Michael Shanks MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I cannot speak on behalf of the House of Commons authorities, but under the building regulations of 2021, all new non-residential buildings and those undergoing major renovations must install charging infrastructure. In government, along with colleagues in the Department for Transport, I hosted roundtables yesterday, and I will host another today, on how we can unlock much more investment in charging infrastructure, because that is critical in supporting the transition to electric vehicles.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Although we are clearly on the sprint to deliver clean power by 2030, demand for electricity in this country is likely to double by 2050. Our reforms around connection to the grid are important —they will make sure that there is space for demand projects, such as data centres, to connect—but so is building the grid for the future, so that we have capacity in our network to deliver on our growth aspirations.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend. The local power plan is a key part of what Great British Energy will deliver. It will give communities the power to develop local power projects wherever possible, and to achieve the social and economic benefits of doing so. We are engaging with a number of stakeholders across the UK. Because of the devolution settlement, our main contact will be with the Scottish Government, who have their relationship with COSLA, but we are determined that local government across the UK will help drive this forward, and will have the capacity to support communities in doing so.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Energy-based Development: Mid Buckinghamshire · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not just on this question, but on securing an Adjournment debate last night on exactly the same subject. As I stated last night, clean power projects in his constituency and across the country are vital to achieving our clean power mission, which will give us energy security and bring down bills for families. Of course, all proposals are assessed on their individual merit through the planning system, and where communities host infrastructure, the Government believe they should directly benefit from it.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Energy-based Development: Mid Buckinghamshire · Hansard source

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  I would be testing the patience of the Deputy Speaker if I were to go into more detail than I could in an Adjournment debate. The point I made clearly to the hon. Gentleman was that it is not a credible position for him to take that there should be absolutely no infrastructure built anywhere in his constituency. The reality is we need to build new infrastructure, not just energy infrastructure but right across the public sector. I have said clearly that the work we are taking forward on the strategic spatial energy plan and on the land use framework by colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is about trying to ensure that we manage the best use of land, but we will have to build new infrastructure, and communities will have to host it.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment) Regulations 2025. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Twigg, and to be back so soon in the year to talk about the capacity market. The draft instrument, which was laid before the House on 16 December 2024, seeks to make technical improvements and changes to the capacity market scheme—the Government’s main tool for ensuring security of electricity supply in Great Britain. To achieve clean power by 2030, electricity market reform is critical; to paraphrase our clean power action plan, we must reform the capacity market to provide clear and viable routes to decarbonisation for unabated gas, enable low-carbon flexible capacity and incentivise investment in existing capacity. Before outlining the provisions in the draft instrument, I will briefly provide some context. Great Britain’s capacity market was introduced in 2014 and is designed to ensure that sufficient electrical capacity is available to meet future predicted demand in order to maintain security of electricity supply. It is a well-established, technology-neutral scheme, in which existing and new build electricity capacity receives revenue based on capacity. Participants secure agreements through auctions, which require them to make capacity available at times of system stress. The capacity market is our main tool for ensuring security of electricity supply and provides all forms of capacity with the right incentives to be on the system to deliver when needed. It covers generation, storage, consumer-led flexibility—formerly known as demand-side response—and interconnection capacity. Through capacity market auctions, which are held annually one year and four years ahead of delivery, we secure the capacity needed to meet future peak demand under a range of scenarios, based on advice from the capacity market delivery body, the National Energy System Operator. Since its introduction in 2014, the capacity market has contributed to investment in just under 19 GW of new, flexible capacity, which is needed to replace older, less efficient plants as we transition to a net zero economy. To date, the capacity market has been successful in ensuring that Great Britain has adequate electricity capacity to meet demand, and it continues to be required in order to maintain security of supply and provide investor confidence. To ensure that the capacity market continues to function effectively, we regularly make adjustments to the implementing legislation, based on our day-to-day experiences of operating the scheme. On that note, let me turn to the details of the draft instrument. The draft instrument makes changes to eight regulations, to deliver technical improvements and changes that support the functioning of the capacity market and that have been identified and explored through consultation. This is about improving security of supply and, by accelerating investment in low-carbon technologies, increasing the role they play in the capacity market, thus supporting the Government’s 2030 clean power mission. Stakeholder feedback in the consultations identified a need to review the wider timescales associated with the settlement body’s penalty calculation activities, to ensure that timelines for settlement remain appropriate. The settlements body is the Electricity Settlements Company, which is a private company owned by the Secretary of State for the Department and established to oversee the settlement of payments to and from suppliers and capacity providers. The draft instrument amends the timelines for the settlement body’s determinations so that they are in line with those concerning penalty charges. As part of the requirements under the capacity market rules, some capacity market units must complete an extended performance test. This provides assurance that a capacity market unit from a storage-generating technology class can deliver capacity for the relevant duration. Effectively, extended performance tests are a sub-function of the satisfactory performance days requirement, which requires a capacity provider to demonstrate availability during a delivery year. The policy intent is that failure to meet extended performance tests should have the same consequence as failure to meet satisfactory performance days. The draft instrument ensures that the regime is consistent and that the two demonstrations of performance are treated in similar fashion when failed. To assist industry when pre-qualifying for the capacity market, the draft instrument further clarifies that a capacity market unit can be pre-qualified only where no contract for difference has been awarded, unless the contract for difference in question has expired or been terminated. The draft instrument further clarifies that a contract for difference means a contract for difference, or an investment contract entered into with the contract for difference counterparty, which has always been the policy intent. Finally, multi-year agreements provide greater revenue certainty and are likely to incentivise further low-carbon participation in the capacity market, which improves market liquidity and can lead to a greater diversity of technologies. A new nine-year capex threshold introduced by the draft instrument will ensure that new and refurbishing projects, with costs that fall between the existing thresholds, are not prevented from entering the capacity market. The draft instrument also enables participants to access a three-year agreement with a capex threshold of £0 kW, which is available to low-carbon new build and unproven demand-side response capacity. That will remove barriers for low-carbon, low-capex technologies to access longer agreements in the capacity market. To ensure that projects meet the definition of low-carbon capacity, the draft instrument introduces an emissions-related determination, which is a decision that the delivery body may take, as a further reviewable decision type. Let me turn now to the two consultations carried out by the Government—indeed, the previous Government—on the measures in the draft instrument. The instrument contains the second phase—phase 2—of the capacity market reforms, which were consulted on towards the end of 2023. These strengthen security of supply and accelerate investment in low-carbon technologies, and respondents were broadly supportive of the proposals. We have also made a number of technical amendments to the capacity market rules, which support the regulations and which were laid before the House—many Members here today were also present then—on 16 December 2024. In conclusion, the draft instrument introduces a number of technical provisions and changes to enable the continued efficient operation of the capacity market, so that it can continue to deliver on its objectives. These reforms will be critical on our pathway to achieving clean power by 2030. They will improve security of supply and, by accelerating investment in low-carbon technologies, increase the role that those play in the capacity market. We need clear routes for the decarbonisation of unabated gas and for the rapid acceleration of low-carbon, flexible capacity, and today we make another step towards that. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Energy Development Proposals: Mid Buckinghamshire · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for securing this evening’s Adjournment debate. It has certainly not been lacking in hyperbole, and I look forward to responding to his specific points. Phrases such as “ticking time bomb”, “intent on destroying” and “thrown under the bus” suggest that we have taken a rational view on some of these decisions, although I will say that his comment about “two Teslas on the drive” suggests that our constituencies are quite different. Perhaps that will come forward in my remarks. I will pick up on the general thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s speech before turning to some of the specifics. He put forward a case that wrongly asserts that the only options are either a clean power system with renewables at its heart, or nuclear. I will come to his point about SMRs shortly, but I agree with him that there is a rational case for balance. We see nuclear as playing a critical role in our energy system in the future, but we also understand that building out a clean power system requires building renewables as well, because they are cheaper to operate and they deliver home-grown energy security in a way that gas plants do not. I will come back to the clean power action plan’s pathway in due course. The truth is that the hon. Gentleman spent the past 20 minutes outlining—in fact, he was quite open and honest about this—that he wants no infrastructure built in his constituency at all, yet I assume that his constituents still want to be able to rely on that infrastructure in their daily lives, including railways, hospitals, schools, energy and prisons. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues certainly want us to use prisons much more, but he does not want us to build prisons anywhere in his constituency. I am always very careful about the arguments on nimbyism, but at the heart of this issue is a real question about the fact that, at some point, we have to acknowledge that if we are to build infrastructure in this country, it has to be hosted somewhere. As someone who has one of Europe’s biggest onshore wind farms just outside my window in my constituency, I recognise that some constituencies will have to host important infrastructure on behalf of the country, and we all need to play a part in that. The reality is that delivering energy security requires us to build much more infrastructure, even if that includes small modular reactors. However, it is estimated that demand for electricity in this country will double by 2050, so the need of all our constituents, including the hon. Gentleman’s, for electricity and the jobs of the future will mean building much more infrastructure. The hon. Gentleman made an important point about the cumulative impact of infrastructure, which the Government have tried to wrestle with. That is partly why we launched the strategic spatial energy plan, so that we have a holistic approach to planning the energy system in the long term—the work should have been started a long time ago, but it was not undertaken by the previous Government. Alongside that, colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have launched the land use framework for the same reason: to try to plan the long-term future for land across our country. Given that food security is incredibly important, how do we protect land for food, and how do we identify pieces of land where we will build nationally important infrastructure? That is incredibly important. I repeat the point that we need to build infrastructure in this country. I am afraid that we have buried our head in the sand for far too long with respect to the infrastructure that is necessary, and the grid is struggling as a result. It is really important that we find a way to build that infrastructure in a holistic way that recognises the cumulative impact on communities. I want the hon. Gentleman to appreciate that I recognise that point. The hon. Gentleman noted that several projects are in the queue to connect to the grid—I think there is some 746 GW in the queue at the moment. I say gently that the reason it has got quite so out of control is that the previous Government did not manage the queue properly. There was not sufficient reform to manage it, so there are, as he says, several zombie projects that will never be developed but are taking up space in the connections queue. We have announced that we want significant reform to ensure that we are prioritising the projects that will actually be delivered, that are important for our energy security and, crucially, that will free up space for demand projects to be connected to the grid, which is important for our economic growth. More on that will be announced by NESO and Ofgem in due course. The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I cannot give an answer to some of his specific points, because for legal reasons I have to be careful not to comment. However, Rosefield, the solar farm that he mentioned, is at the pre-application stage. The application for development consent is expected to be submitted in, I think, Q3 or Q4 of this year. At this point, it is developer-led. On a number of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, I should say that the Government do not go out and identify these projects; developers identify the projects and then have a conversation with landowners.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Energy Development Proposals: Mid Buckinghamshire · Hansard source

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  I take the point, but although the Government absolutely do say, “We need to build a clean power system and therefore these projects are important,” what we do not say is, “Please build a solar wind farm in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.” These are developer-led projects; it is developers who identify the site. On the question of land ownership, the Government are not in the business of appropriating land for energy projects. The landowners have made a decision to sell their land for these projects, and that is a relationship that they have with the developer. It is a developer-led process. I know that the hon. Gentleman will continue to provide his views as the process continues. If the Rosefield application is accepted by the Planning Inspectorate, he and all his constituents will be able to engage with the planning process and register as interested parties. I reiterate that although the Government think that the planning system could be considerably more efficient, that is not about removing the robustness of the system so that communities no longer have a voice. We want communities to have a voice in the process, but we do not want them to be hanging around for years until decisions are made. We want the process to be more efficient, but communities should absolutely still have a voice. That is incredibly important. If the application comes to the Secretary of State, it is the duty of the Secretary of State to be satisfied that the pre-application consultation process has been carried out properly and adequately, in compliance with the Planning Act 2008. I know that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that, given my Department’s quasi-judicial role in these applications, I cannot comment on anything more specific. The hon. Gentleman raised a number of points on batteries. Battery storage is incredibly important. To build the clean power system we need, we need a mix of both short-duration storage, which batteries provide, and long-duration storage, which we have not built in this country for an extremely long time. We have announced that we will build new long-duration storage, but we know there is an important role for batteries to play in short-duration storage so that we can store the clean power generated from wind and solar for when we need it. Of course, these projects will go through the planning process too. I am aware that East Claydon has been rejected by the local council. Of course, the applicant has a right to appeal. Again, I hope the hon. Gentleman understands that it would be wrong for me to comment on that particular case at this point. More generally, batteries are important both for maintaining storage and for reducing people’s bills by storing clean power, which we know is much cheaper in the long run. This minimises the investment in new generation, so if we get the mix of batteries right alongside other renewable technologies, we can help to minimise the need to build more infrastructure by storing power for when we need it. Batteries play an important role in balancing the electricity system. We outlined in the clean power action plan that between 23 GW and 27 GW of grid-scale batteries could be required to meet our decarbonisation goal by 2030. Not far from my constituency, one of Europe’s largest battery plants was announced recently, so this infrastructure is being shared across the UK. I agree with the hon. Gentleman on rooftop solar, which is a real opportunity. He rightly talks about warehouses, and we have a lot of multi-storey car parks, a lot of factories and a huge number of roofs in this country that I am happy to see covered in solar panels. It is not an either/or. There is certainly a role for rooftop solar, and we have announced that we want to see a rooftop revolution in solar. We have been working on bringing forward new building standards so that new build houses and commercial buildings have this as a key part of their design. There is also a critical role for ground-mounted solar, and we can meet our ambitions if we combine the two. The previous Government launched a solar taskforce to build out as much capacity in rooftop solar as possible, while also increasing the number of ground- mounted solar projects, and we have reconvened it to address not just the roll-out but how communities can benefit much better from hosting that infrastructure. We look forward to publishing that soon. The hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members spoke about food security, and I make it clear that we take the view that food security is national security. It is critically important that we maintain food security across the country. Even if we built out all the solar that we currently expect to build, it would still take up less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land, so we do not see food production and renewable energy as competing priorities. The two can co-exist. We all want to see a resilient and healthy food system. The hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and for Mid Buckinghamshire both mentioned floodplains. Tackling climate change will be one of the most important ways to reduce the frequency of floods in such areas, which is crucial for maintaining arable farmland. We have to tackle the climate crisis if we are to maintain our food security, but we also want a balanced approach to land use. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the land use framework, which was announced last week. Unsurprisingly perhaps—far be it from me to say this— The Daily Telegraph misleadingly suggested that all of this farmland will be reused for renewable energy projects. That is not what the framework says. It says there are a number of uses for that land in relation to sustainability, such as where there are peatlands or particular environmental schemes that could help to lock in carbon, support biodiversity and wildlife, and help us to meet our climate obligations. It is not that the land will be used to build energy projects, as the article wrongly said. We are determined to bring communities with us. We want communities to have a voice and for communities that host infrastructure to benefit from it, so we will deliver a package of community benefits. On small modular reactors, as I said at the beginning of my remarks, we do not see energy as coming from one source or another. Nuclear will play a critical role in our energy mix far beyond 2030. It provides a critical amount of baseload, as well as skilled and well-paid jobs across the country. We want to see the SMR programme rolled out. We inherited much of that from the previous Government, but it had not really been progressed and none of it had been built during those 14 years. We now want to move at pace to deliver it. We see nuclear as important, alongside a balanced renewables system. I conclude by again thanking the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire for securing the debate. He and I will not agree on everything, but I hope we can find a way to ensure that we build a resilient energy system that balances the needs of different communities. On his point about the cumulative impact, I hope we can find a way through that, so that all communities benefit from infrastructure, but some will have to host it as well. Question put and agreed to.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is determined to move me more quickly through my speech; I promise that I will come on to the taskforce. He is right that the more visibility we have of projects that might bid, the more aware we can be of what the sizes of ringfences and budgets for each pot in the CfD might look like. A range of factors makes that complex, such as whether projects are at final investment decision stage, or whether planning and consent are in place to allow them to bid into the auctions. There are many factors, but the visibility point is well made. On ringfencing, I hear what hon. Members have said and what has been passed to our Department over the past few months, but we will seek to balance the needs to deliver deployment and to ensure value for money when making these decisions. A number of hon. Members raised the issues of licensing and consenting, which are at the heart of our aims for reform of the planning system. We want to continue to have a robust planning system in which communities have a voice, but we also want to move much faster in making decisions, so that projects are not held up for years on end.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. One of the things we announced before Christmas in the clean power action plan was the broad outline of where we see allocation round 7 progressing this year, alongside the clean industry bonus. We will be saying more about that in the weeks ahead when we launch the initial information on what it will look like, but I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is not surprised that I cannot announce anything today about what ringfences might be in place. It is a tricky balance. The aim of the CfD, and the reason that it is effective at what we want it to do, is that it has to balance the deployment targets that we want to see with the critical role of delivering value for money for those who will end up paying for it—the consumers and all our constituents. Ringfences have an important role to play, but there is a danger that a ringfence could lead to us paying significantly more for a particular technology than we might want to.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  That is an incredibly important point. I told the hon. Gentleman the last time we spoke on this topic that I am going to Northern Ireland soon for the next inter-ministerial working group for Energy Ministers from around the UK; I think that is in March. I hope that while I am there I have the chance to meet different organisations, because I am keen to understand how the energy system in Northern Ireland works, given the separate grid. I do not have responsibility for energy policy in Northern Ireland but I want us to work together and learn from each other. To conclude my remarks, I am, first of all, grateful—I thought that this debate might finish at 3 o’clock and I was going to have to sum it all up in 30 seconds, but I have a little more time. I thank right hon. and hon. Members again for their contributions. I have come away from every energy policy debate in this place enthused by the real cross-party consensus on so much of this. There is much on which we do not agree, but on a lot of this we do. We need to hold on to that consensus, because achieving the future economic and energy benefits of marine renewables will require them to outlive any particular Government. That consensus has been a strength over the past few decades and I hope it can continue. I have always said that I do not have any monopoly on wisdom on these questions and I am keen to hear and learn from projects in constituencies across the country. It is clear that there is huge excitement in the sector. I hope that we can harness that and drive forward the development of these technologies in the future, and remove the barriers there at the moment. Those barriers will be removed even if they are not specifically barriers to marine projects, although I think marine projects will be affected by many things, such as planning and grid reform, to unlock the immense potential that we have across this country. I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. I hope to return to his constituency soon to see many of these projects and learn more about them. Together we can drive far more marine renewables in the UK, delivering value for money for households and harnessing the abundance of clean energy in this country.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I will touch on the Crown Estate later in my speech. On that specific point, I am afraid that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that devolving the Crown Estate is the answer, and I take issue with the suggestion that the Crown Estate’s considerations in Wales somehow come from Whitehall. I have met a number of representatives of the Crown Estate, and they are engaged with the Welsh Government and with communities in Wales. If we can do more on that, I am very happy to reach out to the Crown Estate, although I am not directly responsible for it and it is not accountable to me. Of course, it has published a number of strategies recently and there is more coming on the long-term vision for the Celtic sea and other parts of the Crown Estate in Wales. It is about partnership work, which includes not just bringing together the Crown Estate but how we look at the planning system and consenting, as well as the strategic spatial energy plan more broadly to plan for the long term. I will come back to some of those points later. Although marine renewables are not at the centre of that clean power action plan to 2030, they will hugely benefit from the actions that we will deliver through it, not least on grid connections. Grid connections are all about future-proofing the grid in this country so that it can meet the demand of the future, and prioritising a grid queue that has got out of control with over 700 GW waiting to connect, which is simply not deliverable. I would like to turn to the issue of funding, but first I wish a happy birthday to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), who does not look a day over 21—but that is the last time I will pander to the Lib Dems. He raised a point about Great British Energy, as did a number of other hon. Members, many of whom I cannot help but notice did not vote for it, but now want it to be headquartered in their constituencies and deliver significant amounts of funding. Great British Energy will play a role in this space. It is our first publicly owned energy champion, and it will deliver and deploy clean power across the country and help with some of the innovation and development work. Marine renewables are exactly the kind of technology that Great British Energy might invest in at an early stage and have a significant impact on, rather than technologies that are at a more confident stage. Hon. Members may not have had the opportunity to reach out to Great British Energy—the Bill is still going through the House of Lords, so it does not technically exist yet—but the start-up chair, Jürgen Maier, has had a number of meetings across the UK, has engaged on questions about a whole range of technologies and is keen to continue to do so. It will be for Great British Energy, as an independent company, to make its own investment decisions based on a whole range of factors, including the return on investment potential, but I see marine renewable technology as a potential benefit for it. We think that tidal stream energy will play a significant role, particularly beyond 2030. As many Members raised, tidal stream will bring balancing benefits to a future electricity system that will have renewables at its heart. The balancing role that tidal can play—as a baseload, in the traditional way of thinking about the electricity system—would be important. Currently over half of the world’s tidal stream deployment is situated in UK waters. However, this Government want to go further and faster, as the technology has huge potential. Aside from having one of the world’s best tidal resources, the UK also hosts world-leading marine energy hubs. Many hon. Members spoke about the EMEC. I have been pleased to speak to the EMEC over the last few months; the Minister for Climate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), visited recently and I hope to get to Orkney to do the same at some point. When we came into power, the Government took the contracts for difference option that had been started by the previous Government and increased the budget to try to get as many projects as we could over the line. That led to a 50% increase in the ringfence for tidal stream to £15 million in the last allocation round. That demonstrated our commitment to the technology and ensured that 28 MW of tidal stream was secured in allocation round 6, including 9 MW for projects based in Orkney.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I won’t. Hopefully, it was not the upcoming speeches from me and the shadow Minister that drove her from Chamber. In any event, it is a delight to be here. I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) not just for securing this debate and the customary way that he introduced it, but for the engagement we have had since I came into this post on this issue and many others. He is a great champion not just of marine renewables, but of Orkney and Shetland. In fact, in the last debate we had in this Chamber, he declared that God came from Orkney and Shetland. I am glad that we did not get into the theological nature of the debate this afternoon. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to this wide-ranging debate. I pay tribute to the various policy teams and organisations that have clearly done a very effective job of getting a consistent set of lines out to Members of Parliament; they have certainly earned their salary this week. Those are important points, and I will address each of them. As hon. Members have said, the sector has enormous potential relating not just to energy outcomes, but to the many positive opportunities in skills, supply chains and innovation. The UK can export that innovation to the rest of the world. I will say at the very beginning that the Government are hugely supportive of marine energy, and we want to do what we can to support it. I will start by giving some context on the Government’s position. As Members will be aware—many have raised it today—we published the “Clean Power 2030” action plan just before Christmas. That was an important step in providing some considerable detail on how the Government will deliver on our mission of clean power by 2030, which is hugely ambitious but achievable. It picks up on some of the strands that Members have raised this afternoon, including how we will deliver more effective grid connections and connections reform, as well as look at the planning system and consenting. It is about all the various things that Members have raised that hold back so much of the delivery of such projects across the country. Clean power by 2030 is not some ideological project, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), and others in the Conservative party might like to suggest. It is a critical pathway for how we deliver energy security in the long term; all our constituents have been facing a considerable cost of living crisis as a result of us not having home-grown energy security. The clean power mission is about ensuring that we not only have that energy security but tackle the climate crisis and deliver economic growth. I make no apologies for the fact that we are a Government moving at pace, because it is important that we grasp the opportunities for the implementation of both marine technologies and the many other innovative technologies that Britain can be a world leader in delivering. It is also our best opportunity to deliver cheaper energy for people across the country. I want to pick up specifically on the point made by the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) and the shadow Minister on the clean power action plan. It is right to say that marine renewables are not in the top lines of the pathways to clean power by 2030, because we do not think that that technology is quite at the point where it will be deployed at scale to help us to achieve that mission. That does not mean that we do not hope that projects will come onstream before 2030. Although we are sprinting to deliver clean power by 2030, that will not be the end of the journey. By 2050, we estimate that the electricity demand in this country will have doubled, so this journey will require us to harness all possible technologies to continue to expand our energy supply over the coming decades. That is where I think marine renewables will start to play more of an important role, as they get past the commercialisation challenges and their price comes down, and as we have some more confidence in the technology.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I am tempted to say that, although this debate has been great, it has gone on for so long that Ms Jardine has turned into Mr Betts, so I did not get the chance to congratulate her on her new job.

• 16 Jan 2025 · Marine Renewables Industry · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s raising that point, because that is an important piece of work that we have been moving forward. With the Scottish Government, we launched a consultation, which ran for four weeks, on how the consenting process could be reformed, so that we can change the 1989 Act in a number of key areas. I think the consultation closed a couple of weeks ago; the responses are now being analysed, and we will bring forward legislation in due course. That is a good example of partnership working with the Scottish Government on attempts to deal with some long-running issues. Across the UK, the key point is that the aim is not somehow to reduce the burden of planning where there are still opportunities for affected communities to contribute; it is about saying that it does not serve communities, developers or the Government well when decisions are held up for years on end. That is part of how we will speed these things up. Other hon. Members mentioned the supply chain, which is incredibly important. That is why we as a Government have said that we are not agnostic about industrial policy in this country; we want manufacturing to come to these shores. It is encouraging to see that there is already significantly more UK content in tidal stream projects than in some other technologies that we have in this country. That is a real positive. I hope that we can continue that and learn from it for offshore wind and other technologies that we want to expand. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and many others asked about setting up a taskforce. I am very open minded about that, and when I met the Marine Energy Council just before Christmas to discuss this and a number of other matters, I said that. I cannot quite remember how many taskforces I am currently chairing—we do like a taskforce, and they are important —and I am extremely grateful for the expertise of those who give up their time to come into Government, to help us to shape action plans and route maps and to understand what the challenges are. I am open to the suggestion, but if we set up something like that it must have a clear purpose, and at end of it we want a set of actions that Government and others can drive forward. That is what my officials are working on, and I am happy to speak to the right hon. Gentleman more about it. On the technology point, the Government’s position is that overall the wave energy industry is at research and design phase. That is a key step on the journey to potentially achieving commercial viability, but we do not think it is quite there yet. We are aware that it has huge potential, given the nature of this country, and significant strides are being made to take it forward. My officials are regularly in touch with those in the sector and are being kept up to date on the latest developments. We hope that all these technologies will become extremely successful and the Government are happy to do whatever we can to support that. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he had not had time to write a speech but then, as always, he made a very eloquent contribution. I think that he and the hon. Member for South Devon made the same point about partnership, which is critical to all of this. The coast around this country offers enormous potential in our energy future, in floating offshore wind, in which we are already a world leader in so many ways—I hope we will continue to be so—and marine renewables, in the economic programme that we have already, and particularly in fishing. The point was strongly made that this is not about competing priorities, although it might seem like that; it is about how we can bring industries together to ensure that they co-exist. We can get real strength from that.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The decisions that the previous Government took on storage are for them to answer, and anyone who looks at their record will rightly raise questions about that. On the broader point, he is right. The only plan for how we can get off the volatile fossil fuel markets, to which the previous Government left us far too exposed, is the clean power action plan that we have announced. If the Tories oppose that, they need to come up with their alternative to deliver the resilience in the system that we are fighting for every single day.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  I apologise, Mr Speaker; I think the shadow Minister was confused in the facts that he gave to Parliament today. I am happy to set that right. Let us look at the facts. The National Energy System Operator—the people who run the system—stated clearly: “At no point were electricity supplies less than anticipated demand and our engineers were able to rebalance the system without the need to consider any emergency measures.” If we listen to the experts—to National Gas and to NESO—they both confirmed over the weekend that there was resilience in the system. I reiterate the point that the system operated exactly as it was intended to do. If the shadow Minister has complaints about how the system operates in the country and the gas storage situation, he may want to look at some of his colleagues who were in power over the past 14 years. He knows the truth about his party’s record. He is a very smart guy, and he knows they left us exposed. He knows they did not do enough to build the system that we need and he knows what caused the worst cost of living crisis in living memory. While his party is busy crowdsourcing policy advice on Twitter from net zero sceptics, it would be far better if they looked at their own record in government and, instead of criticising us, recognised that we are getting on with building a resilient energy system for the future.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  I take issue with two of those points. First, in the past decade, 100,000 jobs have already been lost from the oil and gas industry, and that happened under a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. The industry is changing. We are putting in place a robust set of plans to help the workforce into the jobs of the future, rather than burying our heads in the sand and pretending that the basin in the North sea is not super-mature. Secondly, even if we were to extract more gas from our continental shelf, given that it is traded on an international market, and the pricing is set not by us but by the international market, we would continue to pay more for it, whether or not it came from the North sea, so that would not deal with the pricing issue reflected in the hon. Gentleman’s question.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  That is a really interesting question that I asked myself when I came into this role. Logically, we might assume so, but we do not empty the gas storage and then wait to refill it; we refill it constantly. That topping up will be done at whatever the price in the market at the time. The main reason why we would have used the gas in storage is that there is such demand in the system that the price is likely to be higher anyway. The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point, but I do not think that gas storage would have been the issue. I reiterate the point I made at the beginning: part of the reason why we have less gas storage than other European countries is that we have a different mix of routes to get gas in, and far more reliable supply chains for it, so we do not need to store quite as much as our European neighbours.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes a really important point about energy storage in its various forms. Battery storage technology is moving forward extraordinarily quickly, and the short duration that we can get from batteries is improving quite considerably, so batteries will have a key role to play. Importantly, there is the potential for communities to drive some of that. We have been really clear in our local power plan that we want communities to be in the driving seat as much as possible, so that they can secure community benefits. We also want them to own some of the infrastructure. In a few weeks’ time, I will visit a scheme in Scotland where the community would be able to own not just a battery storage project, but a wind turbine that fills the battery. They would get a double benefit from the energy that they are generating and able to store. We would like to see more such schemes right across the country.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is worth saying that electricity margin notices are not unexpected, particularly at this time of year. They mean that there is enough generation available to meet demand, but that NESO would like to see a larger safety cushion; that is the important point for people to understand what margin notices are about. The notice was cancelled, of course, because there was sufficient supply to ensure that cushion. My hon. Friend’s broader point is important. We have outlined in great detail how we will deliver clean power by 2030. The Conservatives now claim to oppose that; in fact, they oppose much of net zero full stop. They will have to answer how they would deliver a secure and resilient energy system of the future that brings down bills and delivers on climate leadership.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  If I am in any kind of attack mode, it is because the Opposition do not seem to be dealing with reality, and I think it is important to correct that. The right hon. Gentleman is right that the future energy mix, as we outlined in the clean power action plan, will involve a range of technologies. We outlined the range we would expect for each of those, and nuclear—in particular small modular reactors—will play an incredibly important part in that. We are moving forward with the programme we inherited from the previous Government, which was yet another incomplete process. We will make it happen as quickly as possible, and SMRs will play a key role in our energy mix.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  I can give that assurance. Indeed, every month I have been in this job, I have been in Aberdeen, meeting oil and gas companies to discuss the issues. We are not going to agree on everything, but I have been very clear that there will be a long future for oil and gas in the North sea. Yes, we absolutely have said that we do not want to issue any new licences for new fields, but we will not revoke any existing licences. That means that there will continue to be work in the North sea for a long time to come. I repeat that it is categorically untrue that our electricity or gas supplies have been at risk over the past week. We have robust systems in place, and they worked exactly as they should. Consumers lost absolutely no supply over the last few days, nor will they in the weeks and months ahead.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right that as well as building an energy system that will deliver generation capacity for the future, we need to work as fast as possible to reduce demand. Part of that is about moving away from gas to heat pumps. That is important not just for our energy system and climate, but for individual households in reducing their bills. We already see a huge shift in the uptake of heat pumps across the country. There is, of course, much more to do on that if we are to reach our target, but the Government are committed to that, and it is important for households right across the country. I echo his points on insulation. Those in fuel poverty are more likely to live in houses that are cold. The more we can do to create warmer homes—that is what the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), is doing—the better for everyone.

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right that this Government are moving as fast as possible to build a more resilient system to get the country off the rollercoaster of volatile fossil fuel markets. The Conservatives seem to oppose that, but they have been on something of a journey in all these questions: they used to champion net zero and recognise that climate change was a clear and present danger to the world, but now they are drifting further away from that, looking for more extremist views on Twitter and elsewhere to crowdsource their policy. We are getting on with building the energy system to bring down bills, deliver energy security and, yes, to deliver climate leadership.