wish we had, because it would help us to reduce some
of our energy costs, which are quite extreme. The Government,
however, have a clear strategy on it, and one that I support, so
I hope that the nuclear power part of their strategy is
successful.
The Minister has regular discussions with the Department for the
Economy Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, . In the past, the Minister
has been interested in hydrogen issues, and in Northern Ireland
we are keen to realise that potential and the initiatives that
are moving forward, as we can across all parts of the United
Kingdom.
The energy security Bill was listed in the 2022 Queen’s Speech,
the first energy bill since 2013. We have witnessed two to three
years of the covid pandemic and, furthermore, Putin’s devastating
invasion of Ukraine, which has restricted the supply of gas to
the European market, causing extortionate price increases for
domestic and industrial users. Renewable energy can generate
electricity at around one sixth of the cost of gas generation in
the UK and, with the energy price cap expected to reach nearly
£3,000 this winter—up from £1,200 in April—that is the proof we
need to focus our priorities on reliable flows of affordable
energy.
Over the past couple of years, there have been considerable
efforts to increase our use of renewable energy, which I support,
although I think we have to be realistic about what is
achievable. The right hon. Member for Wokingham, who spoke before
me, also indicated that. It is not that we are against renewable
energy; it is just that we need to look at the bigger picture and
at what it means. That is what he was saying.
In 2020, the UK had turnover of £41.2 billion in renewable
energy, with Northern Ireland, the smallest of all the nations
and a population of only 1.8 million, contributing almost £1
billion to that total turnover. Furthermore, in 2021, back home,
41.3% of our electricity consumption was generated by renewable
sources, which is a brilliant accomplishment. In Northern
Ireland, I believe that we are doing something good. The Minister
is aware and supportive of that.
Multiple times, I have raised the importance of enabling
community energy and of allowing our local communities the
opportunity to empower their own energy strategies. We might not
have had as much success with that as we would have liked, but we
have all been inundated with emails, calls and letters from
constituents who are genuinely concerned about whether they will
be able to pay their bills this winter. Domestic energy security
is at the forefront of our priorities.
The Prime Minister himself has stated:
“Energy companies tell me they can get an offshore wind turbine
upright and generating in less than 24 hours but that it can take
as much as 10 years to secure the licences and permissions
required to do so.”
Although the Government’s aim to produce more hydrogen power,
wind turbines and green affordable energy is welcome, I am afraid
that 10 years for permissions is doing little to support the
British economy. Perhaps the Minister will indicate how that
period can be shortened.
We are collectively on the right path to producing a more secure
energy strategy, but that provides little assurance to those
facing large energy bills today. The Northern Ireland Department
for the Economy has stated that non-domestic electricity
consumers account for 51% of Northern Ireland’s total electricity
consumption. Elevating our green, clean and affordable energy
strategy gives our local businesses a monumental opportunity to
save money and contribute to our 2050 net zero targets.
We had a tidal project in Strangford a few years ago. It was a
pilot scheme and seemed to go quite well, but it never came to
anything. I was really disappointed. I know that the Government
here supported that, along with the Northern Ireland Assembly. I
am not trying to throw the Minister a curve ball, but were there
any discussions with the Northern Ireland Assembly, and and the Department of
Enterprise, Trade and Employment, to see if that could be
progressed? I believe it could do much good. Queen’s University
biology station at Portaferry was very involved in that and is
keen to progress the project.
The Energy Security Bill marks an unprecedent opportunity to
ensure that businesses and homes can stay warm this winter. If we
bring an end to our reliance on fossil fuels, as the Government
have stated they will, we have the capacity to support global
efforts to strengthen energy security. We must take advantage of
our wind resources, tidal resources and energy sources in the
United Kingdom at a price that our economy can afford. If our
economy can afford it, customers can afford it and our
constituents can pay their bills. This should be, without doubt,
a national effort.
3.27pm
(Midlothian) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birkenhead () on securing this debate. It
has been great to hear a range of views.
It is obvious to many that the Westminster style of government is
often one that seems to tinker around the edges and prioritise
flashy point scoring over a long-term strategy. That is why it is
strange to see something that calls itself a strategy, but is
really just tinkering around the edges, rolled into multi-year
plans. The energy security strategy comes at the right time to
address the climate crisis and the cost of living, but fails on
both fronts, not least because of the gaping holes in it.
I will first touch on the near total lack of support for tidal
energy, which we have heard from other Members.
The hon. Gentleman reminds me of the point that the hon. Member
for Weston-super-Mare () made about cost. The Sihwa
tidal scheme in South Korea, the Rance scheme in France, the
Annapolis scheme in Canada, the Jiangxia scheme in China and the
Kislaya Guba scheme in Russia all want to expand because they
recognise that it is a cheap way forward.
I agree. We do not even need to look that far; we only have to
look at hugely innovative tidal projects like Nova Innovation in
Leith, which could be game changers with the right support, yet
the strategy’s only commitment to any tidal energy is to simply
explore it.
The energy sources need a guarantee and ring-fenced money every
year. After years of campaigning from Members in my party in
particular—I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for
Kilmarnock and Loudoun () and my right hon. Friend the
Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber ()—the Government finally
agreed last year to provide £22 million in ring-fenced funding
for tidal energy. That is welcome—I make no bones about that—but
£22 million simply does not reflect the huge potential of tidal,
which can produce more than 15% of the UK’s energy generation
capacity, according to a Royal Society report last year. A £71
million pot, which is what the aforementioned Members had been
pushing for, could unlock £140 million of private investment,
creating around 400 jobs, whereas the £22 million mentioned
before would unlock only £20 million and create only 100
jobs.
Whether it is £20 million or £70 million, there is no guarantee
that the funding will continue. How do we and, more important,
investors know that it is not just a one-off? The reality is that
without this funding they will be forced to compete for contracts
with long-established companies. It is like trying to force a
start-up to compete with Google completely unaided.
Geothermal energy is another area that gets only a passing
mention in the strategy. The strategy ignores the huge potential
of and appetite for mine water geothermal, which is a way to tap
into heat from water in abandoned mineshafts, using the past to
power our future. The Coal Authority and local activists are
doing great work on this front, but central Government funding is
patchy and unco-ordinated. We have heard about the projects in
Spain and the Netherlands, which have already taken research from
Scotland—Midlothian, in fact, in 2003—and rolled it out into
huge-scale geothermal projects.
My constituency of Midlothian, with its huge wealth of geothermal
mine water potential, could be an energy powerhouse if the
Government got their act together and supported a pilot or a
large-scale trial. It is not just my constituency, though; across
Scotland, mine water could deliver £333 million of economic
growth and about 9,800 jobs, yet the strategy does nothing to
unlock that potential. That reinforces the points made about
projects that could move faster and be brought online very
quickly.
For a far better model, look at Norway. Our Nordic neighbour
relies on hydro and heat pumps, while exporting its oil and gas
to neighbours. The combination makes it a far more resilient to
geopolitical shocks, such as those we are currently suffering
from. Scotland could and should follow suit, and would were it
not for energy being reserved to this place. We have the skills.
The heat pumps used in Drammen were made in Glasgow, for
instance.
The UK is underdeveloped when it comes to district heating,
relying on individuals to pick up the cost. Of course, that is
intentional; it drives individuals into fuel poverty while making
huge profits for the suppliers. This is why the strategy’s
commitment to £30 million of heat pump investment is money spent
in the wrong place. It should be invested in large-scale district
heating solutions. Instead, it will end up with consumers forking
out once again.
I cannot pass over the scandal that sees Scotland facing the
highest grid charges anywhere in Europe. Our grid still works on
outdated assumptions that prioritise the construction of plants
near large population centres. In the green energy age, it is
rural communities that will generate our power—from the coasts of
Orkney to the hills of Galloway. It is time that we overturn the
current model.
We then come to nuclear. Where do I start? Nuclear build costs
have trebled over a decade, while solar and wind costs have more
than halved. No wonder Hinkley Point C is now nearly 50% over
budget and running five years late. If we are serious about the
“security” in “energy security”, we cannot ignore the radioactive
elephant in the room. Nuclear waste still needs to be buried for
hundreds of years; there is literally no other working solution.
It is time for the Government—and Labour—to drop their nuclear
obsession and come into line with the Scottish Government, who
recognise the contribution that nuclear has made in the past, but
oppose new nuclear stations while the current technology renders
them slow to build and environmentally unsustainable.
Of course, the strategy works within the parameters of the
Government's contracts for difference. When contracts are awarded
based on big wallets rather than national interest, it is
unsurprising that so many of Scotland's turbine manufacturing
yards are struggling to stay in business despite their huge
potential.
Energy efficiency has been ignored once again. Technology and
methods that increase the efficiency of our energy use will
reduce energy demand, which gives us better security should
crisis hit. British homes lose heat up to three times faster than
European homes. From the sick man of Europe, we are becoming the
cold man of Europe, but instead of pushing for new builds to be
insulated and energy efficient, we are stuck with retrofitting.
Yet again, the mindset is to tinker around the edges. The
Scottish Government spend a whopping four times per capita more
on energy efficiency measures than the UK Government. Will the
Minister commit to following suit?
I do not know whether the Scottish Government’s opinions matter
at times, though, given that they were not even consulted prior
to the publication of the strategy—something they have been very
critical of, given the major role that Scotland plays in meeting
the UK’s energy needs. It is clear that Westminster just cannot
bring itself to overhaul the outdated status quo, even when a
crisis demands it. For as long as Scotland remains part of the
UK, we will be held back by its antiquated and unco-ordinated
private energy systems. Scotland cannot afford this broken system
any longer, so I look forward to next year, when we can have our
own say.
3.35pm
(Southampton, Test)
(Lab)
We have had a comprehensive, well-informed and thoughtful
discussion this afternoon, instituted by my hon. Friend the
Member for Birkenhead (), whom I congratulate on
securing the debate. It is particularly prescient to have the
debate right now, because, as right hon. and hon. Members know,
we are expecting the imminent arrival of the energy security
Bill, which will have to legislate for all the changes we need to
implement to make our system much more resilient,
energy-efficient and, indeed, internationally secure. I look
forward to seeing how many of the essential measures are in Bill.
The Opposition intend to insert in the Bill as many of the things
that are missing as possible, to make sure that we have a secure,
forward-looking energy strategy for the future.
The content of the Bill will essentially be the recently
published “British energy security strategy” paper. As I have
said on previous occasions, I can describe it best by using the
immortal words of Eric Morecambe, when he said he was
“playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right
order.”
Members under the age of about 50 might not get that, but it is a
very important indication of where the energy security strategy
is.
I will discuss the notes that are being played and the order in
which they are being played in a moment, but before I go any
further, I would like to firmly shoot the canard that has been
repeatedly raised by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (), who has intervened in this
debate and others to talk about our energy system as if it were
vulnerable because of the fact that the renewables we produce are
somehow intermittent, so we need something else to back them up
and the something else clearly cannot be renewable. He suggests
that the way we are going is therefore inappropriate for our
energy security. In fact, at its absolute bottom line, our energy
security is best served by moving completely to a series of
renewable arrangements as quickly as we can, because that will
give us complete security of energy supply, complete security of
energy operation and, indeed, complete security of customer
prices for the long-term future. At the moment, prices are going
through the roof, particularly as a result of international gas
prices and, as right hon. and hon. Members have said, the obscene
invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin. That ought to be our
watchword as far as our energy security is concerned.
In addition, our energy security should be bolstered by energy
that we do not use. We could have a much more secure energy
system if we used much less energy than we do at the moment. As
the hon. Members for Weston-super-Mare () and for Wantage () said, the key is a
substantial programme of energy efficiency for homes and offices,
which it is estimated could result in the use of 25% to 30% less
energy. Imagine the improvements to our energy security that such
a reduction in our long-term energy use would produce! That
programme could be started in the very short term.
I refute the idea that to enhance our energy security, we must
enhance our production of gas, oil and other things. As the hon.
Member for Bath () said, our energy security is
tied up with getting to net zero. Not succeeding in that would be
a great source of energy insecurity. Whatever short-term
improvements might be made in gas supply, the idea that we should
turn on new oil and gas to enhance energy security does not stack
up as part of our overall path.
So to the canard. It is untrue—simply untrue—that the
intermittency of some of our renewables is fatal to our energy
security because of the inability to run a lights-on system,
which is what we absolutely need. It is untrue because of our
increasingly smart energy systems. Because of the way our current
energy systems work, they waste a lot of renewable energy by
constraining it. The introduction of batteries, inter-seasonal
storage and the use of other existing storage such as pumped
storage, which we have in substantial amounts, will back up the
systems where production is intermittent. In addition, not all
renewables are intermittent. Biomass and bioenergy with carbon
capture and storage, which the Climate Change Committee is
considering, would not be intermittent; nuclear is not
intermittent. Nuclear is so unintermittent, actually, that it is
not easily able to cope with the sort of system that we will have
in the future, in the quantities that the Government are
indicating.
One of the most important newer renewable technologies, which is
not completely reliable over 24 hours but is completely
predictable in terms of a number for the energy system, is
tidal—both tidal range and tidal stream. Tidal power is
completely predictable—the tide comes in, the tide goes out, and
we know when it will happen. It is different in different parts
of the country, so we can add different tidal elements in
different parts of the country. It goes into the grid on a wholly
reliable basis. One major criticism of the energy security
strategy is that it does not take tidal technology much into
account, which is a grave omission.
There are at least three wrong notes in the strategy: tidal;
energy efficiency, which is it clear the Government are doing
nothing much about, even though it is an urgent national priority
to get energy efficiency measures seriously under way; and the
reform of electricity market arrangements to create an
electricity market that is fit for the sort of changes that we
will undergo, particularly with renewables, which the hon. Member
for Weston-super-Mare mentioned. REMA should be an absolute
priority right now, but it appears that the Government are not
taking it very seriously. They have one line, I think, in the
energy security strategy, saying that they are consulting on REMA
at some stage.
The sort of changes we must make are an absolute priority now—not
least, as the hon. Member said, getting us off the gas standard
as far as our energy prices are concerned. That can be done
pretty quickly and would make an enormous difference to our
energy prices and indeed our energy security. I am sure the hon.
Member and I have different notions of how that might best be
done, but I look forward to debating that when the energy
security Bill is brought forward. If that is not in the Bill, I
will try to put it there. I will be interested to hear what the
Government have to say in response.
Generally, the energy security strategy contains many of the
right notes, but they are being played in the wrong order. As
Members have mentioned, we are still not taking onshore wind
seriously, with substantial planning obstacles remaining. Unless
we have the infrastructure in place, delivering 50 GW of offshore
wind will remain a wish rather than a reality. We certainly must
deliver hydrogen as soon as possible, but we still have not
properly resolved the debate between blue and green hydrogen or
on delivering green hydrogen in the best way for the future. Of
course, we are also still a long way from getting a serious
carbon capture and storage programme in operation. The hon.
Member for Midlothian () failed to mention this
entirely, but moving the Acorn project down the pecking order of
industrial clusters could deal a real body blow to carbon capture
and storage.
There is range of things in the energy security strategy that
could lead to an enormous increase in this country’s energy
security, but the strategy will probably not deliver because of
what is omitted from its contents and because of the rather
lackadaisical way in which the Government are pursuing a number
of these imperatives through the strategy. My message to the
Government is that they should include the notes they got wrong
and play the notes they got right in the right order. If they do
that, I think they will have a much better energy strategy. I
look forward to debating how we can do that when the energy Bill
comes before the House. Hopefully, we will end up with a much
better energy security strategy as a result of getting that Bill
into a good shape.
(in the Chair)
Talking of renewables and Eric Morecambe, I call on the Minister
to “Bring Me Sunshine”.
3.49pm
The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change ()
Thank you, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for
Birkenhead () on securing this important
debate. I do not have much time to respond, but to start I would
like to briefly recap the context in which the British energy
security strategy—the BESS, as I might call it—came about.
For years, of course, the UK has been dramatically reducing our
dependence on fossil fuels and building up home-grown, low-carbon
energy. Just 10 years ago, nearly half of our electricity came
from coal—the most polluting fossil fuel. Now, that is down to
under 2%. Our hugely successful offshore wind sector is the
largest in Europe and second only to China in the world in terms
of deployed volume. All those policies are the result of
decisions made by this Government over the past 12 years.
Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine has given this work new impetus,
as Putin’s weaponisation of the global energy supply makes clear.
Energy security is a matter of not only decarbonisation—as vital
as that is—but national security. The UK is not dependent on
Russian hydrocarbons, but the war’s impact on the global market
has been severe and affects us all.
Turning to the debate, the BESS sets out the steps we will take
to generate more clean energy in the UK for the UK in the longer
term to protect our national security, reduce our emissions,
create new jobs for our people, revitalise industrial heartlands
and drive down bills for consumers.
I will deal with a few points raised by the hon. Member for
Birkenhead. He said the Government refuse to support new onshore
wind. That is not the case. We will be consulting on developing
partnerships with supportive communities that wish to host new
onshore wind infrastructure in return for benefits, which could
include lower energy bills. He talked about tidal energy, which
cropped up in a few Members’ contributions. Actually, this
Government were the first to commit a dedicated pot—in contract
for difference allocation round 4, which is taking place right
now—of £20 million for tidal energy projects. If people have a
specific tidal energy project they wish to show us, will they
please get in contact with my Department? I have been shown a
number of tidal energy projects in recent times in areas near the
constituency of the hon. Member for Birkenhead, such as Colwyn
bay and Deeside.
The hon. Member talked about our so-called reliance on Russian
oil and gas. No, less than 4% of our gas last year was imported
from Russia. That will be down massively this year. We are
phasing out Russian oil, which will not be more than about 10% of
our oil by the end of the year. Russian coal will also be
prevented by the end of the year. There is no dependence on
Russian hydrocarbons in this country in the same way there is in
many of our European neighbours. The hon. Member also attacked
the new round of licences, but he will know that the new round
later this year will take into account the climate compatibility
checkpoint, which we have been consulting on, and we will release
the results of that consultation in due course.
Remarkably, the hon. Member then said there will be no
forgiveness for this Government because of our record on
renewables and energy efficiency. I found that extraordinary. On
energy efficiency, we have gone from 14% of properties in bands A
to C being energy-efficient in 2010 to 46%. That still means
there is work to be done; 54% do not yet meet the standards we
would like them to. The hon. Member says there will be no
forgiveness for this Government, but I do not know what he thinks
the last Government will be given for their performance. Our
figure is 46%, but we lifted it from 14% when we took power.
Similarly, on renewables, 43% of our electricity is now generated
through renewables. That is a very good figure, but it was 7%
when we took power. If there is no forgiveness for a Government
that achieve 43% through renewables, what hope is there for a
Government that only produced 7%?
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage () made an excellent speech
on, again, the importance of energy efficiency. We are spending
£6.6 billion in this Parliament to ensure we get more
energy-efficient homes, and £450 million has been committed to
the boiler upgrade scheme. My hon. Friend has been a consistent
and dedicated promoter of the Local Electricity Bill. He is right
that there is good consensus on this. The Government support
local electricity generation. I have also met the campaign
groups. There are funds available, such as the levelling-up fund,
which is used quite frequently. There is the example of a local
community energy scheme in Glastonbury, which has benefited from
that levelling-up fund. I have reintroduced the community energy
contact group to ensure we are talking to the sector. The group
had its first meeting on 10 June.
The hon. Member for Bath () made the good point that
there is plenty of wind in the UK, as we benefit from all the
waters around us. We have 15 times the waters that Germany does,
and UK waters are two and a half times the land mass of Germany.
None the less, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham
() made a good point about the
intermittency of wind. Of course, we can get greater diversity if
we have more seas involved, but that will not entirely obscure
the issue of intermittency. That is why he is right that we need
nuclear as well. I am forever hopeful that the Liberal Democrats
will change their ideological anti-nuclear stance, which they
have had at least since they were in coalition with us. In
coalition, they were warming to the idea of nuclear power.
Unfortunately, that has been lost.
My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare () made an excellent speech with
some probing points. REMA is referenced in the British energy
security strategy, and work is moving at pace. How can we get
from a low-capital cost, high-generation cost energy system that
is not particularly intermittent to a high-capital cost,
low-generation cost system with intermittency? He is right to
raise the point about the implications for our energy system
going way beyond generation targets.
On green levies, as we set out in the heat and buildings strategy
and in the net zero strategy, we will launch a fairness and
affordability call for evidence on options for energy levies and
obligations to help to rebalance electricity and gas prices, and
to support green choices, with a view to making a decision later
this year.
The price cap will remain in place until at least the end of 2022
to protect millions of customers. My hon. Friend the Member for
Weston-super-Mare will keep an eye out for the energy security
Bill to see how we might take that further. As he will know, this
year we are delivering a total of £37 billion in cost of living
support to customers, including a £400 non-repayable grant
The speech from the hon. Member for Bootle () was well put together but
fundamentally anti-free market. I can see why the right hon.
Member for Islington North () decided that he would be a
suitable shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury—to not make sure
that control was kept over the public finances. I have already
addressed the points about community energy.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham made a strong and
probing speech, as he always does on energy matters. He is right
that it is our patriotic duty to ensure not only that we get off
Russian gas, but that our European friends and neighbours do as
well. That is why National Grid tells me that this summer, the UK
is playing a major role in filling European energy storage. About
15% is coming either from the UK or via the UK, using our
liquified natural gas capabilities.
My right hon. Friend made a strong point about intermittency.
Nuclear is the answer; it is the only proven way for reliable,
non-intermittent electricity to be produced at scale. He is also
right about hydrogen, but he is not quite right to say that we
are not bringing forward more fields. Licensed fields that have
been consented and have come on stream include Blyth, Elgood,
Tolmount, South Hook, and Alwyn East—I can give him a longer
list. Other fields are coming on stream.
The hon. Member for Strangford () made important points. I will have to write to him
about the Strangford tidal scheme. He is definitely right to say
that nuclear, and Northern Ireland, are part of it. and I meet regularly,
including to discuss hydrogen.
The SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Midlothian (), gave a familiar list of
complaints. He said that he wants tidal schemes. As I mentioned,
we have funded £20 million of dedicated support. He wants
ringfenced and guaranteed money every year. Well, that is a
typical SNP position. If there were a separate Scotland running a
9% budget deficit, which is what it would be doing, I do not
think that ringfenced and guaranteed money would be available for
anything—the hon. Gentleman perhaps needs to go back and have a
look at the finances in the event of separation. Grid charges are
a matter of Ofgem, but it is worth recognising that Scottish
consumers benefit from lower charges, which is important. I
cannot understand, in the light of Scotland’s incredible nuclear
tradition, why the hon. Gentleman is so opposed to nuclear.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) is right
about constraints. That is why we are looking at hydrogen
batteries and storage. He is quite right about biomass, and on
blue and green hydrogen we are doing both. I had better leave
some time for the hon. Member for Birkenhead to reply.
3.59pm
I am grateful to all Members for their powerful contributions,
including the Minister, even though he likes to have a little pop
now and again—we take that with a pinch of salt.
I will take the Minister up on what he said about major tidal
projects, and I will write to him about them. I thank him for
taking the time to participate in the debate, but I warn him once
again that he must not let the Government falter in their
ambition to deliver a greener and more secure energy system that
serves the interest of many, not just the privileged few.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the British energy security
strategy.
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