Cleaner Energy Technologies Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Energy Security & Net Zero
Viscount Trenchard
Main Page: Viscount Trenchard (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Viscount Trenchard's debates with the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero
Cleaner Energy Technologies
Viscount Trenchard Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
We give a value to carbon and use that to inform our policies, not least through the ETS. We have supported a number of early-stage technologies. Offshore wind was extremely expensive when we first started supporting it; now it is very cost-competitive and we are confident that we will end up in the same position on hydrogen.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the only way even to get close to the net-zero targets is to make major changes to the current energy policies to enable a substantial increase in both the number and speed of deployment of nuclear reactors?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I certainly agree with my noble friend that we need to expand both the potential and the deployment of nuclear reactors, and we are doing just that. We recently passed the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, for which I am grateful for the House’s support. We have invested several hundred million pounds in the new Sizewell plant and are supporting Rolls-Royce to develop the next generation of small modular reactors.