Offshore Wind

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention. It gives me an opportunity to confirm the two floating offshore wind projects that have been agreed under this auction round. I might add, by the way, that the auction rounds were not a sort of shoo-in for anybody who wanted to come along and invest, as some people have portrayed them. They were very competitive. The number of entrants to the auction was substantially larger than the number of contracts finally agreed. Among other things, this shows that there is a real appetite for this kind of investment going forward.

That is the case with floating offshore wind. Although the two schemes that were agreed—one in Scotland and one in the Celtic Sea—are not, shall we say, final, full-scale arrays as far as floating is concerned, they represent a tremendous step forward in the development of offshore beyond the continental shelf in the UK. Huge new areas offshore from the UK can be opened up to offshore wind.

Of course, that price is not the same as the price we achieved with the mature, bottom-based offshore wind that we have been talking about, but, if we look at the original administrative strike prices when offshore first took off, they were not dissimilar to the sort of prices that we are now seeing for floating offshore wind. I am confident that, once those arrays get larger, and with the flow of fabrication and assistance which the noble Baroness will probably know is already happening very positively, in the Celtic Sea in particular, the net benefit for Great Britain of floating offshore wind will not just be a large number of jobs and more income coming into different areas of the UK than has been the case for bottom-based offshore at the moment. It will represent a technology that really will allow the whole of the UK to participate in the offshore wind revolution, not just the areas which hitherto have had the main developments in their particular zones.

The Celtic Sea, in particular, is just a taster of what is going to come in the not too distant future—and, by the way, it will be a future in floating offshore wind that will be a British future. Home-grown technology will lead in this particular area, which will not only have an impact in UK but will have a substantial export impact as well.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and his expertise to the Front Bench. He is certainly a very effective parliamentarian, even if I do not agree very much with his narrative. But we will see where we get to there.

I also welcome the Government’s announcement, but it is important that we remember that electricity is only part of this country’s energy need. The other sides are, in particular, transport and heating. I am concerned that, although the Government may remain strong on electricity generation, we are getting whispers of them moving backwards in those other areas, including on electric vehicles, heat pumps and finding alternatives to space heating. I would like reassurance from the Government that that is not the case. I certainly hope it is not. Also, where are we now on the future homes standard? That is absolutely fundamental for how we move forward domestically on energy consumption.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I am afraid the noble Lord will have to wait for about a week before the warm homes plan comes out. That will contain, so I am reliably informed, a great deal of detail about precisely the areas of heat, efficient low-carbon homes, heat pumps—all the sorts of things that are the other side of the energy revolution. We hope they will begin to be combined together into coherent programmes, working with each other to ensure that, among other things, that greatest piece of low-carbon energy—the energy you do not use—is properly incorporated into overall programmes.

I assure the noble Lord that this is uppermost in our minds. We are aiming, as we always have, to develop a comprehensive palette of policies that will deal with all aspects of low-carbon energy, energy security and energy efficiency. Indeed, the noble Lord will note that the AR7 announcement is not complete, inasmuch as there are further pots to be reported on, including solar, tidal, geothermal and various other things, in the next week or so. So I hope we will come back to this Chamber and compare and contrast notes on the picture that we will have when those two things have actually happened. I think the noble Lord will be pretty pleased with what will result from it.