Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what priority they will give to specific economic green development in West Cumbria in their post-COVID-19 reconstruction plans.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are seizing the initiative to build back better, greener, and faster from COVID-19. My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution is part of the government’s mission to level up across the country, mobilising £12 billion of government investment to create and support up to 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs in the UK including in West Cumbria, helping recovery from the pandemic and spurring over three times as much private sector investment by 2030.
We have previously funded the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to produce the Cumbria Local Energy Plan helping businesses develop low carbon and renewable energy projects which will contribute to sustainable economic growth. As part of a restructuring of the North West Energy Hub, the Cumbria LEP will gain a dedicated Energy Officer to assist in the delivery of the Cumbria Local Energy Plan.
Over the coming months, we will bring forward further bold proposals to deliver on our ambitious climate commitments and further cement a green recovery from Covid-19, including a Net Zero Strategy, to cut emissions and create new jobs and industries across the whole country.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to develop opportunities for geothermal energy generation to help address climate change.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Opportunities for geothermal electricity generation in the UK are limited and only likely to be economically feasible in certain locations, such as the far South West of England. The Government is supporting the development of the United Downs Deep Geothermal Project in Cornwall.
The most promising use of geothermal energy in the UK is for low temperature applications such as district heating schemes. BEIS has been providing support to the deployment of district heat networks from geothermal through the Heat Networks Delivery Unit (HNDU) and the Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP). We also announced a further £270m from 2022 to 2025 in the Green Heat Network Fund at the March budget and we will be consulting on eligibility criteria in due course.
Asked by: Lord Judd (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the implications of the School of Advanced Study’s proposals to close the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Institute of Latin American Studies (1) for the Commonwealth community, and (2) for the UK’s post-Brexit relations with Latin America; what representations they are making to the School of Advanced Study about the implications of these proposals; and what plans they have, if any, to provide support to help maintain these institutes.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Universities are independent, autonomous organisations and are therefore responsible for their decisions relating to research priorities and which activities to support. We would expect universities to regularly review and develop their strategic research priorities, and that this may result in some internal restructuring to better support these priorities.