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

Lord Drayson Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Drayson (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness. I join her in thanking the committee staff for their excellent work on this report and their considerable intellectual contribution to it.

I want to emphasise the urgent need for decisive action by the new Labour Government on infrastructure investment. The UK is at an economic crossroads, and the choices we make in the coming months will determine not just the pace of our recovery but our long-term economic prosperity. I am delighted to welcome my noble friend Lady Gustafsson to our Front Bench and am greatly looking forward to her maiden speech. We are fortunate to have such an accomplished technology entrepreneur as our Investment Minister. I was struck that she wrote, in an excellent LinkedIn post last Sunday, that she was suffering from

“the CEO condition which means you want everything done your way”.

It is exactly that CEO mindset that is so needed in the UK Government right now. Nowhere was that clearer than in the evidence that the Science and Technology Committee heard during our inquiry.

It has been widely accepted that, for too long, the UK has lagged behind its global peers in infrastructure development. Indecision and a reluctance to embrace risk and make investment have left us with missed opportunities and anaemic growth. The UK is becoming poorer and falling behind as a result. It is time for that to change and it will need decisive action to achieve it—not consultation and review, but action.

Nowhere is this clearer than in energy infrastructure. A thriving economy requires reliable, sustainable and affordable energy. The new Government are accelerating our transition to a decarbonised grid by 2030 using renewable solar and wind energy. That means it is essential that we also have long-duration energy storage capacity. However, progress on building such a storage facility has been hindered by hesitation and delay. Witness after witness told us how the previous Government avoided decisions and failed to heed clear advice from industry on the need for action—hence the blunt title of our report to get on with it.

Unfortunately, our politics, our Civil Service and our industry regulators have become increasingly risk averse over the past 15 years. Significant investment involving technological innovation is risky. Failure is a real possibility and success requires political courage, a bias for action and skill in managing that risk. In short, we need Ministers with a CEO mindset who understand that the greatest risk lies in not making a decision and who focus efforts on managing risk as implementation proceeds.

If the UK fails to act on long-duration energy storage now, we will not meet our net-zero targets, and we will subject our society and economy to blackouts and higher energy costs. By committing to decisive action now, Labour Ministers can signal that Britain is serious about restoring the nation’s fortunes. They can inspire confidence that the UK is now a place where transformative projects get built and where vision is backed by action.

I have one question for the Minister: when will this Government decide to build the strategic reserve of long-duration energy storage that they already accept will be needed to deliver energy security and net zero?