Asked by: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 1 March 2018 to question 128954, what assessment he has made of whether as a result of increased interconnection (a) net employment in the GB electricity generating sector will increase or decrease and (b) UK GDP contribution from the GB electricity generating sector will increase or decrease in real terms.
Answered by Claire Perry
New interconnectors create jobs and contribute to GDP in their construction and ongoing operation. However, we do not hold sufficiently disaggregated data on employment in and GDP contribution from the electricity sector to make a quantitative assessment of the impact of increased interconnection on these points.
Asked by: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 1 March 2018 to Question 128954, what assessment he has made of the effect of increased electricity interconnection on (a) net employment in and (b) GDP contribution from the electricity generating sector.
Answered by Claire Perry
New interconnectors create jobs and contribute to GDP in their construction and ongoing operation. However, we do not hold sufficiently disaggregated data on employment in and GDP contribution from the electricity sector to make a quantitative assessment of the impact of increased interconnection on these points.
Asked by: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has made an assessment of the effect of increased electricity interconnection on welfare.
Answered by Claire Perry
Ofgem considers interconnectors’ contribution to welfare as part of their assessment for regulatory approval.
The first round of projects that received regulatory approval from Ofgem showed GB consumer welfare benefits of up to £12 billion over their 25 year regulated lifetimes.
The second round of projects that received regulatory approval from Ofgem (GridLink, NeuConnect, and NorthConnect) showed GB consumer welfare benefits of over £7 billion over their lifetimes.
The full details of Ofgem’s assessments for these projects, and a small number of other projects which have been assessed separately, can be found at
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/electricity/transmission-networks/electricity-interconnectors.
Asked by: David T C Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether the UK is projected to become a net exporter of electricity by 2025.
Answered by Claire Perry
Projected figures show that we will not be a net exporter of electricity by 2025.
Projections for the power sector up to 2035 are published in the BEIS Energy and Emissions Projections 2017, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/updated-energy-and-emissions-projections-2017. Beyond 2020, the reference scenario includes assumptions that go beyond current Government policy and should be treated as illustrative.