Electricity Capacity (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Grantchester (Lab) [V]]

I am grateful to the Minister for his introduction to the regulations before the Committee today. He looks a little isolated in the Committee Room today, but I hope our words will buoy him up. We are conducting very successful deliberations today. As he remarked, these regulations are non-contentious and provide sensible revisions to strict interpretations to the letter of the previous regulations by the capacity market delivery body. I agree that the three amendments will enable a better dialogue between capacity providers and the body to enable corrections of non-material errors in pre-qualification applications to enable secondary trades to be better maintained and to enable appeals to be heard to extend compliance periods or withdraw reduction decisions. All these should enable a more competitive capacity market to operate, so I am content to approve the regulations today.

Although they are uncontentious, I must comment that I found the Explanatory Memorandum rather scant. While I note from paragraph 15.3 that the Explanatory Memorandum meets the required standards, which I am sure will have been set and agreed with your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, nevertheless it would have been helpful to me if the memorandum had offered an overview of the main pertinent elements of the consultation respondents’ comments. I realise that the Minister will reply that further information can be gathered through the link to the consultation document and the Government’s response, but some indication of which minor amendments were put forward that have been taken into account where sensible would have given better assurance that respondents were broadly supportive of the proposals. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, spoke about consultation and its importance with interpretation.

Furthermore, at paragraph 6.2 the Capacity Market (Amendment) Rules 2021 are specifically mentioned as additional to these regulations, but without explanation. The Minister said a little about the background details to that in his opening remarks, and I am grateful to him for that.

Having made these remarks, I merely add that the capacity market has worked well in bringing forward investments and innovations necessary to the electricity market reforms that are now appearing more and more to be merely providing free money to provide generation that either will not be called on or would be provided in any case, should there be a need. The most obvious example of this is nuclear power, where a plant is not subject to being switched on and off. Does the Minister consider this an issue, or does he believe that the price mechanisms adjust to this situation? Certainly, the initial operation of the capacity market has contended with and avoided the potentially huge volatility of price movements should various future energy needs predictions of marginal shortages have proved accurate. As we know, the cut-backs consequential to the Government’s austerity programme meant that there was no danger of the lights going out.

As the next review considerations begin to arise, can the Minister confirm that a full appreciation of the capacity market mechanisms to meet potential powers shortages will be part of that review and that it will not be limited to focusing merely on technical, operational measures? Will the review undertake more fundamental appraisals, such as considerations to replace the capacity market mechanisms with alternatives, such as strategic reserve capacity?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

I now call the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I will try one more time, before turning to the Minister, to call the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. As we are unable to reach the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, I now call the Minister to respond.