Energy Security

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. He takes a close interest in this issue, having been Secretary of State for Energy in the past. He makes a very good point about the importance of interconnectors. They will clearly play a key role in balancing supplies across Europe, particularly as we have more and more intermittent renewables both in this country and in other parts of Europe. Of course, there are interconnectors linking us with Ireland, as well as with France, the Netherlands, Belgium, et cetera. They clearly will have an increased role to play. I forget the exact figure, but in the energy security strategy we set out that we wanted to expand the number of interconnectors that are available because of the important role that they will have.

I cannot give the noble Lord an exact date for when Sizewell C will be commissioned; these large nuclear projects have a somewhat chequered history. This is a tried and proven design, but it clearly will be a number of years before this comes on stream; it will, however, still be valuable and still be needed. In fact, if we had disregarded the advice of the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2010 in his famous video, we would indeed now be having new nuclear coming on stream to help us in the energy crisis that we have at the moment. SMRs, of course, will also play an important role, but they are still being developed and designs are still being improved, so, again, it will be a few years before they come on stream.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my question is also on Sizewell C and nuclear. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the Liberal Democrats do not need me to defend them, but none the less I will quote the CEO of the National Grid in 2015. He said:

“The idea of large power stations for baseload is outdated”.


Perhaps the Minister needs to update his assumptions in that regard.

However, I will continue on from the question that was just asked by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, because the Minister was asked when Sizewell C would come on line and he declined to give an answer to that. Surely, the Government must have both a medium estimate and a worst-case estimate—for the enormous amount of money that they are spending—of when it is actually going to be working. I will therefore put that question again to the Minister.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I disagree fundamentally with the noble Baroness. Sizewell C is an important investment. It is still at the planning stage at the moment. We will secure the funding for it and we will bring it on stream as quickly as we possibly can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord will know, from his history of looking at infrastructure projects, that I cannot give definitive answers to those questions. We have announced the funding of Sizewell. Discussions are under way with operators for additional nuclear plants. I will be sure to let the House know when we have secured those investments and when we can make decisions on them.

It is difficult to answer the noble Lord’s question on onshore wind: it will make a contribution. Clearly, individual turbines make a relatively small contribution, but when they are scaled up, it can be quite large. Again, it is intermittent generation, but they will make a contribution, particularly in local areas. We want more wind; we want more solar; we want more hydro; we want more geothermal: the whole idea is to provide a diverse mix of energy sources.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I turn to another issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan: that of energy conservation. The Statement says:

“The days of wasting energy are over.”


I am sure that is something we would all like to see, but the Minister may recall that a couple of days ago, he answered a Written Question from me on the issue of digital advertising screens and neon shop signs, which France, Spain and, in a slightly different way, Germany, have all taken action on to see them switched off during the energy crisis to reduce energy demand and reduce the risk of blackouts. In answering me, the Minister said that the Government had no data on the impact of these. If he wants to see one for himself, he might like to wander up to Tottenham Court Road station, where there is a four-storey high screen billed as

“the largest LED canvas in Europe”,

which blazes out advertising 24 hours a day, I believe. Surely that could be switched off to save energy. Will the Government look at this issue again?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I do recall the Question from the noble Baroness. We do not have precise data on how many digital advertising screens there are in the country and what energy they might be using. I do not think we want to get into micromanaging people’s energy consumption to that extent. We do not want the whole country to be in darkness, and there will be some important display screens that provide key information for people—so getting into heavy-handed government dictating to companies when they can switch their advertising screens on or off might be a policy beloved of the top-down, controlling Greens, but I do not think it is a practical solution.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think I said in response to the noble Baroness’s earlier question that I welcome this fantastic project and wish the developers well in producing it, particularly as I believe that it can be built without taxpayer support, so we should welcome it even more—and of course we will do everything we can to support such a fantastic achievement. If it can be built, it will produce a very useful contribution to the UK’s energy security.

I have to disagree with the noble Baroness, who does not think a target of 15% by 2030 is enough. I can assure her, looking at the analysis of it, that it is an extremely ambitious target. It will require a huge amount of resource to be put into the sector, both public and private, in order to achieve such a target—but if you do not reach for the stars you will never make it, and it is important that we set an ambitious target. We will do all we can to achieve it.

I said in my initial answer that we are spending £6.6 billion on energy efficiency schemes in this Parliament; the Chancellor committed another £6 billion for 2025 to 2028. We are also consulting on the £1 billion ECO+ scheme. We are doing an awful lot in the energy efficiency space and the answer will actually not be in total cash resources, but in the building up of the supply chain, which is constrained in many aspects at the moment. That is what is providing me with food for thought: to make sure that we actually have the resources on the ground, in terms of materials and personnel, to implement all these ambitious schemes.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

My Lords, the noble Lord opposite referred to hydrogen and its importance as a method of storing renewable energy when an excess is available from wind and solar et cetera. I do not know whether the Minister saw a really interesting study out this week on direct reduction furnaces and how if emission allowances are gradually reduced, producing steel with green hydrogen would be 15% cheaper than producing it with coal using carbon capture and storage. What are the Government doing to encourage, support and put into operation the creation of green steel in the UK, given that it is already happening in Germany and has been for a couple of years?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We are looking at a lot of ways of supporting the steel sector—we think that it is a very important sector in the UK. I would question the noble Baroness’s figures. If we wanted to produce steel completely with hydrogen, it would require enormous investment. I know that a number of interesting research projects are going on, but I do not think that they are particularly well established in other countries yet either. However, there are exciting prospects, and we should do all we can to support them.

I agree with the noble Baroness that one way of using so-called excess power from the likes of wind farms that produce lots of power perhaps at times when it cannot be used will potentially be in producing hydrogen. However, hydrogen is a relatively inefficient way of storing power; it is much more effective if we can use the power when it is produced. If we use a unit of electricity to produce hydrogen and then, for instance, use it for heating, we lose 60% of the energy value of that unit of electricity in converting and storing hydrogen. It is a very difficult gas to compress, to transport, to store, and then to use. It is not necessarily an efficient way, but it could be a way of storing excess electricity production if it cannot be used—that gets us back into the question that we discussed earlier of expanding the grid et cetera.

There are lots of solutions and lots of potential technologies that we could use. As I said, our strategy is to explore as many of them as possible so that we are not putting all our eggs in one basket. We have a diverse energy mix; it will take many years to roll out, but that in my view is the future of energy supply in this country.