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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan upon rural communities.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have secured this debate and I look forward to hearing all contributions, particularly the maiden speech. I declare my interest as honorary president of National Energy Action and the UK Warehousing Association. I also serve on the Environment and Climate Change Committee.
The impact of clean energy on rural areas is potentially devastating, yet I would like to start off positively and look at the alternatives that would prevent this happening. The first is North Sea oil. Why are we importing oil and gas from Norway when we could produce from our own oilfields, which are entirely adjacent to theirs? Drilling for oil in the North Sea is good for UK jobs, tax income and the balance of payments. With a developed renewables sector, Denmark—I am half Danish and fairly closely follow developments there—has the largest oil and gas production in the EU. All sources of energy are joined up, which brings community benefits to residents.
Nuclear power is another alternative, and I look particularly favourably on smaller nuclear power stations, which are relatively quick to build, safe and efficient. Energy from waste would tackle two issues at once: disposing of household and light commercial waste, as well as heating homes and hot water for households and businesses. Solar panels could be built on rooftops, car parks and brownfield sites; I am very proud that the UK Warehousing Association is leading the way in this regard.
The future also could contain floating solar. Clean energy entails major concrete and other installations: it involves wind turbines and pylons, solar farms and battery storage plants, including inverters, transformers, substations and control rooms, and connection to the grid. It is often built on prime agricultural land and causes tensions between farmers and developers. A judicial review is under way, involving around 500 Welsh farmers and landowners, many of whom face losing farmland, homes and livelihoods to a proposed 200-kilometre pylon scheme stretching across several counties and into the West Midlands. These facilities amount to creeping urbanisation.
Currently, applications for North Yorkshire alone include East Cowton, Light Valley Solar in South Milford, Hillam, East Appleton, Masham and Swinton, East Rounton, and Scotton and Lingerfield. Many of these are integrated BES schemes, with a horrendous array of solar panels, integrators, battery storage and all the things referred to above. This is an unacceptable cumulative impact of various forms of clean energy.
In one instance, that of Scotton and Lingerfield, the developers acknowledge the very real risk of a fire and a need for evacuation, and a real risk of a smoke plume reaching a nursery. These facilities are inherently unsafe as they are highly combustible and flammable, with fire risks from solar panels themselves and even more so from battery storage units. In many cases, these are positioned simply too close to residential homes, schools, nurseries and other businesses.
It is staggering that fire and rescue services are not statutory consultees. They are not formally consulted on site engineering and the positioning of facilities, or the resources in terms of water, equipment and manpower required in the event of a fire. This is despite the intrinsic unsafety of such flammable sites.
In addition, these sites require wind turbines and overhead pylons criss-crossing the countryside to bring the energy generated to London and the south-east. These are highly intrusive, environmentally unfriendly and wasteful, as energy is lost in such transmission. In any event, pylons transporting energy long distance via vulnerable overhead power lines are environmentally challenging, can be damaging to birds and wildlife, and are wasteful and hideous. This is an ecological scandal in the making.
In particular, when it comes to the end of life of clean energy infrastructure, how will it be decommissioned and disposed of in an environmentally safe way? Will a bond be taken out from the applicants in each case to cover the cost of restoring the site after 40 years, or in the event of a developer failing before that time? Many environmental groups, including the CPRE—the Campaign to Protect Rural England—deeply regret the impact on the countryside, residents and livestock.
Offshore wind farms threaten the marine life that is the very lifeblood of marine areas. Many argue that, in view of the potential damage, there is a strong case for a moratorium on new applications for offshore wind farms until there is a better understanding of these issues.
One of the worst aspects of these facilities is the impact on farming, food and production. The Government have admitted that it will potentially take 10% of farmland out of food production. What assessment have the Government made of the impact on food security and food production of their clean energy proposals at this stage? We are roughly 60% self-sufficient in food, but this is challenging. We are only 18% self-sufficient in fruit and only 55% self-sufficient in vegetables. The majority of these are imported.
Moreover, current levels of debt per household are high and increasing, amounting to a total of £5.5 billion in February this year. The arrears represent around 75% of the total of all unpaid energy bills. Energy spending by households and businesses is increasing. We are paying for infrastructure use in advance before it has even been constructed. This is the only utility to do so, piling costs in the form of energy levies and high standing charges over which households have no control.
Continuing the Danish theme, in the fairy tale by HC Andersen, as we call him in Denmark, the emperor has no clothes. Everyone feared the emperor and wanted to display loyalty, so they praised his garments, but, in truth, he was wandering around in his underwear. Only a young boy was brave enough to tell the truth: that the emperor was indeed wearing no clothes. I am being very brave today in saying to the Minister and the Government that this is wrong.
The Minister will respond by saying that clean energy is safe, sustainable and reliable for our energy. I disagree. Many of the clean energy sites are intrinsically unsafe, highly flammable and combustible. They are not reliable, as when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine we are left powerless. I urge the Government to look closely and positively at the alternatives. Renewables are, in practice, potentially wasteful, lose energy in transmission and bring no significant community benefits. They amount to the creeping urbanisation of the countryside. The proposals contained in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan are premature, ill-thought-out and potentially devastating for rural communities and their residents, livestock and nature. The proposals are unravelling rapidly. They need to be revisited.
Lord Nagaraju (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a great honour to rise and address this House, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for raising this important Question. I express my sincere thanks for the warm welcome from all sides of the House. I am appreciative of Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments, officials and staff. I am grateful to my noble friends Lady Berger, of Barnhill, and Lord Raval, of Hertsmere, for their support during my introduction. I also thank my noble friends Lady Smith of Basildon and Lord Kennedy of Southwark for their guidance and support.
I was born in India and came to the UK as a student. My journey was shaped by education. I pursued a master’s degree in computer science at Oxford Brookes University, leading me into a career in the technology sector. After more than two decades, I returned to study at University College London, undertaking a master’s in public administration, focusing on development, technology and innovation policy. That experience, together with my work on AI policy, reinforced my belief that technological progress must be guided by thoughtful governance and a commitment to the public good. It is for this reason that I have chosen the territorial designation of Bloomsbury, reflecting both my academic connection and its long traditional tradition of intellectual inquiry.
I declare my interests as a technology consultant, an AI policy adviser and a director of AI companies. My experience in the technology sector has given me a deep appreciation of both the opportunities and the complexities of innovation. I strongly believe that the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence must be understood widely and that its benefits should be shared across all parts of society.
I turn briefly to the subject of today’s debate. The transition to clean power is both necessary and welcome. As the Government advance their ambitions in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, it is vital that the impact on rural communities is carefully considered. Technology and innovation can play an important role. AI will increase electricity demand, but it can also help a clean power system to operate more effectively by improving renewable forecasting, balancing the grid and detecting faults faster. The opportunity is to ensure that rural communities are not merely asked to host this transition but are enabled to share in its benefits through community energy, local participation and greater local resilience.
We are living through a period of profound technological change. Artificial intelligence presents both significant opportunities and important challenges. We must harness its potential to drive growth and improve lives, while ensuring that its risks are addressed responsibly and with foresight, particularly in relation to safety, security, ethics and bias. In doing so, I am guided by values long associated with the Labour movement: fairness, inclusion and the belief that progress must benefit all. This is not a challenge for the UK alone. It calls for stronger international co-operation and meaningful partnerships, including those between the United Kingdom and India, the European Union and the United States.
I take my place in this House with humility, mindful of its traditions and the wisdom and experience of its Members. I hope to contribute constructively, particularly in the areas of technology policy, innovation and global co-operation. I thank your Lordships.
Baroness Gill (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Nagaraju’s maiden speech. He is the first representative from the Telugu-speaking states in India. He has already introduced much of that diaspora to this House. I had the honour of meeting many of them, and his wife and daughter, at his introduction and at many events that he has organised subsequently. Through Labour Party organisations, including his founding of the Mahatma Gandhi Future Leaders programme, which was primarily about mentoring political leadership, I have known him as a person of relentless energy and commitment to work.
Moving on to his contributions to improving understanding of the AI field, my noble friend’s work reflects a clear commitment to the responsible advancement of technology and its role in society. As the founder of AI Policy Labs, he has brought together policymakers, academics and industry leaders to engage with the challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence. Through initiatives such as the UK-India collaboration on AI, he has encouraged international dialogue and co-operation in an area that is increasingly debated here and shapes our global future. His emphasis on ethical, inclusive and socially beneficial applications of AI is both timely and necessary.
In public life, my noble friend Lord Nagaraju’s continues to demonstrate a thoughtful, forward-looking approach, grounded in services and a sense of responsibility to wider society. His contributions lie not only in the ideas he promotes but in the conversations he enables and the bridges he helps to build. I am sure that he will play a critical and valuable role in your Lordships’ House.
Moving on to the main topic, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for getting this on to the Order Paper. The UK Government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan sets out a bold and necessary ambition to deliver a cleaner, more secure energy system by the end of the decade. In today’s uncertain world, doing nothing is not a serious option, but it raises important questions: if not here, then where, and if not now, then when? Developments in the Middle East and earlier in Ukraine highlight the necessity to have independent sources of power. It is important that we all play our part in communicating that fossil fuels do not give any area of this country security of supply.
Having represented in the past five counties with numerous rural communities, I have seen just how difficult it is to strike the right balance. Rural communities are not against progress; they understand the need for clean energy, investment and energy security. But they are also being asked to change. The reality is that much of the infrastructure needed to deliver this plan will be built in rural areas. Wind farms, solar developments and new grid connections do not appear in abstract; they appear in real landscapes and near real communities. So we must ask: can we expect the benefits of clean power without being willing to host part of the solution? That is the challenge.
Rural communities often want development but not always the change that comes with it, and that tension is entirely human. But I believe this plan also brings many opportunities to rural communities in terms of investment, jobs and a chance for rural Britain to play a leading role in securing our energy future, and the Government have recognised the need for community benefit and engagement as part of the process.
The real question is not whether change will happen but whether we shape it in a way that is fair. In my experience, impact assessments can be lengthy, time-consuming exercises and will only delay the implementation, whereas engaging now with the proposals that the Government have put forward will start to show results sooner rather than later. If we get this right, rural communities will not just carry the burden of change but will share the rewards. That is how clean power 2030 will succeed, not just nationally but locally too.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I thank my colleague, my noble friend Lady McIntosh, for securing this debate, the authorities for providing room for it, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, on his maiden speech, which seemed full of common sense and aimed at the right issues. I am also glad to learn about his expertise on AI as applied to policy organisation; on a day when it is becoming increasingly clear that there is something rotten in the central machinery of government in this country, his contribution will be very welcome and very valuable indeed.
In my short time, I will ask just one question to the Minister, and I would value as many details as he can give in his answers if he has time. The Minister obviously is aware—not everybody is, but I am sure he is—that NESO has announced its plans for building an army of new electricity pylons, mostly of traditional design but some new ones, to march across the countryside as part of the great grid upgrade on which it is embarked. With 50 gigawatts being added to our existing clean electricity output by 2030—it varies, but on average it is about 45 gigawatts a year—and with the hope to build far more than that, there are plans for 3,000 to 5,000 new pylons, with in the range of 290 gigawatts to 300 gigawatts by 2050.
I do not know whether any of that can possibly be achieved—it does not look like it at present—and of course, even if it is, it is still far too small for meeting the demands of clean electricity of a modern nation by 2050 or, indeed, by 2030. There are 71 data centre applications roaming around; not all of them have been accepted by the National Grid, but about half of them have been accepted, and many will never be built. But they alone would swamp the sort of amounts of gigawatts we are talking about by far. So that would have to be revised upwards, and the chances of meeting it will have to be revised rapidly downwards.
My question is simply: have the Government looked at alternatives, as are being looked at in many other advanced industrial societies, and in particular at the hydrogen vector? For instance, Germany, is planning three new hydrogen-type networks around the whole country to reinforce the vast demands for clean electricity from expanding industry investment. If we could focus on that, much more than we have heard so far from the Government, then a lot of the countryside, to which my noble friend rightly referred, could be preserved.
The hydrogen vector can provide a system of transmitting electricity very different to the great wires of these vast 50-metre structures that are planned, and with much less impact on the countryside. It is much easier to store, and there is no need to pay billions to switch off wind power at night, which of course is the present problem—there is a fear of unbalancing the entire system in trying to marry intermittent and regularly generated electricity, which is proving much more difficult than some people realise. There is no need to develop a pattern which has to be interrupted, as was interrupted with dramatic effect down in Iberia the other day. Japan itself has declared that the real pattern for the future is, predominantly, through the hydrogen vector.
There are, of course, problems; I do not deny that. There are difficulties about transportation, for example. One way is by road, which is not practised in four or five other advanced industrial countries. Another way is through storage and, indeed, by shipping and various other means, but all of them mean that there will be fewer pylons, a better and happier nation and a happier countryside. I hope that this one question will get an answer in the debate this afternoon.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, as I see that I now have an extra minute, I might take it to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, to his place. I welcome him to this House, from one technology geek and computer enthusiast to another, and congratulate him on a wonderful maiden speech.
Last month, the Government published the Land Use Framework for England. Seldom has such a long-awaited report been found to be out of date on the day of its publication. With all the intellectual depth of a sixth-form geography project, it fails to recognise that Britain—indeed, any society—is no more than three meals away from anarchy. A Government who forget that deserve everything that is coming to them. This is a debate about clean energy and the rural economy, and I declare an interest as being involved in farming and fertilisers.
I was struck that the framework outsources much of the future land use policy in this nation not to civil servants in Defra—or, for that matter, to any other part of government—but to the Green Finance Institute and the World Wide Fund for Nature, which are namechecked. The Green Finance Institute is recorded by the Electoral Commission as being a substantial donor to the Secretary of State for DESNZ. In an astonishing twist, Companies House shows that the Green Finance Institute and the WWF share co-directors within that same web of institute companies. For the first time, we see that Labour’s donors have written, and will control, rural policy in this nation through the land use framework. The donors have ensured that rural policy has been bent and twisted by those with an axe to grind, tainted by ideology and class hatred, viewed through the lens of wishful thinking and ignorant of the reality of what it takes to feed us.
Today, I sound the alarm in this debate, because there is one table in the framework, driven by net-zero 2030 ideology, that should strike fear into anyone who is concerned for our food security, our rural economy and the resilience of our society. Labour’s lobbyists have managed to insert into the report that fully 1.7 million hectares of productive land will be entirely removed from agriculture, and then there will be additional controls on the hunting and shooting—activities that help our rural country pubs to survive the winter. The Library tells me that Defra estimates that the total area of farmed land in England is 8.9 million hectares, so 1.7 million hectares is just shy of 20% of all the land farmed in England. The report breezily asserts that there is enough land to go round to feed ourselves. That simply cannot be true.
Let us see what it means for the rural economy, with the sort of analysis that the framework should have done but did not. A farmer would hope that his farm would yield, for example, 10 tonnes per hectare of wheat. With increased food-price inflation barrelling down the tracks, that might generate gross sales of £2,000 a hectare, and the 1,000 hectare farm would generate £2 million in sales. Let us hold that number.
Against that income, he might pay a neighbour for seed and a local merchant for fertiliser. There will be some crop protection products. His farm machinery will be serviced by a local dealer. The sheds and grain storage will need repairs, and there are vermin contractors, builders, fitters, fencers, ditch diggers, plant hire suppliers and any number of ancillary businesses such as timber, builders’ merchants and so forth.
In total he will pay £1.8 million to local suppliers, including that boiler repair man who the farmer keeps going to in the summer so he is available for the villagers in the winter. All these people buy meals in the pub or support the local post office stores. That is the rural economy that Labour is destroying.
That is one farmer of 1,000 hectares, but the Government want to remove 1.7 million hectares from production—that is what the land use framework says. The net-zero ideology, by my reckoning, will cost us 15% of our national cereal production: the grains that bake our daily bread, brew our beer and create our cakes.
The Government tell us that in 2022, agriculture’s contribution to the UK economy was £13.9 billion. Based on my simple arithmetic, 1.7 million hectares removed on the altar of net zero is £3.5 billion taken from the rural economy every year. These are round numbers, but it is between 20% and 25% of agriculture’s total GDP. These zealots will not rest until our best land is given up for solar, which generates no rural income at all—so there will be no need whatever for the little doers. Solar enriches only the private equity backers and the sovereign wealth funds.
I thank my noble friend for allowing me to enumerate so clearly the economic effects of Labour’s war on the countryside and the economic damage that is to be visited on our rural communities. Their jobs and our shared social fabric are being destroyed by Labour’s paymasters, who deny the harsh reality of putting food in our belly, without which a nation can neither thrive nor survive.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, in discussing these various means of producing energy and transmitting it and whether it is best to do it in the sea, agriculture or somewhere else. Then, of course, we have this debate about whether we should have pylons or hydrogen. Nobody has yet invented a sky-hook, which would sort out all the problems.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Nagaraju on a really interesting maiden speech. He did not have very long for it, but I can see that in future he is going to give us some really useful tips and thoughts about how we can improve what we do on these issues, including on access to rural communities. I hope he will take it upon himself to challenge the Government, the Opposition and everyone with whom he may have an issue, because the more experience we get here, the better it will be for everyone.
We have had many debates on rural communities and the need for special fuels to fuel people’s boilers, so I will not repeat them. I really welcome the boiler upgrade scheme of £9,000 for off-grid households that the Government recently announced, but it is worth noting that there are still uncovered costs of some significance in installing heat pumps. It is not a question of just having them delivered off the back of a lorry and plugging them in. They work well, but they take a lot of time and are quite expensive. In the past we have debated some communities, especially people in Cornwall, where I live, who have got together and saved quite a lot of money and made efficiencies by working with one supplier to create the right amount of power at a reasonable cost.
I have a question or two for my noble friend, because there are some issues that may need a little more thought. There is the cost of electricity, which we can go on debating, but putting in a heat pump can mean a problem with building regulations, and it is not always possible. If something goes wrong and you have to revert to what you had before, which is probably an oil burner, and you suddenly find that the building regulations do not allow you to replace it, what are you going to do?
I am quite sure it will work most of the time, but can my noble friend the Minister tell the House—now or, if necessary, in writing—whether, if an off-grid consumer finds that heat pumps are inadequate or unaffordable, with very high running costs, there are any measures in place to give them a bit more protection? In other words, what can the rural communities who rely on oil do to help themselves?
One of the big debates we have had in the last few months concerns the balance in demand between the new fuels to be used in the air sector and the fuels to be used in our heat pumps. When my noble friend the Minister comes to respond, I hope he will confirm that government policy does not give either of those two options strong priority over the other, or suggest that it is more important for people to fly than to stay warm. That would be a very dangerous attitude to take and I do not think my noble friend is taking it, but it would offer some comfort if, when the subsidy comes, we look to do our bit for the rural communities as well as trying to fly.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, on a fine maiden speech, and I recognise his work in the field of AI. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, for bringing this debate, and I thank her and others for their contributions.
I have listened to the concerns—there are real concerns; we are going through a real energy transition. However, there is a danger of framing clean power as somehow inherently anti-rural or of treating net zero as a threat to our countryside. The evidence and public opinion do not support either of those two stances. The DESNZ public attitudes tracker shows that 68% of people support government actions to reduce the impacts of climate change, and over 60% support our 2050 net-zero goals. The clean power action plan is the backbone of our energy transition to get 95% of our power from clean sources from 2030, and it involves major investment in flexibility and necessary grid infrastructure.
I recognise the concerns. We have heard concerns about the loss of agricultural land from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, although I did not recognise the figures given. Concerns about food security were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and about visual amenity by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. We also heard worries about possible large-scale battery fires from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and fears that infrastructure is being imposed on communities. These are legitimate concerns, and those on this side who support renewable energy need to answer them, but I want to make the other case for renewables as well. The fact that I support renewables does not mean I do not recognise that they will have impacts. It is important that we discuss what those impacts are and how we can best limit them as far as possible.
Electricity demand is expected to more than double by 2050, so major investment is not an option—it is essential. It would have been easier if we had started earlier, but this must be done with our communities and not to them, and with proper regard to the visual amenity of our landscape, proximity to people’s homes and communities, and compensation where it is necessary. We should look at the figures. At the moment, only 0.3% of the UK’s land is used for large-scale solar, and the Government’s land use framework indicates that just 1% of England’s land will be needed for renewables by 2050. This is still less than the land taken and used by golf courses, yet I have not heard them mentioned today as a threat to our future.
I support floating offshore solar. It would be good to hear something from the Minister about that. There is a lot of misinformation in this space; there was a newspaper article last week comparing solar to Chernobyl. The implication is that every solar project is a blight on the countryside, but that is simply not true. Solar can have low visual impacts, increase biodiversity gains and bring meaningful community benefit. Agrivoltaics can help farmers to transition to help to improve crop yields in the face of rising temperatures.
The real threat to our countryside is not from clean power but from the cost of inaction. It is from the rise of fossil fuel markets, escalating bills and the growing damage caused by climate change itself. Our rural communities are more susceptible because they have less well-insulated homes, they need to drive more and they are subject to the impacts of climate change, whether from declining harvests, rising temperatures or increased flooding. The UK has warmed already by 1.2 degrees Celsius since 1884. We have had the five worst harvests since 2000. Inaction on climate change threatens our food security far more than any solar panel ever could.
I want to look at the opportunities to get this right and at what more can be done. We need to use rooftop solar first. I ask the Government what more they are doing to make use of warehouses, car parks and public buildings. Planning is also crucial, so I ask the Minister about the strategic spatial energy strategy. My understanding is that it is coming by autumn 2027. I push the Minister as well on community energy, which has also been mentioned, because people in the countryside should be able to benefit from the energy that they host. I ask the Minister about the community right to generate and what more is going to happen to push onshore wind.
However, the idea that the renewables transition is inherently anti our rural communities and our way of life is simply not true.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as chairman of Amey, Acteon and Buckthorn Partners, all of which are involved with the energy transition. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, who spoke outstandingly well. We look forward to his contributions in future debates; he will be a very welcome Member of this House. I also echo what was said about my noble friend Lady McIntosh, whom I thank very much on behalf of the House for securing this debate. Many of the comments she made, not least about North Sea gas, are exceptionally important.
From our Benches, there can be no case for not developing our reserves to the full and instead looking to increase imports of LNG from Norway and the US, neither of which reinforces our security of supply. To take the example of Norwegian gas, Norwegian gas supplies will be reduced this summer. This is presented as a planned maintenance issue rather than a political decision, but we should not be deaf to the fact that there was a major political debate in Norway on restricting exports, and that would threaten our supplies from that country. Given the high level of dependence, with Norway providing 70% of UK gas imports in some periods, any reduction—even temporary—raises concerns about UK energy security.
The argument often used about developing the North Sea is the environmental impact. We are told by the Government that to encourage new oil exploration, appraisal and production in the North Sea will be an act of “climate vandalism”. Yet the average carbon intensity in the North Sea is 24 kilograms a barrel of oil equivalent; Victory is predicted to be 12 kilograms a barrel of oil equivalent; and Jackdaw, just eight. Norwegian gas through the pipeline is eight kilograms, but imported LNG from the States is 85 kilograms a barrel of oil equivalent in terms of carbon intensity. Surely, that being a major multiple on delivering our own gas from the North Sea is a strong environmental argument to develop our own reserves.
What the Government are saying, or, to be more accurate, what the Secretary of State at DESNZ is saying, which increasingly does not reflect Treasury good sense, is that because the price is set internationally, there is no benefit in maximising our own gas and oil production. Yet the more we develop our own reserves, the more we control our own prices. We need only to look at Henry Hub prices in North America to prove that point. The issue today is whether we are making the best use of our own gas, and obviously the answer is no, we are intent on not using our own gas.
Our energy policy is sequentially driving us to shut down the reserves in the UKCS, first by stopping new licence rounds while allowing limited tie-backs; secondly, by imposing regulatory and environmental policies which deter investment; to which we add a burdensome windfall tax and create a hostile environment to new investment which seeks projects internationally in a highly competitive global market for every investment dollar. This is intellectual folly and I urge the Government to change course or to provide one well-argued reason why we should shut in future North Sea reserves.
The second point I want to raise as a result of this debate is on dependence on the grid. Delivering the Government’s ambitions for clean power would require
“rapid delivery of 80 network and enabling infrastructure projects”,
according to NESO, cited in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. The Government said that, by 2030, around twice as many new electricity transmission networks would be needed compared to the number built in the past decade. Installing more renewables weakens the grid. The growth in intermittent renewable generation disrupts system frequency in two ways. Intermittent renewable generation delivers an output that is highly variable in time. Wind speeds are rarely constant, changing in both intensity and direction by the second, Similarly, cloud patterns can create significant instantaneous variations in solar output. Changes in either generation or demand can lead to changes in grid frequency, so highly variable generation patterns make maintaining a stable grid frequency more difficult.
Intermittent renewable generation is increasingly displacing conventional generation in the generation mix, reducing the amount of heavy rotating turbines on the grid and therefore the amount of inertia they provide. The National Grid said:
“Operating the system with low inertia will continue to represent a key operational challenge into the future and we will need to ensure we improve our understanding of the challenges this will bring”.
Is the Minister confident, therefore, that there will be no blackouts during this period of government? If so, on what technical assumptions does he reach that decision?
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Whitehead) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all those who have contributed to this important debate and particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for securing it in the first instance. She made a number of important points that go along, I think, with her particular view about the role of renewables but are nevertheless important points that need considering as far as this debate is concerned.
Before proceeding, I want to add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Nagaraju, who made his maiden speech this afternoon. I think he will have gathered already from the acclaim around the House for his maiden speech that he will undoubtedly be a tremendous asset to our House in the future.
In her initial contribution, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, listed a number of alternatives to Clean Power 2030. What was striking about the list of alternatives she put forward is that they are mostly things that the Government are doing already. They are not necessarily exactly in the context of the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, although there are many more things in that plan than many noble Lords and others seem to think—for example, there is a substantial role to play for hydrogen in the action plan and on a longer-term basis after 2030.
The noble Baroness mentioned clean power: floating solar, energy from waste and small nuclear. The Government are actively involved in undertaking all these things at the moment. But I emphasise that they are not alternatives to the race or the journey to clean power; they are part of that journey, along with other things, such as offshore and onshore wind, solar, and various other arrangements that we can see blossoming before us.
The action plan is a requirement to get to mostly, or almost wholly, renewable power by 2030, both for reasons of carbon emissions reduction—and the move towards net zero by 2050—and to make sure that the nation has energy independence as far as is possible and that we are not dependent on fossil fuels from around the world dictating how our energy economy works for the future.
Noble Lords have drawn attention to just how hard this work will be to achieve those particular goals, and they are absolutely right: it is very ambitious to ask the energy system to translate itself into a low-carbon system with the speed that we hope will be achieved. But we ought to be clear that the means being put in place to do this are not the bogey mentioned by a number of noble Lords. This is genuinely clean power. It will, certainly for rural communities, enhance their way of life, with cleaner air and much greater community involvement in the power that will be introduced, which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned. Altogether, this will make our society a much cleaner, greener and more liveable place overall.
That does indeed involve certain changes to how we deploy our power in the future. Noble Lords have mentioned that we may use 10% of productive farmland, for example, for solar and similar activities. Reports were mentioned, and the land use framework published by Defra in March 2026, for example, states that renewables are projected to take up approximately 155,000 hectares of England’s utilised agricultural area, which is about 2%, not 10%. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned, that is far less than the amount of land taken up by golf courses in this country for the future. So it is not the huge take that some people suggest.
Lord Fuller (Con)
The noble Lord is selectively quoting from the table, and he may indeed be right on solar, but the land use framework enumerates a whole load of other different types of use. In total, 1.7 million hectares—about a fifth of all the farmland in England—is to be taken from agriculture and applied to other uses. He cannot get away from that: those are the Government’s numbers.
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
The noble Lord says I am selectively quoting. I am sorry to disagree with him, but I am not selectively quoting; I am quoting. That is what the land use framework says on the best estimates for the land that is being taken. In addition to that, he and other noble Lords will be aware that, in the guidance and arrangements for the development of solar, there is a clear understanding that the best and most versatile land will be excluded from those solar developments and that they should go primarily on brownfield land or less-important agricultural land, so that precisely that best and most versatile land for farming and food use is preserved for that activity. That is what is happening with the solar developments coming forward at the moment.
The other thing I want to mention on rural communities is that, when we are putting forward proposals for grid coverage of the country, as other noble Lords have mentioned—the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for example—that is not just about clean power 2030. Among other things, it is about getting the grid fit for energy for the future in general. Even if clean power 2030 were not in place, it would be necessary to undertake that huge programme of grid renewal and updating, partly because of the extreme neglect of grid uprating that took place during the Conservative Government who immediately preceded this Government. We are not just undertaking a grid for the future but catching up from the past.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am not accusing the Minister in any way of misleading the House, because this is from a different department, but the actual figure that was consulted on by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in January 2025 was that more than 10% of farmland in England was to be diverted towards helping to achieve net zero and protecting wildlife by 2050. That was in the consultation that was the prelude to the land use framework and I understand was in parallel to this net zero policy.
Lord Whitehead (Lab)
I am happy to write to the noble Baroness to clear up that exact point, but what I quoted from, as I am sure she will know, is the actual land use framework and not the precursors to it. At the final point when it was published by Defra, it came to the conclusion that I have mentioned. It is in table 1 on page 19 of that land use framework, so it can be looked at. I am very happy to write further to the noble Baroness on that particular point.
What is absolutely right, though, as indicated in the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, is that we are basically all in this together. It cannot be the case that we can exempt parts of the country from the energy revolution taking place in front of us. But what we can do is make sure that, where it has effects on those areas, they are mitigated as far as possible: for example, as we are planning at the moment, they will have community benefits coming their way from those changes. Community investment through the discount schemes is also coming forward. A new electricity bill discount scheme will provide £2,500 over the next decade to households living within 500 metres of new and significantly upgraded transmission infrastructure, with the first payments expected in 2027.
We are also looking seriously at community benefit from upcoming changes to grid systems and various things. The SSEN’s upcoming Tealing to Aberdeenshire transmission line, for example, could mean funding of more than £23 million for local communities. There is assistance for communities that are associated with those changes, but also an understanding that, while those changes have to be made very carefully—with full consultation and appreciation of the difficulties that may stand in the way of some of those schemes—where those schemes go ahead, they have done so on the basis of our Planning and Infrastructure Act. That means full scrutiny and consultation, full arrangements for remediation and a full consideration of what, among other things, the cumulative effect on the landscape may turn out to be.
With that, I hope I have addressed the points made by most noble Lords. If I have failed to do that because of time constraints, I am happy to write, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, to go a little further on the question of hydrogen for the future. I can assure him that it plays a very substantial role in the process, along with other non-variable things such as biomethane and biogas, for the future of the energy economy.
Overall, the Government are doing a responsible job in trying to match the requirements of the clean power action plan with quality of life and the future, particularly of rural communities. We will certainly continue to take that very carefully into consideration as the plan develops and, indeed, as clean power goes beyond 2030 and into the next decades.