Long-duration Energy Storage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the Labour Climate and Environment Forum. I joined the Science and Technology Committee just as it was finalising its long-term storage report, so I am afraid that I cannot claim any credit whatever. However, I am pleased that I can speak today in support of this important report and of our admirable chairman, who was quite unfairly attacked by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—but let us not keep that debate going.

I also add my welcome to the Minister my noble friend Lady Gustafsson; I look forward to her maiden speech in response to this debate. With her investment role, she will understand that driving investment is probably the only issue in this topic that absolutely has to be grasped.

As many noble Lords already pointed out yesterday, the power grid operated in exactly the way that a long-term energy storage system should be designed to avoid: the temperature dropped, the demand for heat and power went up, the wind and sun were absent—the famous Dunkelflaute—and the reserve gas-fired power stations had to be cranked up at great expense, because everybody else in Europe was calling for gas at the same time. We cannot go on like that.

When Conservative Ministers came to the Select Committee a year ago and we probed how they saw such a situation being dealt with in the long term, we were quite hard on one of them, if I remember correctly. He eventually lost his cool completely and snapped, “That is why we need to have a reserve of gas-fired power stations, even if they are unabated. Something’s needed to keep the lights on”. I was a bit disappointed in that as a response.

I am glad to say that we have moved on considerably from then. The Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, which was published in December, is a major step in the right direction. It is only a first step, in a route map that needs to be clearly laid out, to the decarbonising of power to avoid the spectre of dependency on expensive, insecure and polluting unabated gas. It is interesting that polling of the public that we did last year for LCEF showed that, at the height of the energy price crisis, the public ranked energy security equal with reducing the cost of energy as important in their mind.

The 2030 action plan outlines intentions to capture and store excess renewable energy generated when the sun shines or the wind blows and we have more electricity than we need. As noble Lords have pointed out, we currently pay renewable energy generators not to produce this surplus energy, which, even given the polite title of “curtailment”, is bonkers in anybody’s books. The plan, of course, focuses only on the revised target date for zero-carbon energy of 2030—the clue is in the title—but, for longer-term back-up and storage, it points in the direction of travel beyond 2030. It outlines what measures need to be put in place and some initial timetables, although not enough. This is all vital if we are to inspire confidence in investors and leverage private money to tackle the task.

Can my noble friend the Minister today provide us and the investment market with additional assurance about the Government’s intentions beyond 2030? I have some specific questions. First, are the Government clear that long-duration energy storage, which provides highly flexible power, is the missing piece of the energy jigsaw and that it will reduce our reliance on unabated gas generation, allow variable renewables to be used more efficiently, reduce costs, enhance our energy security and contribute to the reduction in carbon emissions?

Secondly, do the Government support the central role of hydrogen storage, along with other technologies such as pumped hydro storage, battery technologies and compressed air? Do they support the central idea that a reduction in the reliance on gas, as outlined by the Royal Society, will reduce costs?

Thirdly, are the Government committed to providing an investable policy environment, including a cap and floor regime, for long-duration energy storage technologies and policy support through dispatchable power agreements and other mechanisms beyond 2030, to enable the construction of hydrogen storage projects and supporting pipelines?

Fourthly, does my noble friend the Minister judge that we are providing enough support for projects aimed at testing the viability of carbon capture and storage, to achieve both the decarbonisation of gas-fired power stations and the creation of a sustainable hydrogen supply chain?

All these issues have a strong spatial element, and noble Lords will recognise that I cannot speak without mentioning the Government’s land use framework, which we hope is about to emerge. There are some very interesting steps, such as is happening in Hull, to co-locate various cutting-edge testing projects, such as CCUS and hydrogen projects, to see the value of co-location and to explore the spatial aspects of these technologies. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us when we might see the strategic spatial energy plan and what it will contain? Can she say how it will nest in the Government’s overarching land use framework, which will deal with all the key demands for land? We heard from the Defra Minister on Tuesday that it will be launched for consultation this month—but I heard that last Christmas, too.

Our excellent chair and many other noble Lords have already addressed the need for speed, and I will finish, very briefly, with my view that all these strands need to be progressed with commitment and vigour, to give confidence to the investment market as well as to hit targets. Large-scale hydrogen will take seven to 10 years to build. Although the word of the debate may be “Dunkelflaute”, I prefer the title of the report: Get On With It. I am not as well brought up as our admirable Select Committee’s chairman, so I would urge, even more starkly, the use of the admirable phrase “JFDI”. For those who do not know what that means, it is simply, “Just do it”, with a little embellishment that I will not repeat for fear of offending the Hansard writers.