Great British Energy Bill

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

In years to come we may perhaps have brought in nuclear, for instance, with small modular reactors. I forgot to declare in Committee my modest shareholding in Rolls-Royce; it certainly would benefit if the contract was given to it. Small modular reactors might well bring in good new sources of electricity and it may be possible to wrap up Drax at some stage, which is polluting the atmosphere and contributing to CO₂ emissions. We have to be very careful that we do not fall into the trap of saying that, because it is being fed with sustainable wood chips or oil-seed rape is being grown and so forth, we are not emitting vast amounts of CO₂ to get to the point where we generate the electricity. We need to look very closely at this.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 13 and 44 in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for supporting Amendment 13, which is very straightforward. Very simply, it would exclude biomass from the things that GB Energy can invest in. Amendment 44 is drafted very tightly and makes the assumption that biomass will still be included, but then asks: will the Government report on the perceived carbon neutrality of that biomass, the percentage of power it will provide to the grid and the overall impact of it on achieving our domestic and international climate targets, particularly our nature targets?

I wanted to bring these back today as I did not feel like the Minister’s response in Committee addressed the issue. But it would be entirely remiss of me not to take the opportunity to say well done to the Government on what they have said about the future regime of Drax. I wondered whether the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, had picked up on this. It came out yesterday and is a big move on behalf of the Government to start to rely much less on Drax and to really try to clamp down on all the things he was talking about, such as importing old wood from Canada and the sense that we just cut up wood in the Pacific and ship it all the way here. The Government have gone a really long way and I am really grateful, because I and a lot of people have banged on about Drax now for a very long time. It is terrifically encouraging to see that the phase-out of this type of power is on the cards as we build up all the others. From my point of view, it does not mean that all biomass is okay; I think it is a very dodgy source of fuel.

I noted, in a report by E3G last month, that the clean power mission could be delivered without extending the lifetime of Drax, so perhaps the Minister can tell us how far they have considered this as an option and what options were considered. I have a few specific questions. Bioenergy is costly and, as I said before, has a great impact on nature and land use, and particularly on what we will have for food production. I know there are lots of things such as miscanthus that you do not have to replant, but you are still using up some really good agricultural land. Is this a good use of the money we are going to invest in GBE?

Can the Minister confirm that Drax will not be allowed to burn wood from primary forests for any of its generation? I am so pleased with the work that has been done, but I would like some confirmation that we can all listen to. On the issue of transparency, can he commit to his department publishing whatever research, analysis or investigation it has done before arriving at the decisions it has today? When I asked a Written Question on this recently, the substantive point was not answered.

As many people who care about this have seen, “Dispatches”, Private Eye, “Panorama” and even an Ofgem investigation have found that all the biomass energy generators in the UK have misreported data. This is endemic—it is continual. Along with several other noble Lords, I wrote to the FCA last week about some of these allegations, which contradict Drax’s annual report. So, while I appreciate the announcement, I would like to know what measures the Government are taking to tackle this issue. The operators—or at least one—cannot be trusted to mark their own homework, and the regulator has thus far failed to be completely on top of it. I know that we are tightening all the regulations, but is the Minister confident that his department will be able to deliver what has been asked for, because what has been asked for is a terrific step forward.

While the Government have let the door open for BECCS in the future, we need to be honest about the fact that we do not know whether it will work at the scale that is needed. It was very interesting to hear the outline of the earlier amendments in this group, with the extreme positivity about what carbon capture and storage will be, and I look forward to hearing more about it. However, at the moment it is taking out very little carbon from the atmosphere and, in all the future carbon budgets, it plays a very big role in us getting to net zero. Many people are anxious about whether this will be deliverable, and on what timescale.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, was music to my ears. This really is the missing prince at the ball—the missing element in the whole strategy of reducing emissions in order to curb the violence of climate change, which, after all, is the main purpose of all our endeavours. It is not a secondary purpose, it is the main purpose, and of course it is failing. Emissions are continuing to rise worldwide and the forecasts are very gloomy that they will rise still further. Our own performance has been good in contrast, as one tiny bit of the jigsaw, but overall the aim of reducing emissions is not succeeding. Carbon capture, usage and storage is an area where vast improvements can be made, with real effort to store emissions, such that we no longer have to watch those gloomy monthly or three-monthly figures detailing rising emissions worldwide again and again.

Furthermore, it is admitted, quietly—I think I have heard NESO and other experts say it openly—that carbon capture and storage is an essential part of the 2030 story. Because we have delayed so much—all parties are to blame—and we have not got on with nuclear, which we have allowed to shrink because we dithered on various other technologies, there has been very little advance on carbon capture and storage, but we know that in order to achieve decarbonised electricity by 2030—I think we are talking about the present electricity output, which is one-fifth of our total energy storage, not the whole of an electrified economy—we will need, in order to prevent outages, further gas-generated power. That is not proclaimed very loudly; CGN plants are being contracted for, designed and built to make it possible for there to be reliable and, we hope, affordable energy in 2030, even though it is substantially decarbonised.

That will require an output of carbon of considerable size, which will have to be captured and stored, otherwise the system will not work. The 2030 target is literally unobtainable, unless we have an elaborate expansion of carbon capture and storage for gas-generated electricity, which is an essential part of the pattern for 2030, as it probably is for 2040 and 2050 as well. Domestically, this is a central issue, yet it is hardly mentioned in this discussion or in the Bill.

That is not all; worldwide, the one contribution that this nation could really make through its brilliant technology is in developing cheaper versions of carbon capture and storage. All over Asia, there are coal-driven electric plants belching carbon and smoke, and more are being built at the moment. China has achieved amazing things in reducing its coal-based electricity from 1,900 gigawatts a year down to about 1,000 gigawatts. As we now produce no electricity from coal, which is rather amazing, that is an infinite number of times the amount that we produce. China is down to 1,000 gigawatts, but that is still a vast addition every year and every day—it is producing much more than we do in a year in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane as well.

To deal with the world’s problem, carbon capture and storage is essential, capturing not only carbon emitted when generated from fossil fuels but carbon direct from the atmosphere. Some major projects are being developed around the world on that scale. All these are essential projects to achieve the main aim, which is to lower emissions. If that is the main aim then Great British Energy should surely have a serious role in it.

We should be using the resources of organisations with money to invest in getting the cost down, to the point where it is possible to put some kind of abatement on those 11,000 chimneys and have some control of the carbon to be captured. Can that be done in the next stages? Of the countries concerned, one is talking mainly about the United States, where it can be done; China, where they are trying to do it; and India, where they are trying hard but not succeeding at all. They need the engineering skills to install carbon capture and storage, once we have developed systems which are cheaper and more economic. There is a whole new programme there to be developed. Is it being developed and invested in? Is this organisation looking at it? We have not had a single word from the Government—not a word—on the idea that this should be a major part of the story.

The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, is totally right that this should of course be a major part of the story. I fear that, as with so many parts of the endeavour to get to a green transition, we are losing sight of the main purpose, which is reducing emissions. This nation is superbly equipped to contribute on that front, but not necessarily by itself subsidising more and more low-carbon electricity for our own purposes. We should go that way but not push it too fast, because if we do that then we will slow things down.

If we are to contribute to the world’s efforts on this, which are failing and going backwards at the moment, and to make more progress, we must turn to carbon capture and storage. Why is there no mention of it in the Bill? Please can it go in, through this amendment or in other ways that the Government choose, to indicate that we are serious about reducing emissions and not just about the virtuous side of clean energy, which is very nice and very important but not the main aim?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 53, which seeks to ensure that the voices of local people are heard when proposals are made or encouraged by GB Energy for renewable energy projects that impact on local areas. This is a group about community involvement and consultation, and how people might have their say. I regret to say that, in so many cases, local people have been airbrushed from the debate, which has been conducted above their heads. We build resentment, scepticism and resistance when local people are denied their say. I speak with authority when I say that the NSIP system is being systematically abused by developers of solar farms, who string together otherwise stand-alone and discrete proposals for small-scale solar and aggregate them together as a device to somehow creep over the threshold. The voices of the local planning authority, locally elected representatives, local people and business are excised from the record.

The NSIP system was designed to allow truly exceptional and impactful infrastructure projects to be considered in the national context. I completely support that principle, but I see in my own area, for example, that one proposal, extending to 1,100 hectares but covering 40 square kilometres and at least a dozen separate landowners some 15 miles apart, has been cobbled together in the crudest and most cynical manner to creep over that 100-megawatt capacity line. It undermines public confidence in our planning system and acts as a recruiting sergeant for conspiracy theorists and their superficial, fundamentalist views. We will all become tainted and tarred by their brush while we deny the public due process and a proper say on these schemes, which should be decided locally but are not.

Later, on Amendments 50 and 52, I will say that solar should not be permitted on the best and most versatile land—grades 1 to 3A. I recognise that other land could be used for large-scale renewables, but we need to exercise care and caution. Even grade 4 or grade 5 land has a value, but that is more likely to include amenity value, outstanding landscape contribution or wider social benefit, perhaps in areas of outstanding natural beauty or other designations. It is for that reason that, for all land—even in cases where land may be at the poorer end of agricultural quality—changes in use to renewables more widely should be consulted on for residents within a 20-mile buffer of the widest proposed land extent. My amendment provides for this stipulation.

It is because the NSIP system is being abused and has fallen into disrepute that I have brought this amendment to repair the damage and indignation that local people rightly feel. We are storing up some terrible problems if the political class structurally sidelines views in an unthinking dash for renewables and fails to consider those wider impacts.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly too to speak to my Amendment 22. I am very grateful for all the support of so many noble Lords, and I am thrilled to be standing here after so many attempts to get community energy into the statute books. I note the work of Power for People, which has done a fantastic job over the years to make this happen.

Following on from the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, my sister has lived in Denmark for over 50 years now and she has had a financial stake in a wind farm for a very long time. She gets good, reliable, cheap energy. They really like it; it makes you feel like part of something.

I do not support the Liberal Democrats’ amendment that GB Energy should have to pay for all the home insulation, but I am extremely worried about where this money is going to come from. I do not see a place. We all understand that we have to do something about homes, for all the many reasons that the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, set out, yet there seems to be a bit of a black hole, as we call it, in this department. You cannot get everything out of the GB Energy fund, and it is right that it should be ring-fenced around the actual production of the new green fuels that we all need, but there needs to be a be a really tough plan. I would be very interested to know what the Government have in store.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

The aim of my amendment is not that GB Energy should pay for it; I feel that GB Energy would be a good body to deliver it.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

Okay.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, may I add to the outbreak of harmony by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the Minister for Amendment 8? As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, it is great to see local community benefit coming on to the face of the Bill. Especially since all the supporting material about GB Energy is very strong on community energy schemes, it just seemed rather crazy that it was not in the Bill, so I say thank you for that.

Ideally, of course—we environmentalists are miserable people who always want more, so I am moving on to Amendment 22, to which I also have added my name—with the Government having gone as far as Amendment 8, which puts community energy schemes on the face of the Bill, it would be quite nice to get slightly more specific recognition that such schemes need to be part of the strategic priorities. Therefore, can the Minister say why he will not accept Amendment 22, which I assume he will not support?