Queen’s Speech — House of Lords, 2022-05-16
Topic: Energy
Questions: 2050—I am just 100 years out. Even if we get to that, a lot of countries in the world will not. Two things follow from that. The first is that climate change will not be significantly improved. We in this country produce 1% of the world’s emissions, so if we have all the struggles and make the vast expenditures but other countries do not, we will not have achieved anything so far as climate change is concerned Secondly, if we have spent an enormous amount of money improving our electricity and getting it all done, our electricity will almost certainly be more expensive than it is in other countries. There is a danger we have to watch, as the heavy industrial users of electricity will build their factories in other countries, not in those that have spent all that money on this. We have the time to deal with this, but we have to be very careful that that is not the end result of what we do.
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): We hope that it will do. Of course the market is in turmoil at the moment, but the noble Lord rightly pointed out that we have some very advanced LNG offloading facilities in the UK. We can play our part in helping parts of the EU that do not have LNG terminals, through the interconnection pipeline. But it is an international market; there is reduced supply and, of course, we all know that the price is at sky-high levels at the moment However, the current volatility in global energy prices and security concerns only underscores the importance of building strong home-grown renewable sectors and reducing our reliance on all fossil fuels. The ultimate way to deal with the high gas price is of course to use less of it. That is why this Government are so excited about hydrogen, which the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and others asked about. My noble friend Lord Liverpool and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, asked specifically about our plans for so-called green hydrogen. I am pleased to tell the House that we are introducing a comprehensive package of measures to get these projects off the ground and help this outstanding new technology to thrive in the British marketplace. The global market for these technologies is for the taking, and we have the innovation and engineering expertise to be world leaders, just as we are becoming world leaders in EV battery technology I reassure my noble friend Lord Young that we have provided £30 million-worth of funding to support vehicle-to-everything projects, and we will provide a further £11.4 million of innovation funding. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, and my noble friend Lord Leicester raised an important point about electric vehicles—EVs. We recently announced our electric vehicle strategy, which sets out our vision and action plan for the rollout of effective vehicle charging infrastructure in the UK; I actually agree that there is much that we can do to improve that. Of course, electric vehicles will not take off unless the appropriate charging infrastructure is in place The noble Baronesses, Lady Whitaker and Lady Hayman, and my noble friend Lord Liverpool all spoke about the important subject of tidal power, and they are right in some respects. Along with copious wind, the UK is also blessed with strong tides. The Government’s position is that tidal power could well contribute to our energy mix, as we transition towards a carbon-neutral power sector. Indeed, the energy security strategy commits to aggressively exploring the potential of tidal power to contribute to our net-zero ambitions Of course, building these projects requires finance, which is why the Government are introducing the UK Infrastructure Bank. This also answers the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer—