Energy Resilience

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

Thank you, Mr Efford, for chairing this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) for securing it and for all his experience in this area, which is of great value to me and the Government. It is an important topic. I will speak more broadly about the issue of energy resilience, and then come to some of the specific points that he raised. As I said in the House last week, maintaining this country’s energy resilience is a key priority for the Government. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, it goes hand in hand with us taking, as fast as possible, the opportunities from new technologies on our path to net zero.

In the context of the widespread power outages experienced across the Iberian peninsula last week, this debate is particularly timely. I praise my hon. Friend for his significant foresight in securing the debate many weeks before both of the incidents that he referred to; that is a real skill that we might come back to. I will repeat what I said in the House last week about all those who were affected. We clearly saw significant disruption in Spain and Portugal on our television screens here, but I was glad that power was restored remarkably quickly.

My thoughts are with all those who were affected, and with those who are now carrying out the work to investigate exactly what happened. A significant number of unfounded claims and speculations have been shared by Members of this House, and across social media, about the cause of the disruption. Clearly, given it was such a significant failure, it will take time for the Spanish network operator to carry out an investigation into its exact cause, and it is important that we wait for that statement before rushing to any kind of judgment.

Turning back to the UK, Great Britain has a highly resilient energy network, largely because of how diverse it is. In recent years, although we have seen high energy prices, our energy supply has remained reliable because we are supplied from more than one source, including the UK continental shelf, our long-term energy partners such as Norway, international markets for liquefied natural gas and interconnectors to the European continent. That means that we are not reliant on any one particular supplier for security of energy supplies, and we are confident that the system operators have the tools that they need to effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios all year round. As my hon. Friend set out, storage is also an important flexibility tool in the GB system, allowing us to respond to short-term changes in supply and demand, especially during colder months.

To further protect consumers, Ofgem sets annual targets on customer interruptions and customer minutes lost, which means that companies themselves are directly incentivised to reduce the number of interruptions, no matter the cause. Of course, I work closely with the National Energy System Operator and Ofgem to ensure that resilience is built into our networks wherever possible.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is an ever-present voice in these debates, is no longer in his place, but I wanted to give my regular response to him: although I take the issues of energy in Northern Ireland very seriously, they are devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive and not my immediate responsibility. I think he probably knew that that was what I was going to say anyway.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester raised our journey to net zero and what we need to do to ensure resilience as the system decarbonises. We are obviously committed to maintaining current levels of resilience and reliability through collaborative work with industry, the regulator and other stakeholders, and there is a variety of ways in which we can do that.

Obviously, the most common cause of any disruption in our network, here in the UK, is storms and weather events. We have seen lessons learned from storms such as Storm Arwen, which led us to introduce a number of resilience measures. There is also the role of critical new technologies, such as hydrogen, which my hon. Friend raised throughout his speech and can be used in energy resilience. He is correct, of course, that we now have an opportunity to design a clean energy system, and that is why NESO is carrying out new functions that will shape resilience policies on our journey to clean power.

I will briefly talk about what we learn from incidents. Our system is remarkably resilient, but, of course, no system is immune from disruption entirely, so we must plan for all eventualities and learn from incidents when they happen. We do that through working closely with the energy industry to ensure that robust plans are in place. We learn from every incident, in strong partnership with others.

My hon. Friend rightly raised the dependencies in our energy system. The recent example from the Iberian peninsula really brought home just how much our lives are dependent on electricity in one form or another. The point about our telecoms and communications systems, which are so reliant on mains electricity now, is really important for us to consider in these resilience plans; we must make sure that we have back-ups in place. That complex interdependency was also demonstrated by the recent fire at the substation in Hayes, which resulted in the closure of Heathrow airport. Such incidents are incredibly rare, but they occasionally occur in a complex system with many thousands of assets, such as ours.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero continues to lead cross-Government work with the Cabinet Office to enhance the resilience of all critical sectors to major energy risks, such as those listed on the national risk register. Events in the Iberian peninsula last week, as well as those in Heathrow in March, highlight just how crucial electricity is to our wider system.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester was right to point out that, as we move to a clean power system, the question of storage will be key. That is why I was delighted the Government announced the funding to build the first long-duration energy storage assets in more than 40 years. We have worked to set out the cap and floor scheme so that major infrastructure projects can be delivered. We look forward to those projects coming forward in due course.

My hon. Friend highlighted the role of hydrogen. Although I am not directly responsible for hydrogen, I am as excited by the opportunities it presents as my colleagues in the Department are. It can play a key role in our mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower by delivering new clean energy industries. Although it can provide near-zero emission hydrogen, particularly green hydrogen, as my hon. Friend said, it is not yet available at scale, but there is a real opportunity. He made the point about trying to bring people together to recognise that this is a really exciting opportunity and moment. It is everything that the Government are about through our approach to delivering the clean power mission and unlocking the potential of these more nascent technologies to provide significant resource into the future. That is an important point to put on the record. We are very supportive of what hydrogen can do in our system in future.

This is a very important debate. The question of energy resilience is one that we will return to, quite rightly, because it is never a settled subject. The Government have credible plans in place that we test robustly at regular intervals to make sure that, in the unlikely event they are needed, they work as we intend. It is clearly important that we revisit them regularly to make sure they are as detailed as possible.

I reiterate the point that I made in the House of Commons last week: the UK has a secure and resilient energy supply. Our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower is the best route to improve our energy security into the future. When we have experienced incidents that threaten our energy resilience, we have used those as opportunities to prepare better for future threats. Preparing for outages is an ongoing task that Government, industry and the regulator collaborate on. We are also taking this opportunity to build not just the clean power system that will deliver climate leadership, energy security and bring down bills in the long term, but the storage assets and everything necessary to make sure we can capture clean power and utilise it when we need it most.

Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester not just for securing this timely debate and the points that he has made on storage and on hydrogen in particular, but for all the work that he is doing generally in Parliament on these really important issues. As we progress towards clean power by 2030 at pace, rapidly deploying new infrastructure, we will continue to work with all those in the energy sector to maintain the high levels of resilience and security that this country needs.

Question put and agreed to.