Biomass: Power Generation

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord has asked me about this a number of times. As I have said to him, we are supportive of tidal power and are allocating funds to its development through the various CfD auctions. But I think he will recognise that it is not yet available at scale and in the quantities we would need. We are very proud of our renewable resources: almost 50% of our electricity production is now from renewables; we have the five biggest wind farms in the world; we are easily the biggest producer in Europe; and we are seeing lots of applications for solar development. Renewables are great, but it remains the case that they are not available all the time; we need more storage and back-up, and need other sources as well.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

At the risk of upsetting a few colleagues, I ask: is the Minister aware that some of the forests in Canada and America were originally planted for paper? The paper mills closed because paper was not wanted; towns were decimated because they were one-product towns for the paper mills. Drax came along and saved some of those towns in the early days.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I do not know the truth or not of that; I will take the noble Lord’s word for it. As I said, these are complicated matters involving a number of different factors.