Offshore Wind Transmission Connections — House of Commons, 2020-11-05
Topic: Energy
Duncan Charles Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): This is my first Adjournment debate in this place, and I am proud to have been granted a debate on one of the most important areas that the Government are tackling. At its heart, we are dealing with climate change, and our efforts to provide clean, green power will set us apart as we tackle the single most important issue that all Governments around the world face Perhaps it is rather fitting that I am standing here at all on Guy Fawkes night, because had Guy Fawkes got his way back in 1605 and blown up the Houses of Parliament, I would not be able to be here to talk about a different kind of blow—the blowing of the wind that is to transform our energy sector and make us the leading nation in the whole world in the race to decarbonise and reach net zero. Back in December 2019, I stood on a commitment to care about and tackle climate change. Eleven months in, how are we are getting on? We are doing that, aren’t we, but why? Wind energy has the potential to be our greatest story and to give us energy security—just imagine that—as well as protecting our natural environment; all those things together Off the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, we already have 52% of all the wind farms in the country, and we will contribute well over 60% of all the country’s energy once the current applications are built. This programme, along with all the other initiatives we are contributing to, is making us the fastest country in the G7 to decarbonise since 1990. As well as that, we have been the first nation to legally commit to being bound to achieving net zero by 2050, an achievement that we on the Conservative Benches are all rightly proud of. But recently, we heard the Prime Minister announce that we will go even further, even faster. Not content with that, the Prime Minister four weeks ago announced that by 2030 every single household in the country will be powered by wind-produced energy. As he said: "As Saudi Arabia is to oil, the UK is to wind" And I have no doubt that the Prime Minister is sitting watching, having a cup of tea It is an intrepid quintet of Norfolk and Suffolk MPs who are already ahead of the curve. We saw that vision and we have a method to deliver it. It is at this point that I want to thank my colleagues, some of whom are here this evening, because without them we would not be as far down the line as we are now. My hon. Friends the Members for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) and for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) have been working on how to achieve that vision for months and, certainly before newbies like myself, even longer. For there is a problem that brings us to this debate. How do we connect that much power and put it into the transmission grid? We need a better system, a better method, and a fit-for-purpose and future-proof way Five years ago, nobody really cared. It was not the problem that it is now, but we have come an enormous way since then. We have now to catch up with the technology, catch up with the regulatory framework and catch up with the legislative processes.