National Policy Statement for Nuclear Energy Generation

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, like the Minister, I look forward very much to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Maclean. With her reputation and past work, I am sure she will bring a fresh mind. Fresh minds are certainly needed in this area, where technology is changing extremely fast—faster than some people realise.

If I could find a word to sum up my feelings about EN-7, it would be one borrowed from the Prime Minister, who uses it quite frequently. I am afraid it is “disappointment”. I am disappointed. When I went to get EN-7 from the Printed Paper Office, I thought the office had failed to give me all the adequate paper, because when I read it through, I could not find very much addressing all the energy issues that are preoccupying the people of our nation and the industry. I am sorry to say that it left me very disappointed. It is not very different from EN-6, which mentioned SMRs. It is not all that different from EN-1, published back in November 2023, which also mentioned SMRs and so on. There is a difference: the move towards more criteria-based decisions for sites, which I will come to in a moment, and more references throughout to SMRs. They are included in the words, but not very much in the action.

I sound—and feel—negative. When I opened it, I found that the very first sentence of the entire document, about demand doubling, is wrong. It does not seem to be understood by the department that we are running at about 65 gigawatts of electricity—these figures are rough—which is 20% of our total energy use. The talk in the first sentence of the document is that demand will

“more than double by 2050”.

As I said, 65 gigawatts is 20% of total energy use, so double will be 130 gigawatts. That is miles below what will be required for an all-electric decarbonised economy. It will be well above 130: most people who examine these things closely say that it will be more like 250, and some say 300 gigawatts. That is the kind of clean energy volume we have to mobilise, and I totally agree with the Minister that nuclear is essential to it. With 3,000 hours of windless time around the United Kingdom and in this part of northern Europe, we will need a massive nuclear contribution, miles above what we have now or are likely to have in the next two or three years. The official figure is 24 or 25 gigawatts. I would like to take a bet—except I am not a betting man—that we will wish we had 50 gigawatts by the time we move into the 2030s. I am very glad to hear that, from the Minister’s and the Government’s point of view, there is no limit on what we should be building; it should be determined by other factors.

As for SMRs, which the rest of the world is busily ordering, I can find nothing here on the obvious siting differences arising between putting down on the ground sets of four, six or eight smaller reactors, depending on their size and the total required, and putting them down on different areas from the usual list, which appears on page 10 and is the list we have all been looking at for the last 20 or 30 years. It seems to miss out the possibilities of all the other abandoned, closed or still-suitable sites.

I am not arguing for a moment that the world is ready for individual SMRs to be placed at the end of this or that street or in this or that locality. I do not think the public are ready for that. There has been absolutely no education of or discussion with the public on the question of ionised radiation machinery being spread around the country. I am talking entirely about sites that either have been, are still or could be safely and securely nuclear. What about all the old Magnox sites? What happened to them? There are Trawsfynydd, Berkeley, Hinkley Point A and Sizewell A—followed by B, which was the only one that was rescued from the ones I announced in the lower House in October 1979 when we wanted nine new reactors, but only one emerged from that plan. There are Heysham 1 and Dungeness B, which I have visited and has, I think, already closed, and there are the old coal-fired stations. In California, industries are saying that they do not trust the grid any more and cannot feel safe with it. They are buying up old coal stations and installing SMRs in them, very small ones, to get the reliable electricity they need for their production, so nothing is needed there.

I am looking forward to EN-8. I hope it is now being drafted, telling us the possibilities of setting down sets of small reactors from the various producers telling us that they can produce fully operative, commercially competitive models by the early 2030s, which is years ahead of anything being considered for Sizewell C. They say that the new one at Hinkley C will be completed in 2029 but, quite honestly, heaven knows when it will be. The original idea from the then chairman was that we should cook our turkeys for Christmas 2019. I think that the original deals approved by the Cameron Government and the first contacts with EDF under Tony Blair’s Labour Government were talking about an original expenditure of £9 billion. Then it became £17 billion, then £19 billion, £23 billion and so on. The latest figures I have seen are £46 billion- plus. One figure says £51 billion. Obviously, inflation affects that, but the expansion of cost has been enormous. I marvel that we want to proceed with a replica in the rather charming belief that we will have learned all the mistakes from Hinkley C and therefore it will all cost less and be much quicker. I do not believe a word of it.

There is nothing on offer about a central point when you come to building and siting nuclear power stations, which is that SMRs can be fabricated in a factory. There is not that business of trundling trucks smashing up country lanes and destroying the environment for years and years on end, which of course is one of the driving forces of planning objections and delays. If you can bring in fabrication in the factory, you gain an enormous advantage, take a great deal of heat and tension out of local objections and probably cut years off the construction time. There is nothing on the advantages of a more distributed electricity system, which is what we are discussing and what many people are beginning to analyse, and which the use of SMRs and AMRs would greatly contribute to.

That means—and this is a very important planning thing—fewer pylons. If we can distribute our electricity—if we can get to the point at which we can convey North Sea electricity through switching stations into hydrogen by electrolysis, and move that in the same way that we move petrol today; and if we can then localise and get to market electricity or an electricity vector such as hydrogen—we will need fewer pylons. That would save years of planning objection, difficulty and political problems. I am amazed that there is nothing about that.

There is nothing on the fuel side. Some companies have said that they can manage perfectly well without enriched uranium at all. They are going to use already irradiated plutonium, of which we have a store at Sellafield, which we are guarding at considerable cost. That is a whole new possibility.

Above all—I know I am a little over my time—the factor that is really missing in this is finance, on which there is nothing. The fact is that small reactors can be financed profitably and will be in the future. There are several companies ready to do that without government money, whereas the big boys—the giant gigawatt machines—will cost the Government money, which means that they will cost the consumers, who are already overloaded, and the taxpayers money. Both Sizewell and Hinkley C, the big ones in the pipeline, are already in deep financial trouble. We remain to see and hear how they will get out of it.

The whole world is into this new design system. Countries are ordering and building SMRs. Canada is putting four in Ontario. Denmark has said it wants to start, after years of being anti-nuclear. Indonesia has ordered 20. Poland is in the business, as are Korea, Japan, the United States and, of course, China and Russia. They are all building small nuclear reactors. There is a very long queue building up, and we will be at the end of it unless we move very fast indeed—faster than this EN-7 indicates or suggests.

Nuclear: Small Modular Reactors

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, we will hear from the Cross Benches.

Energy Prices: Energy-intensive Industries

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to answer the noble Baroness by saying “in due course”. Clearly, these matters are being discussed very fully in my department, and we want to reach a conclusion as quickly as possible, but I cannot give her a date.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, if the Minister is correct in his economic theory about gas and electricity prices—frankly, I am not sure that he is—why is the lower price of oil, which is now getting quite low, not bringing down the price of gas as well?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, it is because of marginal pricing, whereby gas is the most predominant, and it tends to set the price. As my noble friend said, this system has operated for many years, but we are looking at it very carefully.

Energy Grid Resilience

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much take my noble friend’s point; I will certainly take it on board and discuss it with colleagues. In relation to energy security, I have already said that we must maintain a resilient and secure electricity system. It is a key priority for us. We work closely with the National Protective Security Authority. I pay tribute to my noble friend for the contribution that he has made to these discussions. We are providing extensive advice and support to industry on what measures it should take to protect itself, but I take the point about communication with the public and it is something that I will reflect upon.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

I want to reinforce the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. He is right, and the Minister is right, that in the past we did indeed have resilience. In this sort of case, resilience means bringing in a large amount of extra supply at very short notice, such as could be performed at Dinorwig, the pump storage station, which I was told could bring in several gigawatts at two minutes’ notice and, furthermore, that even if it was never used, the entire system would allow other plants to run at a higher margin, with a higher inertia factor, and, therefore, provide even more resilience and effectiveness for the whole system. In this age, as we move into reliance on renewables on a massive scale, are we providing extra support of that kind—rapid resource mobilisation—which will give us the modern and reliable system that we are going to need to compete in the modern world?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Yes, my Lords, we are. It is a very relevant point. Clearly, we are looking for a balanced energy mix for the future. We see nuclear as being an essential baseload. We will have renewables, but we are looking at hydro storage, as the noble Lord reflected in his own question. The whole point is that we will have a balanced system, but one that is heavily decarbonised. That is exactly the aim of what we seek to do.

Wales: Nuclear Power Generation

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I take the noble Lord’s point. EN-7, on which we are consulting, gives us a much more flexible policy on siting, but those sites identified in the current planning statement, EN-6, clearly have very favourable attributes, and this is where I think Wylfa has to be considered. His overall welcome support for new nuclear is to be acknowledged and welcomed.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, some of us have been talking to the main SMR producers this very morning. Their general message is that wait, delay and obstruction are their findings in dealing with the British Government, unfortunately. They are waiting for site sales to be settled, for the GDA and DCO processes to be accelerated, and, obviously, for the government lead that they all need. They say that they could produce earlier, by years, than anything that could come from Sizewell C or other, larger developments. They point to the facts that they could do it without government money and that the order books are rapidly filling up in all other countries. There really is a sense of urgency if our nation is to reach our desirable goals on reliable, affordable energy. Please can the Minister get on with the job?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the last statement by the noble Lord, but I do not agree with what he said. The Government are very focused on development of new nuclear. He knows that, in relation to small modular reactors, we have a process by Great British Nuclear, which is going through a detailed series of negotiations, with final decisions to be made over the next few weeks. We were bequeathed that process by the Government that the noble Lord supported. His party did not open a single nuclear power station. I can tell him that, as far as SMRs are concerned, I have been to many fora discussing this with companies. They are clearly awaiting the outcome of the GBN process, and we will make progress following that.

Energy Prices

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

The noble Lord is clearly right that energy efficiency in our homes is necessary if we are going to meet the net zero target by 2050 and hold down the cost for domestic consumers. I cannot give him a date, but I can say that my department is working across Whitehall on the policies we need to enunciate to get going in that area.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, has the Minister noticed that the chairman of Électricité de France has just been sacked and that, understandably, advice has been given to EDF to spend less money on overseas investments and concentrate on power in France? Can he give us an idea of what effect that has on our one major nuclear development, Hinkley, where, of course, EDF is a major player, and on Sizewell C, where it is a minor but considerable player? Is this not rather dangerous, given that nuclear power, along with renewables, is absolutely necessary to get our costs down in future?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I have noticed the change in leadership at EDF, and we look forward to having discussions in the future with the new person who has been appointed. EDF has made a major investment in Hinkley Point C and, as the noble Lord says, is an important minority shareholder in Sizewell C. We have enjoyed a good relationship with EDF. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero met with his counterpart in the French Government only a few weeks ago, and we maintain close contact with both the French Government and EDF. We will have to see how this unfolds over the next few weeks, but I am confident that we will see progress towards the opening of Hinkley Point C and a final investment decision on Sizewell C.

UK Energy: Grid Decarbonisation

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand the noble Lord’s concern. He will know that the Great British Energy Bill is being debated in the other place in a day or two’s time. I understand the point that he raises and we will look at that letter with a great deal of consideration. We are committed to tackling the issue of forced labour in supply chains, and legislation and guidance are already in place to help businesses take action against modern slavery.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

Could the Minister, who is usually very clear, be a little clearer with us about what is meant by decarbonising the grid by 2030? A number of authorities are saying that that is not what is going to happen at all. A number of gas-generating electricity stations are already being commissioned, and when they are there in 2030, as they will be, they will emit large amounts of carbon dioxide. How is that going to be handled? How is it going to be buried? Have the contracts begun for carbon capture and storage? It does not appear that there is much sign of that.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord will recall that we signed contracts in December to launch the first carbon capture, usage and storage project. We expect that, by 2030, clean sources of energy will produce at least 95% of Great Britain’s generation, and gas power generation will be there mainly as a back-up.

Great British Energy Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 25th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I briefly add my remarks to those of the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bennett, about the community energy fund. I thank the Minister for responding so positively to my noble friend Lord Vaux by bringing forward this amendment on more general accountability. It is a good step forward, but will he respond on those companies—I gather there are around 150—that would have been eligible for the community energy fund but will not be able to receive funding if the money indeed runs out in May, as is forecast? On that specific point, when the £100 million runs out in May, what will be put in its place?

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I find the amendment extremely interesting. Perhaps I may just make a general point about the nature of such amendments and provisions outside this Bill. We see here a grey area between what is strictly on the Government’s credit and bill under the PSBR and what is in the private sector. Previous Governments have been caught on this barbed wire for many years as to what lies in the public sector and influences the Government’s credit and what does not. I think we are going to see the model contained in the Minister’s amendment in many other areas as well. Right around the world, Governments have all the demands on them to make utilities work, vast changes to infrastructure and so on, and the private sector has the money. Somehow, the two must be brought together, as we tried to do in the late 1990s with PFI—the private finance initiative—which ran into great difficulties, but there were some lessons to be learned from it.

We have to learn more lessons now, otherwise the finance for these things simply will not be found. This applies particularly in the energy sector, where very large investments are required over many years. The Government cannot do it because they cannot raise the money and the private sector does not want to take such risks. This is very interesting, and I see that the Minister has done his best in plunging into this still very grey area, because we do not really know how to define accountability or what it is we are calling to account.

As to the amendment itself, I had to smile. We have had similar arrangements in the distant past for bodies that are neither public nor private, and this is an attempt to overcome the problems of that in the past.

It is, frankly, not very easy to evaluate the amendment to appoint this independent person to review effectiveness if we are not quite sure what “effectiveness” means. It says, “turn to Section 5(1) on the obligations on the Secretary of State to lay down certain criteria”, which, apparently, he has not done yet, so we do not know what the criteria will be. They will appear in six months’ time. Of course, it is easy to think of various criteria to allow one to say, “An organisation has, unfortunately, lost a lot of money but has still done terribly well, because I have these criteria here which show that it has achieved certain other objectives”. There are criteria that we can think about: externalities, opportunities for broader contributions, geopolitical objectives. All these things not only rest on highly subjective judgments but will be very far in the future. The analogy comes to mind of goalposts on wheels: the goalposts have been moved from time to time and from year to year as to whether effectiveness has been achieved, even though a lot of money may have been lost.

I have to put in a reservation that all these issues are matters of intense debate. All round the planet some of the best minds are wrestling with the effectiveness measurements of certain huge investments of a green nature, which look terrific but, unfortunately, either do not make money or go wrong, but nevertheless contribute to some part of the battle against climate violence and to some limitation on the ever-rising carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

Great British Energy Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 13 and 44 in this group. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for supporting Amendment 13, which is very straightforward. Very simply, it would exclude biomass from the things that GB Energy can invest in. Amendment 44 is drafted very tightly and makes the assumption that biomass will still be included, but then asks: will the Government report on the perceived carbon neutrality of that biomass, the percentage of power it will provide to the grid and the overall impact of it on achieving our domestic and international climate targets, particularly our nature targets?

I wanted to bring these back today as I did not feel like the Minister’s response in Committee addressed the issue. But it would be entirely remiss of me not to take the opportunity to say well done to the Government on what they have said about the future regime of Drax. I wondered whether the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, had picked up on this. It came out yesterday and is a big move on behalf of the Government to start to rely much less on Drax and to really try to clamp down on all the things he was talking about, such as importing old wood from Canada and the sense that we just cut up wood in the Pacific and ship it all the way here. The Government have gone a really long way and I am really grateful, because I and a lot of people have banged on about Drax now for a very long time. It is terrifically encouraging to see that the phase-out of this type of power is on the cards as we build up all the others. From my point of view, it does not mean that all biomass is okay; I think it is a very dodgy source of fuel.

I noted, in a report by E3G last month, that the clean power mission could be delivered without extending the lifetime of Drax, so perhaps the Minister can tell us how far they have considered this as an option and what options were considered. I have a few specific questions. Bioenergy is costly and, as I said before, has a great impact on nature and land use, and particularly on what we will have for food production. I know there are lots of things such as miscanthus that you do not have to replant, but you are still using up some really good agricultural land. Is this a good use of the money we are going to invest in GBE?

Can the Minister confirm that Drax will not be allowed to burn wood from primary forests for any of its generation? I am so pleased with the work that has been done, but I would like some confirmation that we can all listen to. On the issue of transparency, can he commit to his department publishing whatever research, analysis or investigation it has done before arriving at the decisions it has today? When I asked a Written Question on this recently, the substantive point was not answered.

As many people who care about this have seen, “Dispatches”, Private Eye, “Panorama” and even an Ofgem investigation have found that all the biomass energy generators in the UK have misreported data. This is endemic—it is continual. Along with several other noble Lords, I wrote to the FCA last week about some of these allegations, which contradict Drax’s annual report. So, while I appreciate the announcement, I would like to know what measures the Government are taking to tackle this issue. The operators—or at least one—cannot be trusted to mark their own homework, and the regulator has thus far failed to be completely on top of it. I know that we are tightening all the regulations, but is the Minister confident that his department will be able to deliver what has been asked for, because what has been asked for is a terrific step forward.

While the Government have let the door open for BECCS in the future, we need to be honest about the fact that we do not know whether it will work at the scale that is needed. It was very interesting to hear the outline of the earlier amendments in this group, with the extreme positivity about what carbon capture and storage will be, and I look forward to hearing more about it. However, at the moment it is taking out very little carbon from the atmosphere and, in all the future carbon budgets, it plays a very big role in us getting to net zero. Many people are anxious about whether this will be deliverable, and on what timescale.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, was music to my ears. This really is the missing prince at the ball—the missing element in the whole strategy of reducing emissions in order to curb the violence of climate change, which, after all, is the main purpose of all our endeavours. It is not a secondary purpose, it is the main purpose, and of course it is failing. Emissions are continuing to rise worldwide and the forecasts are very gloomy that they will rise still further. Our own performance has been good in contrast, as one tiny bit of the jigsaw, but overall the aim of reducing emissions is not succeeding. Carbon capture, usage and storage is an area where vast improvements can be made, with real effort to store emissions, such that we no longer have to watch those gloomy monthly or three-monthly figures detailing rising emissions worldwide again and again.

Furthermore, it is admitted, quietly—I think I have heard NESO and other experts say it openly—that carbon capture and storage is an essential part of the 2030 story. Because we have delayed so much—all parties are to blame—and we have not got on with nuclear, which we have allowed to shrink because we dithered on various other technologies, there has been very little advance on carbon capture and storage, but we know that in order to achieve decarbonised electricity by 2030—I think we are talking about the present electricity output, which is one-fifth of our total energy storage, not the whole of an electrified economy—we will need, in order to prevent outages, further gas-generated power. That is not proclaimed very loudly; CGN plants are being contracted for, designed and built to make it possible for there to be reliable and, we hope, affordable energy in 2030, even though it is substantially decarbonised.

That will require an output of carbon of considerable size, which will have to be captured and stored, otherwise the system will not work. The 2030 target is literally unobtainable, unless we have an elaborate expansion of carbon capture and storage for gas-generated electricity, which is an essential part of the pattern for 2030, as it probably is for 2040 and 2050 as well. Domestically, this is a central issue, yet it is hardly mentioned in this discussion or in the Bill.

That is not all; worldwide, the one contribution that this nation could really make through its brilliant technology is in developing cheaper versions of carbon capture and storage. All over Asia, there are coal-driven electric plants belching carbon and smoke, and more are being built at the moment. China has achieved amazing things in reducing its coal-based electricity from 1,900 gigawatts a year down to about 1,000 gigawatts. As we now produce no electricity from coal, which is rather amazing, that is an infinite number of times the amount that we produce. China is down to 1,000 gigawatts, but that is still a vast addition every year and every day—it is producing much more than we do in a year in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane as well.

To deal with the world’s problem, carbon capture and storage is essential, capturing not only carbon emitted when generated from fossil fuels but carbon direct from the atmosphere. Some major projects are being developed around the world on that scale. All these are essential projects to achieve the main aim, which is to lower emissions. If that is the main aim then Great British Energy should surely have a serious role in it.

We should be using the resources of organisations with money to invest in getting the cost down, to the point where it is possible to put some kind of abatement on those 11,000 chimneys and have some control of the carbon to be captured. Can that be done in the next stages? Of the countries concerned, one is talking mainly about the United States, where it can be done; China, where they are trying to do it; and India, where they are trying hard but not succeeding at all. They need the engineering skills to install carbon capture and storage, once we have developed systems which are cheaper and more economic. There is a whole new programme there to be developed. Is it being developed and invested in? Is this organisation looking at it? We have not had a single word from the Government—not a word—on the idea that this should be a major part of the story.

The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, is totally right that this should of course be a major part of the story. I fear that, as with so many parts of the endeavour to get to a green transition, we are losing sight of the main purpose, which is reducing emissions. This nation is superbly equipped to contribute on that front, but not necessarily by itself subsidising more and more low-carbon electricity for our own purposes. We should go that way but not push it too fast, because if we do that then we will slow things down.

If we are to contribute to the world’s efforts on this, which are failing and going backwards at the moment, and to make more progress, we must turn to carbon capture and storage. Why is there no mention of it in the Bill? Please can it go in, through this amendment or in other ways that the Government choose, to indicate that we are serious about reducing emissions and not just about the virtuous side of clean energy, which is very nice and very important but not the main aim?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 35 is about the renewable liquid heating fuel obligation, which is something we debated in Committee. I thank my noble friend the Minister for spending time with us and understanding the problems of some of the people who operate in this field. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for his support.

This issue affects 4 million people in this country, and about 250,000 businesses, who are off the gas grid and therefore generally rely on heating oil, as I do in the countryside—I declare an interest. These are big businesses and they are no more complicated than other similar systems, but it is a question of whether the renewable fuel obligation could be applied, so that it would be easier for people to continue to use fuel oil with this addition, rather than having to spend a lot of money converting to some other means, which I know has been debated at length.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Sorry, Hansard.

There is a huge hole in the carbon budgets, in which we have all colluded by saying, “Well, carbon capture and storage will fill that hole”. But what happens if it is the emperor’s new clothes and it does not work? We have to be very wary and understand what is happening at the moment. The Government are, quite rightly, throwing quite a lot of money at carbon capture and storage to trial it out as quickly as possible to find out whether we here in the UK can make it happen. If we can, great; let us replicate it very fast. If we cannot, we have to find some other solutions.

My final point is in support of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I do not want it to sound as though CCUS is the answer to everything, but surely the whole concept of carbon sinks, of trying to preserve our forests—which are rapidly disappearing—and of developing new freshwater areas around the world in desert areas, as has been proposed in a very elaborate series of schemes, is doing just that: they are trying to capture carbon directly out of the atmosphere or from projects which are belting out carbon. What is wrong about that? I do not quite see why she is so dismissive.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

I am probably breaking the rules here—I should address the House rather than the noble Lord—but nature-based solutions, which create biodiversity and other benefits, such as benefits for human health, mental health, water purification and flood control, are excellent schemes if they can be made to work effectively and cost effectively, bearing in mind all the benefits. Carbon capture and storage from industrial processes or, indeed, from air sources—from carbon that is already out there—is the bit that is not yet tested and not yet proven. We need to get ahead and decide whether we can make that work in the UK, which, I hope, is what the Government are trying to do. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that.

On Amendment 35, I share the joys with noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—not in the same house, I may say—of being an off-grid home owner who wants to do their bit for carbon reduction. At the moment, the choice for the average home owner in a rural property of an aged sort, which is highly dependent on oil because they are off the gas grid, is not terrific. You live in trembling fear of the wretched boiler breaking down: in an emergency situation such as that, the choice that then faces you is either just slamming in another oil-fired boiler, or else shelling out 20-odd thousand and waiting in the cold for six months while they work out how to put in an air source heat pump, which will probably not work at all anyway. It is not a choice. We need options for that rather beleaguered population in the country, many of whom live in aged, drafty houses and have very little assets of their own to be able to upgrade or may have a listed building of the sort you cannot upgrade.

Renewable liquid fuel seems to allow a simple transition using existing kit rather than having to capitalise up front for a totally new technology. It could produce—literally from next week, if you wanted it to—carbon reductions of up to 80%. I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I hope the Government can do that too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I too very much welcome the Government’s amendment. I would also like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on her work to get her amendment there, which I think added pressure. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has made a very good point. It may be something that will carry on in other Bills as we go through the Session.

I want to talk briefly about the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. There is some truth in it, but I think it is an amendment in the wrong Bill. This whole area of land use will come in when the Government finally bring forward their land use legislation. I would point out that onshore wind has a very small footprint in terms of agricultural land. If we had that 20-mile radius, I am thinking of the first field south of London that has, perhaps, a very modest wind farm or a single turbine. It would probably require a consultation with some 5 million people for that one turbine. So, I think it is the wrong place and the wrong amendment for this Bill, and it discriminates against certain parts of renewable energy. There is something in it in relation to land use that does need to be pursued, but perhaps in a Bill to come later in this parliamentary Session.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I have glad tidings for the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, regarding her concerns. There are between 23 million and 27 million homes in this country still using gas for heating, cooking and warmth. Clearly, that has to be tackled. The answer is quite simple, but complicated as well. The answer is that modern electric boilers can replace all those gas boilers, without having to dig and provide new hydrogen pipes and all sorts of other such complications.

The snag is that electricity is so hopelessly expensive. That is the deterrent. Here we are, wishing to transform millions of homes away from gas, and the pipes then will all become redundant. We can put in modern electric boilers, which can do the job just as well, but the cost goes up rapidly. If only we could focus on how to reduce the cost of electricity by building rapidly—which we are not doing—the cheaper, smaller modular reactors and cheaper devices for producing electricity, and even using more hydrogen on the electricity side; that is another story that we have not really discussed. Even on that basis, we are facing the problem that electricity is very expensive. As long as we keep it that way, as long as we play that game in relation to the overall energy cost, we are shooting ourselves busily in both feet.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, the topic of community energy was raised several times in Committee by noble Lords on all sides of the House, because it is a highly important aspect of energy provision. When in government, we introduced the community energy fund, which provided funding to specifically target the community energy sector. So, I would concur with noble Lords that it is very important that communities are involved, as they are able to raise and solve issues that are unique to their local community.

Great British Energy Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

I apologise for intervening. For future reference, moving an amendment on behalf of another Member is permissible, but reading a speech out on behalf of another Member is not, according to the guide.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, pointed out, it is a bit odd if we think about it. Since we started on this Bill, the Prime Minister has been making some very lively speeches, but going in a different direction. According to the newspapers, he wants to power the energy-hungry data centres needed for artificial intelligence. We all know about those: they are being built and they cannot get enough juice. He expects this own party to back small nuclear reactors in their constituencies. The headline is, “Starmer to Push Past Nimbys and Build Many New Nuclear Plants”. This is all extremely welcome to me. It is the sort of tone we have to adopt 10 times over to meet the challenges and the vast amount of clean electricity that we need. So it is strange that we are here in the meanwhile pursuing an area where nuclear is “verboten”, to use a German term. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, has got a point. I would like a comment from the Minister on whether we are still on the right track or whether we should scrap the whole thing and start with a different policy of him backing the Prime Minister.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who speaks with such authority on energy matters, I have to say that is my view that we are on the right track. I do not see any inconsistency in government policies and actions and I thank noble Lords for their support for my Amendment 21.

Turning to Amendment 26, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Offord, let me make this clear: the founding statement outlined that supply chains would be a key focus in the work of Great British Energy. It says:

“The sustainability of UK supply chains plays a key role in achieving greater energy security. Great British Energy will help to drive forward greater investment in clean, home-grown energy production and build supply chains in every corner of the UK. Great British Energy will work with industry to accelerate the deployment of key energy projects and support the transition to an affordable, decarbonised power system by 2030 built using domestic manufacturing and supply chains”.


That is an important statement of principle.

I can also reiterate that GBE will help drive the growth of supply chains in the industry by working with my department, the Crown Estate, the National Wealth Fund and other parts of the public sector to deliver a comprehensive package of support for domestic clean energy supply chains in everything from offshore wind to carbon capture and storage.

I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and spoken to so eloquently by my noble friend. On the point about NESO, it was asked to report to the department on what we needed to do to get to clean power by 2030, so it is no accident that its focus would be on renewable energy. But in fact it did not ignore nuclear. In the Clean Power Action Plan which followed from the NESO report, there is an extensive section on nuclear power. On page 80 it says:

“Nuclear will play a key role in achieving Clean Power 2030 … and our long-term net zero objectives”.


Since then, we have published the new policy statement for consultation, which, as we debated earlier, essentially brings in a more flexible siting policy for the future. The Secretary of State has indicated the importance of nuclear energy in providing an essential baseload.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that I do not see any conflict. We think it is very important to get Sizewell C over the line, and obviously we are now into SR discussions about the final investment decisions, and we see great potential in relation to small modular reactors. Of course, we are very interested in the developments we have seen in the US of the links between the big tech companies and the developers of advanced nuclear technology. Clearly, I am working with colleagues across government to make sure that the UK can take the potential of this as well. So, I want to assure the House that we see nuclear energy as having a very important role to play in the future.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

The Minister has been very clear, but at the moment it just still does not add up. At the moment about 6% of our electricity comes from nuclear—that is what it has shrunk to. We have four and a half years until 2030. Nothing nuclear is being built except Sizewell C, where they are clearing the ground and have already spent £10 billion—miles above what they originally estimated—and apparently the word is going around that it will be ready in the mid-2030s. I suspect that it will be more like 2040. If the private investor is not attracted by it, whereas they are attracted by these SMRs, is there an agenda we have not quite heard about and the SMRs are going to be rushed forward, starting next summer? As in other countries, will they be built in series on the endless sites that are now becoming available—the old Magnox sites, maybe some of the new sites? All sorts of areas are possible and are so far acceptable to the public, although there is a lot of explaining to do. Is that the plan and, if so, can we hear it?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the contribution of nuclear was more than 6%—I think it is about 13% or 14% as of today. Clearly, it will go down, because a number of the current nuclear power stations are due to go offline. However, I must pay tribute to EDF for going through the proper consent process. There have been extensions to a number of existing nuclear power stations and, in a statement it issued I think about three or four weeks ago, it made it clear that it saw further potential for extensions, subject to the regulatory provisions being required.

On Hinkley Point C, the company says that it expects the first unit to go online between 2029 and 2031. With two units, that will be 3.2 gigawatts. Sizewell C will follow. It is a replica of Hinkley Point C: 80% above ground, another 3.2 gigawatts. With the SMR programme, Great British Nuclear is going through a technological appraisal; it is in negotiation with the companies, and this is all subject to the spending review. Clearly, we want to see a long-term projection of new nuclear power stations opening, giving us energy security but also developing a much stronger UK supply chain. Although we will see a dip in the contribution that nuclear power provides, in time, it will start to go up again. I do not think there is a conflict; I think it is just a recognition of what has happened. It is worth making the point to the party opposite that there has been a lot of messing around in terms of decision-making on Hinkley Point C. There was disappointment at what happened at Wylfa. We are now getting this back on track.