Manufacturing Post Brexit

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There are tremendous opportunities facing the UK following Brexit. We can have regulatory freedom in a number of areas where we were constrained by the EU. I do not want to cast doubt on the noble Lord’s figures, but manufacturing in the UK is doing well. According to Make UK, which is the largest UK manufacturing trade body, manufacturers are continuing to increase investment in the next 12 months, more than half of manufacturers plan to increase investment in both people and training within the next 12 months, and a further 57% are planning to increase investment in new product development. Manufacturing is doing well. We should not talk it down.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

When we look to supporting manufacturing industries, is not the immediate question what we are all going to do in the face of rising American protectionism and subsidies, particularly in the motor sector? Are we going to challenge them? Are we going to join with the EU in its enormous plan for subsidies to counter American subsidies, or are we going to do nothing or go it alone?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US is clearly going to have big effects on the UK and Europe. We need to work together with our friends and partners in engaging with the US to try and convince them that a rise in global protectionism is really not the way to go.

REUL Bill: Trade Unions and Workers’ Rights

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I can see that we will have lots of interesting debate when this legislation arrives. The noble Baroness is wrong; we are not just considering all the regulations in the timescale she identified. If the regulations need to be updated, then each will of course come to this House for consideration, as all secondary legislation does.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister probably needs a touch of support on this matter. Is it not the position that, if we were to take these 3,000 to 4,000 regulations and really examine the aspects of each one, after 40 years of being members of the European Union, that would take us years and not one year? Also, do we even have the capacity as a Parliament to deal with the complexities of such an enormous range of law changes?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. The concern now from the Opposition for all these regulations is touching, but of course they did not show such concern when they were introduced into UK law without any consideration in the first place.

COP 27: Outcome

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

If the noble Lord is referring to the UK’s taxation system, it is clear that those at the top end of the scale pay the largest amounts of taxation by far. If that translates through to our international climate commitments, where we are proud to be contributing something like £11 billion, then I suppose in a strange way the noble Lord gets his wish.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the main problem at COP 27, and the main disappointment, was that it failed to address the central and crucial issue of rapidly rising global carbon emissions. In light of that, is it not time to reassess our own contribution to meeting this crisis, recognising that a 1% reduction in emissions, which our net zero might achieve, is all right, but it is only an example and an example is not going to be enough. We have to think in terms of mobilising old and new technologies on a massive scale with other countries to begin to bring the temperature down from the 2 to 2.5 degrees centigrade it is heading to, and curb the otherwise inevitable climate violence which will hurt a lot of people.

Energy Security

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, there is much to welcome in this very important Statement. It shows real momentum in this area, which has been lacking in the past. I will ask the Minister two questions. First, the whole of Europe is covered by an intricate and balanced system of electricity interconnectors. Can we be assured that there is no question of undermining that in pushing for the greater degree of energy security which the Statement calls for, because that will be sorely and continuously needed?

Secondly, would he care to chance his arm and offer even an estimate of when Sizewell C might be operational, if it is authorised from now? I declare an interest as being involved in the instigation of Sizewell B. That took 15 years to get going, from the authorisation to the actual production of commercial electricity. The idea is that Sizewell C is going to be a replica of Hinkley Point C. As we all know, Hinkley Point C is not without its problems, and the EPR model on which it is built is certainly full of problems. At every point where it has been tried and tested, not one EPR has yet existed which has not run into major problems. There are those who say that a set of small modular reactors would be ready much earlier on a Sizewell C site than sticking to the large-scale EPR Hinkley model. Could the Minister comment on that? There is very strong opinion that, if we want low-carbon electricity within the lifetimes of most people now alive, we are going to need that rather more quickly than these huge large-scale projects can achieve or have achieved in the past.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. He takes a close interest in this issue, having been Secretary of State for Energy in the past. He makes a very good point about the importance of interconnectors. They will clearly play a key role in balancing supplies across Europe, particularly as we have more and more intermittent renewables both in this country and in other parts of Europe. Of course, there are interconnectors linking us with Ireland, as well as with France, the Netherlands, Belgium, et cetera. They clearly will have an increased role to play. I forget the exact figure, but in the energy security strategy we set out that we wanted to expand the number of interconnectors that are available because of the important role that they will have.

I cannot give the noble Lord an exact date for when Sizewell C will be commissioned; these large nuclear projects have a somewhat chequered history. This is a tried and proven design, but it clearly will be a number of years before this comes on stream; it will, however, still be valuable and still be needed. In fact, if we had disregarded the advice of the former leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2010 in his famous video, we would indeed now be having new nuclear coming on stream to help us in the energy crisis that we have at the moment. SMRs, of course, will also play an important role, but they are still being developed and designs are still being improved, so, again, it will be a few years before they come on stream.

COP 27: Commitments

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on securing this debate and on the very realistic assessment he has just given us. He has shown not only speed but agility in giving your Lordships’ House a chance to address the post-COP 27 situation so early. We will of course come back to it again and again, because all the issues are enormous and ongoing.

Outside, there has been a mild—or, more than that, a quite strong—feeling of disappointment at what came out of COP 27. But there was no surprise because, even before it got going, many people felt that the priorities remained wrong in relation to the serious issues that we face. I will quote the excellent chair of COP 26, Alok Sharma, who I believe will join us shortly in your Lordships’ House. As he said, there was no mention in the text of emissions peaking before 2025, and emissions of course continue to increase at a considerable rate, collectively. We are drifting further and further away from the Paris targets—this realism has to be faced if we are going to mobilise the right answers to the situation.

Alok Sharma added that there was no

“Clear follow-through on the phase down of coal.”


That is understandable, because Asia and Africa are driven largely by coal, and new coal stations are being constructed now. The proportion of electricity, or power generally, generated from coal across Africa and Asia is not decreasing, I am afraid; on the contrary, it is increasing. He also said that the text of the communiqué did not contain

“A clear commitment to phase out … fossil fuels.”


Again, that is a reflection of an ugly fact: 85% of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. So, over two or three decades, we are talking about the most colossal undertaking in human history, far exceeding the industrial revolution or any other vast technological change in the past, to transform the world so that it no longer depends upon fossil fuels. It will take time and will have to be orderly, and just passing resolutions and putting them in texts is no contribution at all.

Most people rightly point to what is missing from all this. There are clearly some good things: the idea of a loss and damage fund to help those in real difficulty over climate change is obviously desirable, but it has to be formulated and organised. But everyone says, “Where’s the strategy? What is the grand strategy to meet this huge challenge to the stability of nations and the well-being of the 8 billion people, as we now are, on this planet?”

To my mind, the priorities are wrong on two levels. First, on our own contribution, which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned, if you ask the experts what we in the United Kingdom are doing, the answer is, first, setting an example. I am always a little uneasy about that: if you talk to friends in Delhi, Beijing or anywhere in Asia, they do not seem to be taking much notice of our example. Still, we are trying and doing our best, and I do not deride that for one moment. The second answer is that we are aiming for net zero—for production, not consumption, because of course we continue to import massive amounts of carbon through our huge import facilities. Will that contribute much, given the size of the challenge? We produce about 1% of world carbon emissions; I am told that China produces in a week what we do in a year, so it is a very small pimple on this vast problem.

I am sure we could do much better in our contributions if we were more focused on what the issues really are. The issue is the ever-rising level of emissions from thousands and thousands of coal-fired stations, and thousands of other sources of carbon throughout Asia, owing to the size of the human race. If we are to make an effective contribution—more than just feeling we have done our bit with net zero—we will have to mobilise our technology and resources on a scale not contemplated since the wars of the past. Even they were on a smaller scale because we were talking about a far smaller world population and a far smaller problem in the world. We are now being called on to face up to the need to use our most brilliant talent and to make real sacrifices in the interests of curbing the ever-rising level of emissions.

I have long argued, as have many others, that the immediate national role that we can develop—I should like to hear how the Minister thinks we are getting on with this—is using our technological skill to reduce and cheapen considerably the methods of carbon capture, storage and usage. We should also cheapen the methods of installing those carbon-capture technologies in, as I said, thousands and thousands of smoking chimneys from coal-fired stations across the whole of the developing world, particularly in Asia and Africa, and using that to start curbing the main sources of emissions growth. That is where these emissions are really coming from. America is the biggest source—it may be getting some kind of grip on it now, although it has a long way to go—but the really fast-growing sources are India and China. We do not really know about the figures for Moscow. They say they are doing things and planting trees, but the net effects are not easy to see.

These areas are where we can really make a contribution, nationally, with our technological skill, but I am not convinced that we are doing that now. I am not convinced that the resources we are putting into NZ might not be better used for contributing the technology that will actually reduce climate emissions globally. It may not make us feel so good, but that is where the real impact can be made nationally.

Then we come to the wider world effort, and here the scene does fall short. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, rightly said, it falls very considerably short of what we should be achieving. We must bring a halt to, or start reducing, the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere, now reckoned to be at the level of 422 parts. That is much too high—it must come down. The UNFCCC says that it must come down, our own Climate Change Committee says that it must come down and every expert says that it must come down. How can it be done? The answer is that we have to move on to a totally new area of innovation in carbon absorption: the direct extraction of carbon from the atmosphere on a scale not yet contemplated—and, alas, not discussed very much at Cairo.

This is where we should take a lead nationally, in a huge international effort to create the kind of schemes that Imperial College is now proposing: huge new carbon sinks and huge new ecosystems of every kind around the world, which can be developed. The first is now being suggested in Morocco. The noble and right revered Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned Morocco, as I did the other day; it can supply us with about 10 gigawatts—three or four nuclear power stations’ worth—of solar, low-carbon electricity in a few years’ time. More than that, it and other countries can provide huge desert areas in which new ecosystems can be built.

None of this was discussed, as far as I can make out, at all in Cairo. Therefore, I think the time has come for us to raise our game massively and to recognise that this is the biggest single move in the organisation of our planet since the Industrial Revolution. I saw a figure this morning that said it would require $100 trillion. I think that is far too high and we can do it for less, but we need innovation and ingenuity on a scale we did not see at Cairo. I hope, however, that in this nation we can at least point out the realities and raise our game.

Newport Wafer Fab

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord knows that I cannot comment on other live cases until final orders are made. I can give him some figures from the National Security and Investment Act report, published in March. The NSI unit received 222 notifications and 17 applications were called in. Since then, we have made 10 final orders, and acquisitions have been unwound or blocked on three occasions.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, there has been some change of view over time about this case, so might we expect further changes of view in other areas where the Chinese are deeply involved—for instance, in civil nuclear power, where they are embedded? There have been doubts about that all the way along. Can the Minister assure us that when and if a change of view is beginning to develop, or new facts come to light, he will keep us informed on this change in policy in the way that our entire nuclear programme is going?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I do not accept that there has been a change in policy. The policy is the National Security and Investment Act, which this House passed. If and when other trigger events occur, there will be a full investigation by the NSI team in my department and the Secretary of State will take a quasi-judicial decision, as he has done in this case.

Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: Energy Supply Shortfalls

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord asks a very good question, given his experience. We keep these matters under constant review, but both Northern Ireland and the Republic depend on Great Britain for supply of gas and certain amounts of electricity. All the transmission system operators and civil servants on both sides of the border are working very closely together to make sure we plan for any operational difficulties.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, some parts of the energy supply of Northern Ireland are part of a larger energy entity for the whole of the island of Ireland. Can the Minister explain what role it might play? Given that there is plenty of gas on the high seas waiting for destinations and the Republic of Ireland has some terminals to receive it, there ought to be no problem sharing that in a constructive way.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I will check but I do not think my noble friend is exactly right; I do not think the Republic of Ireland has any LNG terminals. It relies on the ample supply Great Britain has. We supply them through our interconnector pipelines. He is also right that there is a single electricity market in Ireland with power stations, many of them gas-fired, on both sides of the border. We will ensure that they continue to receive supplies.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 49 and the introduction given by my noble friend. First, I apologise for not being around on Monday; being here was outwith my control. But I watched the debate, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes did a wonderful job. I first did a double act with him in the September of 1974, when we educated the Scottish public about devolution. Since that point, I have been lost in awe of him, not just for his knowledge but for his energy. I was recently at a significant birthday party, and the amount that that man can do is quite amazing. However, I am here today to address the carbon capture and storage issues.

I should declare an interest: I am the honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, and I have been involved in the interest in carbon capture and storage since it was called “clean coal technology”—which gives my age away now as well.

As my noble friend Lord Foulkes pointed out, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association has been very helpful to us in drafting some of these amendments. One of the reasons why it is important to take it into account is that although an awful lot of us have been around carbon capture and storage for a long time, I do not think that most people realise the extent to which the Carbon Capture and Storage Association has changed. In the past year, there has been an exponential growth in membership, and it is coming from a lot of companies that are at the cutting edge of technology.

Our concern addressed in Amendment 49 is that Clause 63 is restrictive. We have been helped very much by the Minister’s department in looking at where we can go from this stage onwards, and it is unfortunate that the way this clause has been drafted means that the shortlisted projects that can be available during phase 2 are limited to industrial power generation and hydrogen. However, there are UK companies now developing engineered greenhouse gas removal technologies —GGRs—which are keen to connect to the CO₂ transport and storage network. At lot of these are small companies that are moving, and there is uncertainty. Many noble Lords in the Chamber today have been around carbon capture for quite some time but do not realise the extent to which new people are coming into the field. The carbon emissions committee made the point that carbon capture and storage is now a necessity, not an option.

We are waiting for the business model for these new companies to be developed; they want to join in the process in due course. It is that ability to see them join the process that is behind this amendment. It is not nit-picking; it is seeking to find a route that allows them to move forward. These technologies currently include bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture, which would be excluded from the process if we did not have an amendment such as this.

This will prepare the Bill for the future. It ensures that we are future-proofing and that we have the ability to move rapidly in a way that would allow the inclusive use of all technologies that can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, not just those which capture from a commercial or industrial source. I commend Amendment 49, and make no apology for saying that we will come back at fairly regular intervals with amendments—probably small in size—which seek to take into account the new companies that are looking to enter into carbon capture and storage.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the mover and seconder of this amendment have mentioned direct air capture, because sometimes there is confusion between carbon capture and storage and the actual absorption of carbon out of the atmosphere on an enormous scale. Frankly, this is where the big impact will be made in future.

I know that we have made efforts with carbon capture and storage on and off over the years. There is a theoretical idea that finding a way to cheaply cap every chimney of the 9,000 coal-fired stations across Asia and Africa and pipe away the carbon might solve some problems and make a small impact on the overall rising greenhouse gases. However, the most sizeable absorption of carbon that is already in the atmosphere is through direct air capture and climate recovery.

Schemes are already being developed with the input and encouragement of Imperial College and other sources—and in other countries—for developing direct air capture on an absolutely enormous scale. Of course, we cannot do this alone; this is part of an international rescue, if you like, in a way that really begins to give some hope that emissions can be offset so that we can start getting some leverage and control on the overall carbon in the atmosphere. Without this, we will undoubtedly miss all the Paris targets and everyone throughout the world will face very dramatic and increased climate violence, very cold winters and very hot summers.

So I hope that the Minister will indicate that this area is in the Government’s mind and that the development of huge carbon sinks can commence—for instance, in deserts across the world that have already been designated as uninhabited areas. Carbon can be sunk into gigantic lakes the size of Wales or Dubai, or four times the size of London. These vast new developments would offset the overacidity of the ocean. These things can be done. Carbon can be captured and used. CO₂ is a fantastic promoter and fertiliser of food on a colossal scale, and if we are moving into an era of world food shortage, covered areas fed by carbon from huge carbon sinks will really begin to make some impact on the scene.

The other development for carbon sinks is that we could just plant a lot of trees, but that is not very good. Trees are moderate absorbers of carbon although, of course, if they go up in flames they put all the carbon back into the atmosphere straightaway. The real development comes from mangrove groves, which are 16 times more absorbent of CO₂ than other trees. They can be promoted along with saltwater and freshwater lakes in areas where there is a lot of sun and where electricity is therefore virtually costless. Of course, this is at or near the equator. These are the schemes that will save us all and which our Government should be leading in developing by thinking about and backing the necessary legislation. Please, can we have a little more thought on this excellent amendment and the ideas behind it?

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

I wish to express my support for Amendments 39 and 49. I have been looking for a place to make my interjection, which ought to have been encapsulated in an amendment, but perhaps I should propose an amendment at Report. However, now is as good a time as any to air my suggestions.

Aviation contributes significantly to emissions of carbon dioxide. These emissions do not approach the level attributable to road transport but, nevertheless, they must be eliminated. It may be possible to replace short-haul aircraft with aircraft that depend on battery power, but long-haul aviation cannot be electrified. It will continue to depend on liquid fuels. It has been suggested that the fuel could be liquefied hydrogen, but this seems be impractical. Conventional hydrocarbon fuels have an energy density that greatly exceeds that of hydrogen, which is difficult to store in a liquid state and demands considerable storage space. Jet engines that burn hydrogen have not yet been developed.

It seems that hydrocarbon fuels must continue to be used in long-haul aviation. Eventually, this will be acceptable only if the carbon element of these fuels can be sequestered from the atmosphere and the hydrogen element of the fuels becomes green hydrogen. When such fuels are burned, their carbon element will be returned to the atmosphere. Moreover, the use of green hydrogen, as opposed to the so-called blue hydrogen derived from the steam reformation of methane, will mean that no emissions of carbon dioxide will come from this source. To manufacture aviation fuels derived from the direct air capture of carbon and from hydrogen generated by electrolysis will require a huge input of energy. Sufficient energy would be available only if we were able to depend on nuclear reactors to provide it. Such synthetic fuels will be costly to produce; unless they are subsidised, they will be unable to compete with petroleum-based fuels or fuels derived from biological feedstocks. However, biofuels have a high opportunity cost, since the production of their feedstock is liable to pre-empt the use of valuable agricultural land. They are therefore best avoided.

We need to support the development of carbon-neutral synthetic aviation fuels. I propose therefore that, in the first instance, they should be allowed to incorporate green hydrogen as well as carbon not derived from direct air capture but captured from fossil-fuel emissions. In time, both these allowances would be abolished.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4, as well as Amendment 5, on which my noble friend Lord Moylan made an extremely interesting speech, as were the speeches just made by the noble Lords, Lord Ravensdale and Lord West. I declare my interest in energy matters as an adviser to Mitsubishi Corporation—one of the world’s largest producers of heat pumps, as well as of all connectors and the switching stations associated with them, both here and overseas—and the Kuwait Investment Office, with which the linkage, through its oil and gas production, is obvious.

I am afraid this sounds suspiciously like a Second Reading debate rather than a Committee debate. That is perhaps inevitable, given that we are in the midst of a first-class energy crisis—the biggest certainly in my active lifetime. Naturally, your Lordships are taking any opportunity—as we are entitled to do—to relate remarks on this enormous Bill to the very difficult dilemmas that the nation now faces, with no obvious way out, a cacophony of new views about what should be done, an absence of views about the international dimension, which I will mention in a moment, and a general bewilderment that, somehow or other, we will have to borrow a great deal more money to prevent real suffering, collapse and bankruptcy across a large part of the enterprise and small business sector, and so on.

I am not going to support Amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4 because they do not add much to the purposes, or indeed deficiencies, of the Bill. If they did, I would say let us support them, but that is not what they do.

I want to comment in passing on my noble friend Lord Moylan’s remarks on pump storage. He mentioned the Dinorwig installation in north Wales. I had the honour and pleasure of authorising not the original installation itself but the expansion in the early 1980s. One interesting fact for your Lordships is that it was capable then of delivering within 12 minutes 2 gigawatts into the system. The remarkable fact is that it never needs to work at all to be an enormous addition to our generating system and an enormous saving. Why? It is because the fact of what it can do enables the rest of the power system and all the power stations to operate at slightly higher capacities, with lower safety margins, than they otherwise would—in the knowledge that this extra is always there. So we have the extraordinary situation of a vast installation that never need actually operate to make substantial savings. That is one of the anomalies of the national energy system that we have to familiarise ourselves with.

As for the amendments—to a Bill that, frankly, does not leave me totally happy anyway—first, I am unhappy about the lack of any address in the amendments, let alone in the Bill, to the international dimension; at most, they very slightly address it. I admit there is a section on interconnectors, and that is very important. In fact, the interconnector element in our future diversity of supply is going to increase substantially; I think the Bill mentions 18 gigawatts of interconnectors. I understand that Morocco is thinking of adding an enormous 3 gigawatts of clean energy—solar energy using linked cabling from Morocco all the way to the UK—and there will be many similar sources. They all raise very complicated issues since they have to be managed under direct current, because you cannot put alternative current underwater; they have to have amazingly extensive energy transformations from direct current back to the AC that we can use inside our system.

The truth is that the resilience and security of our system is going to depend not less but more on the international environment, international supply and the sorts of issues that have been raised by the horrors of Ukraine and Russia’s determination to distort to the maximum the entire energy system of western Europe—and that includes us physically. All these issues need addressing in intense detail, but I do not see that detail mobilised in the Bill.

Secondly, the amendments talk, as does the Bill, about our climate commitments. Obviously our climate commitment in law, in the Climate Change Act, is to achieve net zero by 2050, but what actually are our climate commitments? I would like to hear from the Minister what new thinking is going on in this respect. Surely the aim of our endeavours in our climate commitments is to limit global emissions and greenhouse gases. The question that we have to ask ourselves, again and again, as we struggle towards net zero, is not only whether we can afford it—and many people say it is going to cost a lot of money—but whether, when we have got there, it will have any effective impact on curbing the growth of global emissions, getting to the Paris targets and halting greenhouse gases. There seems to be an assumption that the greenhouse gases will stop at the white cliffs of Dover if we can achieve net zero. It does not work like that. I am afraid the world is integrated, in the sense that greenhouse gases are increasing very rapidly, and our efforts and contribution need to be rethought again and again in order to make a serious impact on that.

Achieving net zero by 2050 with clean power and electricity requires a multiplication by about seven or eight times of our existing clean power sector—that is, wind, solar and now of course nuclear, which is recognised by the European Union as part of the ESG group and therefore clean energy. That needs to be multiplied by six or seven times, including a vast increase in wind power and solar power, as well as in our nuclear power. That would mean several new nuclear power stations, but they are not being built and are not going to be. No one is planning on building them. We are building one now but it is in considerable difficulties. The ex-Prime Minister said in his outgoing speech that he wanted to build a lot more, but that would be 10 or 15 years away, and the chances of the system working and doing so efficiently, if it is a replication of Hinkley C, are very slight indeed.

All that is just to get to net zero. Beyond that, we must have legislation—and understanding in that legislation—to achieve a genuine contribution to climate change curbing. That is not going to be done. Adaptation is going to be needed on a massive scale to prevent really bad heat in summer, really cold winters and enormous flooding that will affect us as well as many others. That is the element that is not in the Bill, and the amendments would not add very much to it.

As to minimising costs, which the amendment mentions—it is also mentioned in the Bill itself and in the explanatory documents for it—how is this to be done? We will not minimise costs by trying to build, very rapidly, these enormously expensive new, large-scale nuclear stations. We will not minimise costs unless we remain totally integrated into the world energy supply system or unless we deal, day by day, on a sensitive basis, with our Norwegian suppliers of natural gas and electricity. If we take our mind off that for a moment, that gas will probably go elsewhere, as is happening now as Germany tries to fill up its strategic gas storage tanks, as are many other countries. All this is creating not stability, resilience or security but the opposite.

I therefore ask the Minister that when he turns down this amendment, as he no doubt will—he is quite right to do so, because it is unnecessary and adds nothing—he gives us a little assurance that in this new and changing situation, this long-term future which we have to build on and in which, by failing to build on that of 40 years ago, we have now plunged ourselves into this terrible crisis, these things are being addressed and will be taken account of. Perhaps as we go through the Bill clause by clause, we will hear something from him about how the new situation is to be addressed. I do not think this amendment does it; nor, frankly, does the Bill.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I must declare my interest as a member of the advisory board of Penultimate Power UK Ltd. By the Government’s own admission, the Bill introduces 26 separate measures, based roughly on three pillars, which aim to give the Bill a modicum of coherence. Many of the amendments in this group, however, seem also to be intended to serve as a kind of preamble to the Bill, which, as my noble friend Lord Moylan and others have said, would improve it.

Amendment 1, as eloquently spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, seeks to add a principal purpose to the Bill. Amendment 7, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, aims to do the same thing. However, these amendments would add not one principal purpose but three. Furthermore, I consider that principal purposes (a) and (b) in Amendment 1 are in conflict with each other, in the sense that while delivery of the country’s climate change commitments is obviously highly desirable, it conflicts with purpose (a) in that resilience and reliability are not served, at least in the short term, by abandoning natural gas as a source of energy with unnecessary haste. Actually, purpose (b) is also in conflict with purpose (c), because it is hard to argue that maintenance of the climate levy helps to minimise costs to consumers or protects them from unfair pricing.

I therefore urge my noble friend the Minister not to accept this amendment, or indeed Amendments 2, 3 and 4 in this group in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie. I understand why they want to introduce a requirement for a strategy and policy statement in line with the Bill, but I regret that the Bill does not cover the whole of the country’s energy strategy or policy. Furthermore, these amendments give a higher priority to meeting climate change commitments than they do to developing reliable sources of energy, which protect the consumer against the risks of intermittency.

That is why I support Amendment 5 in the name of my noble friends Lord Moylan and Lord Frost, and the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead. This amendment recognises that the Government must have regard to the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, the Net Zero Strategy, the British Energy Security Strategy and all the other strategies; but that, crucially, they need to compensate for the huge reliance on wind and solar energy contained in those strategies by ensuring that we will have electric power to replace that generated by renewable sources, which are subject to intermittency.

As my noble friend Lord Moylan pointed out, it is necessary for the Government and the public to understand how much achieving the objectives of net zero by 2050 will actually cost. The Government have been, and continue to be, far too cautious in their policy towards nuclear power, but Amendment 5 will require the Government to support nuclear to a far greater extent than they have done so far, because nuclear is completely reliable and not subject to intermittency. One of the points in the 10-point plan covers the delivery of new and advanced nuclear power, while the subsequently published strategies increasingly recognise its greater importance.

Much has been made of the Prime Minister’s commitment in May that we will build one new nuclear power station every year, instead of one every decade. But he did not clarify whether he was talking about a new power station such as Hinkley Point C, with two large reactors each generating 1.6 gigawatts of electricity, or perhaps a bank of NuScale reactors, producing 77 megawatts, or of U-Battery reactors delivering 4 megawatts each. Could the Minister clarify how much new nuclear capacity the Government expect to commission every decade or year?

Net Zero Strategy: High Court Ruling

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think the noble Lord is wrong in his first statements; we have so far met, or indeed exceeded, all our carbon budgets and we are on track to meet the latest one. This is a reference to a carbon budget in 12 or 17 years’ time, so of course we will look closely at the implications of the judgment. On the noble Lord’s question, we have said that we are not against the expansion of onshore wind, but we will need to do it in close co-operation with, and with the support of, local communities. Meanwhile, as he will be aware, we have massively expanded the ambition of our offshore wind, which during the latest contracts for difference round is now coming in at record low prices.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, when I saw this headline judgment, I thought for a moment that the court might be making the obvious point—which I think most people agree with—that while our national net-zero target is pressing ahead rather well, with the contribution and efforts of my noble friend, and while other Western countries are moving towards net zero, emissions are rising very fast when they should be at least level, if not falling, under the Paris targets. The Paris targets are receding, and almost everyone in the world of combating climate change recognises that a vast uplift in international efforts to curb carbon emissions, of the kind that involves a huge abstraction of carbon from the atmosphere on a global scale, is now needed. That is what the UN and the IPCC are saying and even the CCC agrees to it. Leading figures such as John Kerry also agree with this view. If there is a criticism, it is perhaps that our contribution there is not realised enough, so much are we concentrating on NZ. However, I fully agree that we are doing that rather well, and I hope that we appeal.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes some important points. Of course, our contribution to global emissions is relatively small, but this is very much a global problem. As a leading industrialised nation, it is right that we should set an example, and we are doing so. As I said, we have some of the fastest and most ambitious reduction targets. We will certainly look closely at the judgment, but we will carry on with our ambitious decarbonisation strategy.