Energy Storage Capacity

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend’s question deserves a long answer because it is a complicated subject. We need to differentiate between short-term storage, particularly from batteries and elsewhere, which is currently expensive—although prices are coming down—and longer-term storage provided by the likes of pump storage stations such as Dinorwig. That has been around for decades, and there are similar schemes in Scotland too. We need to do all these things. We need to get more offshore wind because it is a very cheap form of power, but it is intermittent, so we also need storage capacity to balance out that intermittency. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, we also need more nuclear for baseload power.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, storage is a long-term solution, so can the Minister tell me whether Dungeness B, which was finally decommissioned only last year, might be brought back into service? Has the department examined the possibility of doing that as a short-term solution?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Of course we will want to ensure that the existing nuclear stations, of which Dungeness B is an excellent example, will continue into their lifespan as long as possible, but we will need to replace many of these ageing nuclear stations, which is why we recently passed the nuclear financing Act.