Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he will take to support community-owned solar farms.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Through UK-wide growth funding schemes, the Government is enabling local areas to achieve net zero goals in ways that best suit their needs. Community energy projects, including solar farms, are encouraged within these schemes.
Ofgem also supports community energy projects and is now welcoming applications from community interest groups, co-operative societies, and community benefit societies to the Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme.
Given the level of support already available, the Government has no current plans to take further steps to support the development of community-owned solar farms.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in the context of constraint costs and grid capacity issues, whether he plans to provide support to long-duration energy storage technologies.
Answered by Graham Stuart
In April 2022, this Government, in the British Energy Security Strategy, committed to ensuring the deployment of sufficient large scale long duration electricity storage to balance the overall system by developing appropriate policy to enable investment by 2024.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department will take in the event an energy supplier declines to install smart meters in their customers' homes.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government wants as many homes and small businesses as possible to be able to benefit from smart meters.
In order to drive continued rollout momentum, the Government has introduced minimum annual installation targets for energy suppliers. Energy suppliers are also obligated to take all reasonable steps to install a smart meter where a meter is fitted for the first time or when an existing meter needs to be replaced.
These licence conditions are regulated by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), which has a range of enforcement tools at its disposal.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an estimate of how many and what proportion of households have a smart meter installed in each local authority as of 10 October 2022.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government’s official statistics on the rollout of smart meters are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/smart-meters-statistics. These statistics are based on data from energy suppliers provided at Great Britain-level only.
The rollout is making good progress, with more than half of energy meters in Great Britain now smart. At end June 2022 there were 29.5 million smart and advanced meters in homes and small businesses across Great Britain, including 27.8 million smart meters in domestic properties.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for how many hydrogen schemes his Department (a) is providing support and (b) plans to provide support.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund will provide up to £240m to develop and construct new production plants, and the Hydrogen Business Model will provide revenue support to production projects.
The first joint allocation round for electrolytic hydrogen projects seeking support under both schemes closed on 12 October. Four CCUS-enabled hydrogen projects have also been shortlisted to proceed to the due diligence stage of the Phase-2 Cluster Sequencing process.
The Government has also committed to design, by 2025, new business models for hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure, and is currently consulting on these.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which hydrogen schemes in Scotland his Department has identified for government support.
Answered by Graham Stuart
We intend to deliver the Hydrogen Business Model and Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF) on a UK-wide basis. Projects will be selected on a competitive basis.
The Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, which includes hydrogen facilities, is a reserve Track-1 cluster.
We note the Scottish Government’s intention that funding available from the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund for hydrogen production will be complementary to, not duplicative of, the NZHF.
Government is also supporting industry to deliver projects that use hydrogen, including the H100 project in Fife, Levenmouth, which aims to trial the use of 100% hydrogen for heat in around 300 homes.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department will require energy suppliers to replace pre-paid energy meters with smart meters.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Energy suppliers are already obligated to take all reasonable steps to install a smart meter where a meter is fitted for the first time or when an existing meter needs to be replaced.
Smart meters can operate in credit or prepayment mode. Most recent figures showed 13% of all smart meters were in prepayment mode, broadly in line with the overall levels of prepayment meters in the market.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Energy Price Guarantee announced on 8 September 2022, what steps he plans to take to ensure that amounts paid to energy suppliers accurately reflect actual energy use for each relevant period.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government is engaging with energy suppliers, industry payment bodies, and Ofgem to ensure that suppliers are accurately compensated for their actual energy usage during the Energy Price Guarantee’s reconciliation period. The Government has considered which data flows will most accurately reflect total energy use and will publish more details in due course.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether any of the hydrogen projects announced in the Growth Plan 2022 will be located in Scotland.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Growth Plan sets out the infrastructure projects that government will prioritise for acceleration, across transport, energy, and digital infrastructure. The list includes projects up and down the country and shows the UK government’s commitment to growth.
The list is not exhaustive, and the Government will be looking at acceleration opportunities right across the portfolio.