Heat Pumps
Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord is right; we will require a massive upgrading of the national grid. That is proceeding and we have plans in place for it. Ofgem has authorised tens of billions of pounds-worth of expenditure to upgrade the grid. This is a transition; we gradually need to move away from gas supplies and gas boilers, and on to electrification of heat and electric vehicles. It will happen over time, but it is happening.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have had two air source heat pumps for the last 10 years, and I somewhat regret it. With the median heat gain for air source heat pumps at 2.8, and the electricity-to-gas ratio of 4, they do not make sense. I ask my noble friend the Minister, and indeed all Members of the Chamber, if they would be so good as to speak to their local plumber—if they can get hold of him or her—and ask them the question that I asked, as to whether it is in any way possible to imagine 600,000 installations per year, given the level of training that would need to be given to plumbers to do that.
Lord Callanan (Con)
There are a number of parts to my noble friend’s question. First, on expanding the supply chain, he is of course right, but there are thousands of new installers being trained every year. I spoke to MCS, which is the trade organisation, and it is registering new companies every week to do this installation. We are funding training courses under the heat training grants. However, the main part of his question is about the price differential between electricity and gas. He is right—we need to rebalance those costs, and the Government will issue a consultation on that later this year.
Oil and Gas Windfall Tax
Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
I am very happy to agree with the noble Lord. I am tempted to observe that he might want to talk to some of his colleagues on his Benches about that message. He is right that it makes much more sense as we go through the transition to obtain those resources from our own fields rather than import them at a much higher carbon content.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register and to the previous questions I have raised on this matter in Treasury Questions. The point is that the EPL has had a dramatic effect on investment in North Sea oil. The question from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, asks what assessment the Government have made of it. Would the Minister include in that assessment an analysis of the bids that have been made—for example, for Chevron oil in the Republic of Congo and in the Gulf of Mexico—by North Sea oil companies that are no longer investing in the North Sea?
Lord Callanan (Con)
My noble friend makes an important point. Taxation levels are obviously a matter for the Chancellor and the Treasury. However, there are a number of concerning stories from investors that they have pulled out of investments in the North Sea; in fact, one remarked that parts of Africa were a more stable tax environment.