Infrastructure Planning (Electricity Storage Facilities) Order 2020

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I share his interest in vehicle-to-grid storage, as I shall reflect shortly, although I would place perhaps greater stress on the need for demand-side management, rather than thinking of electricity as water in a tap that you can just turn on whenever you want.

I note that the study carried out for the Government estimated that the benefits to the UK of a smart and flexible energy system could be somewhere between £17 billion and £40 billion by 2050. Batteries are clearly a crucial part of that, so I welcome the modest progress marked by this statutory instrument and the encouraging words of enthusiasm for battery storage from the Minister.

I often go back to the words of Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, in 2015, who stated that the idea of large coal-fired or nuclear power stations to be used for baseload power was outdated. He said:

“From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the rooftop is going to be the baseload”,


and that energy markets

“are clearly moving toward much more distributed production”.

What was implied in that was a great growth of storage as well as renewable generation—local, household and business based. We can only regret the lost half decade in which progress has been so achingly slow. For example, I have often heard from a great community and social enterprise, Sheffield Renewables, which develops funds and builds, owns and operates renewable energy schemes. It has had some great successes, but been frustrated again and again by inadequate and unstable government policies.

In all these issues, with the previous SI that we were debating and this one, we must not lose sight of the fact that the best possible energy—the greenest, cleanest and cheapest energy—is the energy that we do not need to use. Every form of electricity generation and storage, and every form of energy production, has a cost, both financial and environmental. In recent weeks the International Energy Agency has been getting highly enthusiastic about extremely low-cost solar. This is something that must not be forgotten.

The previous debate focused on the importance of home energy efficiency and decarbonising heating. It is surely the correct order for us to be doing this, speaking about battery storage next, as part of a broader focus on ensuring that we can move towards a renewable-powered world. I would particularly like to see government policy promoting household batteries and rooftop solar, particularly in social housing, where the benefits come close to those who need it most—community distributed systems with distributed benefits. I saw examples of highly successful pilots of that five or more ago, but we have yet to see widespread rollout, although I note that Portsmouth council has just installed battery systems in 13 housing blocks, with a further 20 on the way.

When we talk about storage there is often a focus on batteries, but we also need to look at research and development and policy support for heat and chemical storage, which may well be cheaper and more suitable for some applications. However, in talking about vehicle to grid—I come back to my enthusiasm for that—many years ago I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall, which was already using it. It powered it office from cars and it was all powered up by solar. It is disappointing that we have not seen that taking off in what is now a very mature technology.

I conclude by welcoming the removal of what has clearly been the distorting impact of the NSIP regime on battery storage and the retention of the 50-megawatt threshold in the case of pumped hydro, reflecting, as the Minister did, the potential environmental and local impacts of that. On hydro more generally, I cannot but reflect on my visit to innovative hydro schemes on small farms in Wales a few years ago, which put income into small businesses and communities. There was a sudden change in government policy and that entire business collapsed. With energy policy, boom to bust and sudden changes in direction and policy simply have to end. We need to see consistent long-term stable policies to take us in the right direction in this climate emergency.