Energy Grid Resilience

Debate between Michael Shanks and Roger Gale

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend has been a champion of these issues for a long time, and it will not surprise him or the House to hear that I entirely agree with him; clean, cheap and secure is absolutely right. We know that because when we invited many countries around the world to the energy security summit last week, it was clear that it is not just the UK that is on the transition. The rest of the world is also moving at pace to divest from fossil fuels and invest in the renewables that deliver the secure energy system and remove the volatility that all our constituents continue to pay the price for. It is the only way forward, and the Government are determined to continue with it.

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

The Minister is fully aware of my total opposition to the construction of a 90-foot-high converter station on the Minster marshes in east Kent. National Grid’s sea link project is very vulnerable to physical attack and cyber-attack, and it is largely based on the provision of power from weather-related sources. Is it not time that we revisited all this and looked seriously at speeding up the process of acquiring small nuclear reactors?

[Michael Shanks]

I am happy to agree with the right hon. Member on his final point. Small modular reactors will play a really important part and are an exciting proposition that the UK can be at the forefront of. The technology competition will conclude shortly.

On the broader point, we get to the heart of the contradiction. The Conservative party wants to talk about resilience of the network but does not want to build any new network infrastructure. I am afraid that the two go hand in hand. If we want to have power and a resilient network, we cannot stay in the same place we were 60 years ago. We actually have to build some stuff.

Biomass Generation

Debate between Michael Shanks and Roger Gale

Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I think we should consider two aspects of the analysis of the importance of Drax to the system. First, in comparison with the counterfactual of building new gas-fired power stations, our analysis is that the deal we have agreed, which involves the use of gas on the system for 27% of the time, costs £170 million less. Secondly, on energy security, the assessment is that even if we wanted to go down that route, there would be risks about whether we could build that capacity in the time that we have.

This is all about the decisions taken by the last Government, who did not look far enough ahead and did not have that capacity on the system. Even if we did want to proceed with new gas stations, there would be questions about whether we could build them in time. This deal is about protecting bill payers, halving the subsidy from £1 billion and ensuring that there is dispatchable power when we need it as we build the clean power system.

As we move towards the 2030s, what comes next is long-term planning for a clean power mix, but also about the long-duration and short-duration storage mixes that will help us to make decisions that are different from the one we were forced to make this time.

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

I suppose we shall be told that half a loaf is better than none, but this strikes me as a half-baked half-loaf, to say the least.

The Minister has spent an hour this afternoon lecturing the House about why it was better to import oil and gas from overseas than to extend the production of at least some home-grown material. The bottom line is that, clearly, the Minister has not read the KPMG report, the Prime Minister has not read the KPMG report, and we are still going to pay billions of pounds in subsidy to import pellets created in Canada and then shipped across the Atlantic at God knows what carbon cost. Where, please, is the sense in that?

[Michael Shanks]

First, let me say that I have spent the last hour answering questions from Members on both sides of the House. I have not lectured anyone. I have, however, stated the facts—for instance, that if oil and gas are extracted from the North sea, they are sold on the open market for whatever price the international markets have at any given moment. That delivers neither energy security nor confidence to bill payers. While Opposition Members may want us to go back to the fossil fuel casino and hope we can play a better hand this time round, I think we should be building a secure power system that delivers both energy security and confidence that we will not be exposed to the price spikes we have been exposed to in the past. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to take that as a lecture, he can take it as such.

On the role that Drax will play, of course we looked at all the assessments around Drax to date. Frankly, we have put in such a robust process on sustainability, and independent assessments of some of that, because of the questions that the right hon. Gentleman raises: we know that there have been questions in the past, and we want to make sure that there are tough penalties if Drax does not comply. Raising sustainability from the level under the previous Government—70%—to 100% means that we will not pay a penny of subsidy if Drax fails the sustainability tests that we have set out for it. That protects consumers right across this country and delivers the dispatchable power that we need.