Great British Energy Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a few words to some of the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. He mentioned the carbon cost of steel, but there is one other element we should not forget. I understand that building pylons to take power overground is cheaper than putting it underground, but I plead with the Minister to accept that there are areas that we should try to protect. In fact, in the long term, it is probably as cheap, if not cheaper, to put power lines underground. I recognise the dilemma that the Minister is in, but we should look at the aesthetic value of what we are talking about, as well as the financial one. I believe that there are some areas of the United Kingdom that we should protect at all costs.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom on carbon accounting. He said that he does not know very much about oilseed rape, but I do. About 20 years ago, in some of the very earliest stages of emissions reduction, I was involved commercially in that.

My noble friend asked that we should have pilot plants and studies to see whether the energy balance of oilseed rape can be done, as if it has never been done before. I can tell your Lordships that pilot plants were set up on Teesside, at enormous expense, and analysed to death. Although this is not a debate on farming, I can say that, at normal yields, when all was said and done, after the ploughing, sowing, fertilising, spraying, harvesting, processing and transportation, you came ahead on a carbon basis only when or if you burned the straw that otherwise would have been left behind in the field. Of course, at low yields, you spent more carbon on growing it than you got back at the end.

I make no other comment save to say that my noble friend is correct that, often, superficially attractive green energy schemes, when you boil them down, cost more carbon than they yield. That is important to look at because, otherwise, we could sleepwalk into an enormous waste of public funds through GB Energy, chasing projects that do not hit the target—which, of course, is to allow us to be more sustainable in future.