Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
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 is taking to reduce the UK’s energy dependency on foreign states.
Answered by Greg Hands
Great Britain has one of the most reliable electricity systems in the world. It benefits from a diverse electricity mix, which contributes to security of supply by ensuring no dependence on any single market participant for the power consumed.
Interconnection with overseas markets forms an important part of Great Britain’s electricity mix. However, the majority of power consumed in this country is still domestically produced.
Around half of Great Britain’s annual gas demand is met through domestic production and most imports come from close proximity suppliers such as Norway.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
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 is taking to ensure sufficient provision of skilled alternative heat source technologies engineers to help facilitate the move away from gas boilers to new technologies, such as ground or air source heat pumps.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Government is working closely with industry and the education sector to ensure that high-quality training is available for heat pump installers. This includes training for new heating engineers, and for existing heating engineers who do not yet have heat pump training.
As part of the Green Homes Grant Skills Competition, the Government awarded more than £6 million to support training for tradespeople delivering green home energy improvements, including heat pump installations.
We are also supporting the industry-led development of new heat pump upskilling courses for existing heating engineers. By the end of 2021, we expect industry to have the capacity to upskill thousands of heating installers per year to work on heat pumps.
Furthermore, BEIS together with the Department for Education is also working with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to ensure that apprenticeships and T-Levels contain high quality heat pump training. Additionally, we are working with the Association of Colleges to ensure that further education providers are aware of future needs for heat pump installer skills, and to understand barriers to providing relevant training so that they can be better addressed.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
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 is taking to create opportunities for young people in (a) the nuclear sector and (b) the wider green energy industry.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
BEIS is a member of the industry-led Nuclear Skills Strategic Group (NSSG), which brings together employers, government, regulators, and trades unions to address the skills challenge and drives major skills developments in the nuclear sector. The NSSG has developed a long-term Nuclear Skills Strategic Plan which incorporates a variety of activities, including those to recruit more young people in the nuclear sector. As part of the Strategic Plan, the following are expected to be delivered.
We continue to engage and support as the plan is delivered.
We are determined to seize the once-in-a-generation economic opportunities of the net zero transition, delivering a green industrial revolution, by creating new business opportunities and supporting up to 2 million green jobs by 2030 across all regions of the UK. In order to ensure we have the skilled workforce to deliver net zero and our Ten Point Plan, we have launched the Green Jobs Taskforce, working in partnership with business, skills providers, and unions to advise on how we can deliver the green jobs of the future.
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
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 is taking to help businesses in the construction sector tackle (a) supply chain issues and (b) the resulting increased costs.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Government is aware that a range of building materials are in short supply nationally. This is driven by demand and increased global competition to secure supplies.
In light of this, and in view of more local disruptions in the supply of some products, the Construction Leadership Council’s Coronavirus Task Force has established a Product Availability Working Group, comprised of product manufacturers, builders’ merchants and suppliers, contractors of all sizes, and housebuilders. The Task Force continues to monitor the supply and demand of products, and identify those in short supply.