Energy Security Strategy

Baroness Boycott Excerpts
Thursday 7th April 2022

(2 years, 1 month ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Callanan Portrait Lord Callanan (Con)
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The noble Lord is right: we will have an ongoing requirement for oil and gas in the transition period. We will seek to obtain as much of that as possible from our own domestic sources and will roll out an additional licensing round for North Sea oil and gas projects this autumn—they will of course all be done in co-operation with our climate compatibility tests—because it is much better to get those resources locally than source from unstable parts of the world. I cannot comment on discussions that have taken place with various regimes in the Middle East.

Baroness Boycott Portrait Baroness Boycott (CB)
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My Lords, the IPCC report this week was explicit that emissions need to peak by 2025: that is only three birthdays away if we are to have any hope of holding to below 1.5 degrees, yet this press release says that there are new licensing rounds for oil and gas this year. Does the Minister not agree that drilling for oil will not lower the bills and that the surest and cheapest way to do this is to ramp up all forms of renewables and insulate homes?