Lord Lilley
Main Page: Lord Lilley (Conservative - Life peer)(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady knows that we legislated to introduce a decarbonisation target for 2030 in the Energy Act 2013. She also knows that my party strongly supported that.
We looked at gas storage in huge detail to see whether there was a case for Government intervention, but we found that an awful lot of gas storage was being built with more modern technology, which means that the gas can be produced and brought into the pipeline network much more quickly. We have looked at that matter in detail and we do not intend to review it.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
17. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the problems we are facing illustrate that, despite huge investment, wind and other renewables cannot replace conventional fuels and require additional capacity megawatt for megawatt to meet need when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine? Will he confirm that the Government’s costings for renewables do not take into account the cost of supplying an additional amount of conventional capacity?
Mr Davey
We need a mixed approach to energy supply and generation. The Government have always argued that we need renewables, gas and new nuclear and that diversity gives a country extra strength in its security of supply. When we do our analysis we consider all the system costs, not just of renewables but of nuclear and other systems, and no type of electricity generation is without its challenges. For example, in the short term, we have seen fires at two coal plants, Ironbridge and Ferrybridge, that we are having to take into account in our analysis to ensure that our capacity margins are okay over the winter. The mixed approach that we propose is the most secure.