Climate Change Policy
Debate between Ben Lake and Claire Perry(5 years ago)
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Claire Perry
It will be published as soon as possible. I thank my hon. Friend for that meeting. As he will know, energy companies are voluntarily bringing forward what are in effect smart export guarantee prices, so those price signals are already coming through. As I said, we want to get it right. We do not want to find, as we did with feed-in tariffs, that we have committed more than £30 billion, as we will have done over the lifetime of that scheme, to deliver a relatively small number of installations. We want to future-proof the smart export guarantee and we want to make it stick.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
The Minister mentioned in her statement that the Government had sought the advice of the Committee on Climate Change on a net zero target. Can she reassure the House that, should this advice entail a greater investment in low-carbon innovation than the £2.5 billion detailed in the clean growth strategy, the Government will commit additional funding as necessary?
Claire Perry
The hon. Gentleman is inviting me to make funding bids to my colleagues in the Treasury. Of course, I would want to make that bid. Innovation funding and co-partnership on innovation is a huge success and one we need in order to drive down costs and drive up deployment.
Solar Industry
Debate between Ben Lake and Claire Perry(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Claire Perry
I am going to take an intervention from the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), who has not spoken yet.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
Does the Minister also recognise the potential for the energy company obligation scheme to support innovation, particularly in renewable energy? Often, the challenges to securing a return on investment that developers face can be overcome through the certainty that some sort of support mechanism can offer.
Claire Perry
Indeed I do, and I am proud to have secured one of the largest increases in innovation research and development spending in the clean energy space. Of course, the ECO scheme, which we have recently pivoted to focus on fuel poverty in its entirety, includes an increase in the amount spent on innovation.