Energy Bill
Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Worthington
Baroness Worthington
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I want to clarify that I am not in any way saying that we should keep coal out of the capacity mechanism. I am stressing that we need to think very carefully about the design of the capacity mechanism so that it does not produce unintended consequences. I am also suggesting, as I have done in previous discussions, that there should be a back-stop measure to prevent the base-loading of coal should all the extra scenarios line up to make that the thing that they economically choose to do.
This is not about saying no to the capacity mechanism or to coal within that and I would not want to see coal closing unnecessarily. I want to see its role constrained to providing peaking and backup power rather than base-loading as it is today because it is so profitable.
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I could not help but smile when I heard my noble friend Lord Deben start his peroration to us because my mind went back to the 1980s when House of Lords Committees were doing exactly the same as they are doing today in a very effective way. My noble friend happened to be a joint Minister with me on a couple of Bills. He did not like what we did then I seem to recall. I am very glad now that he thinks we were right all along and doing a very good job in the 1980s as well as in 2013.
Turning to the amendment, I was interested by what the noble Baroness said because that was not how I read her amendment at all. She said, particularly when she intervened just now, that she did not want to drive coal out. But the effect of her amendment would be to drive coal and gas out and rely solely on renewables. The way that she phrased things at the end was much more balanced. She is a great crusader for renewable energy, but having read her amendment, I thought, “Well that’s great: the nuclear industry has the best advantage now. We can build a whole lot of nuclear plants because they have no carbon and that would be extremely good”.
I have always supported the nuclear industry. It is a pity that the previous Government did not support it more fully. We might not now be in the potential difficulties that we face, which my noble friend Lord Jenkin outlined in his amendment. Given what the noble Baroness said later in her intervention, I look forward to what the Minister has to say.
Energy Bill
Debate between Earl of Caithness and Baroness Worthington
The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, with regard to the first question that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, posed to me, yes, of course, I agree with him. I read out the sentence from paragraph 40 of our report. It was one of our conclusions that certainty was a pre-requisite for the investors. My question to my noble friend and the Committee was: is a delay of two years going to make that amount of difference when we have an EU target for 2028-32 to agree within a short timeframe ahead of us?
With regard to carbon capture and storage, I did not want to go down that track. I totally agree with the noble Lord but, again, we have limited evidence about it to date. I wish that there was much more that we could report to the Committee about the tests for carbon capture and storage. There are still some people who say that, despite what is going on at the moment, it will never become a commercial issue. With regard to nuclear, of course, having lived next door to Dounreay—as has my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart—I regret the closure of that research centre. Dounreay had the potential to have got us out of the hole we appear to be about to fall into.
Baroness Worthington
My Lords, I am delighted to speak to Amendments 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 14. If your Lordships will permit me, I will speak to Amendment 22 when we discuss Amendment 27, because I think that they are very similar. Unsurprisingly, having put my name to these amendments, I support them.
I congratulate the Government on having introduced these measures into the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, pointed out, they were not there at the start of the process, but the Government have clearly listened to the representations from a large number of organisations requesting that they be put into the Bill. Here they are, and here we are debating them in detail for the first time. We have had a fantastically detailed and wide-ranging debate today and I would like to make some contributions to some of the issues that have been mentioned already, as well as a few additional points.
First, why do we need such a target and why should we support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh? It is simply the fact that investors want this and the country needs it. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, said that only one trade organisation had made representations to him, but he and I were both present at a joint meeting of the Nuclear Industry Association, the Carbon Capture & Storage Association and the Renewable Energy Association, and all three were united in calling for greater certainty and for a decarbonisation target to be set as part of the Bill. That is just three trade associations. An additional 23 trade associations support it. Another 83 commercial companies support it. In total, more than 200 organisations support this provision being in the Bill. It is absolutely certain that we need it; investors have said that they need it. Simon Howard, chief executive of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, has said:
“There is significant investor appetite for the UK to be a global leader in profitable low-carbon energy solutions, providing the high-quality innovation and jobs that the country needs to ensure a future economic recovery”.
Basically, people want to invest in the UK, but they need certainty.