Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point, and I know the COP President will be happy to continue the work that is already under way.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on accelerating domestic renewable energy production to reduce carbon emissions and help ensure delivery of COP26 commitments.

[The COP26 President (Alok Sharma)]

The Government recently published the British energy security strategy, which sets out plans to turbocharge our clean energy transition. As I said earlier, the aim is to quintuple our offshore wind and solar PV capacities by 2030, while also significantly expanding nuclear and hydrogen. We aim to decarbonise our electricity sector fully by 2035.

[Christine Jardine]

While I welcome the Minister’s comments, all the evidence points to the fact that we need a drastic shift towards renewables if we are to meet our climate change commitment. What does he say about figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that show a reduction in growth in renewable energy over the past few years, specifically in onshore wind? Will he commit to investing more in onshore wind, and to committing to hydrogen, so that all new housing developments are hydrogen capable when boilers are replaced and central heating systems are introduced?

[Alok Sharma]

As the hon. Lady knows, a lot of work is going on with hydrogen, and we published our hydrogen strategy last year. We have announced plans to double our available capacity to 10 GW of hydrogen production by 2030. We already have 14 GW of onshore wind deployed to date, and we have made it clear that we will be consulting this year on developing local partnerships for a number of other supportive communities that wish to host new onshore wind infrastructure. That will, of course, be in return for benefits, including lower energy bills.