Energy Grid Resilience

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Yes, my Lords, we are. It is a very relevant point. Clearly, we are looking for a balanced energy mix for the future. We see nuclear as being an essential baseload. We will have renewables, but we are looking at hydro storage, as the noble Lord reflected in his own question. The whole point is that we will have a balanced system, but one that is heavily decarbonised. That is exactly the aim of what we seek to do.

[Lord Spellar (Lab)]

My Lords, the Statement says that the GB system is “highly resilient” but, in reality, has that not eroded over recent years, as was demonstrated recently at Heathrow, when we have known for some years about capacity problems in west London? The Minister will also be aware of the bottlenecks on the high-voltage national grid, not helped by the current long lead times—around four years—for high-voltage cable and transformers. Even without the rising threat of sabotage, has the network provider not been far too complacent about the threats to the resilience of our electricity network? Finally, he mentioned in a reply about small modular reactors that the industry has been waiting for too long for a decision while our competitors are moving rapidly ahead. Is it not now time for action to get on with building this industry of the future?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, in relation to SMRs, I agree with my noble friend that we need to get on with it. I hope and expect that we will have some decisions very soon. I hope that that will set the foundation for future investment in the SMR programme.

As far as west London is concerned, my noble friend is absolutely right to point out the challenges there, and the fact that we basically inherited a system where there had not been sufficient investment in the grid and local distribution network. In relation to Heathrow, let us await the interim and final reports of the review that we have established to see what lessons can be learned. As I said earlier to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, the fact is that we expect there to be a major investment in our whole grid system between now and 2030. It will be essential to meet our clean power targets. I think that will give industry the confidence to invest in the areas where we wish it to do so.