Rolls-Royce
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
I congratulate the noble Lord on getting the Royal Navy, a matter close to his heart, into his question again. But to be serious, I agree that we need to develop the next generation of small modular reactors, and we are providing support to enable that to happen.
Lord Ravensdale (CB) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest as in the register. The East Midlands, where Rolls-Royce has its headquarters, has the lowest public sector research and development spend in the UK, at £83 per head. R&D and the skilled jobs that it generates are essential to the levelling-up agenda. What plans do the Government have to increase R&D spend in the Midlands, making the most of its strengths in the rail, aerospace, nuclear and other vital sectors?
Lord Callanan (Con)
We are happy to support good R&D projects. Rolls-Royce is a major beneficiary of our R&D support operations through the £1.95 billion Aerospace Technology Institute programme. It is also one of our largest UK investors in R&D.
Energy White Paper
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a very good point. As I am sure she is aware, we have created a carbon capture and storage infrastructure fund of at least £800 million to establish at least two UK sites—one by the mid-2020s and the other by 2030—and £500 million to help energy-intensive industries to move to low-carbon techniques and decarbonise carbon-intensive regions such as Humberside.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. Given that we are unlikely to achieve net zero without nuclear power, which is critical to the security of thousands of jobs across the regions, I am concerned that the White Paper will contain only a broad outline of the strategy for new nuclear. Will it set out in detail clear guidance on financing, for example a commitment to a RAB model, to give the sector the clarity it needs to progress?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The White Paper will look at the whole system of energy within the UK as part of our commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. I reaffirm the key role that nuclear will play as part of that future energy mix. I can tell the noble Lord that we will respond to the RAB consultation in due course.
Energy: Hydrogen
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The Hydrogen Advisory Council has already been established and is meeting. My noble friend is entirely correct that hydrogen will play a key role in our decarbonisation efforts. We will want to set that out fully before the COP in 2021.
Lord Ravensdale (CB) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. Currently the major basis for hydrogen production, as other noble Lords have said, is steam methane reforming, of which CO2 is a by-product. It requires the successful deployment of CCS, which is a high risk from an engineering and commercial perspective. Does the Minister agree that a drive in research and development towards non-methane reforming sources of production needs to be a major priority?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I agree that we need to look at all available technologies for the production of hydrogen, whether blue or green, including electrolysis and other methods. It will be a key fuel for our decarbonisation efforts and we need to consider all available technologies.
Renewable Energy
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Ravensdale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the updated recommendations from the National Infrastructure Commission that the United Kingdom should aim to meet two-thirds of its electricity needs using renewable energy sources by 2030.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the recent NIC report and will consider its recommendations. The Government are committed to reaching net zero through a sustainable, diverse and resilient energy system. This will require significantly increased renewables deployment. Renewables are on track to deliver the majority of electricity by 2030, having reached nearly 50% in the first quarter of this year. The energy White Paper will set out plans to further accelerate renewables deployment.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
I declare my interests, as set out in the register. I thank the Minister for that response. Given the NIC’s findings that increased earlier investment in renewables can be delivered at the same overall cost, meeting half only of total demand by 2030, and will not increase costs for consumers, can the Minister give assurances that the Government will prioritise investment in the UK’s world-leading renewables sector in the forthcoming spending review?
Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord will understand that the spending review is of course a matter for the Treasury and that I cannot comment ahead of its decisions. However, we are prioritising investment in the renewables sector. We are accelerating new capacity through the contracts for difference scheme, which gives us certainty to drive private sector investment and has been very successful in driving down costs.
Environmental Projects
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Callanan
I welcome my noble friend back to the Chamber. I agree with her that we are committed to building back better and greener. I am sure the overseas territories will have an important role to play in that, and of course we will consider requests for funding from them.
Lord Ravensdale (CB) [V]
My Lords, while the establishment of a Cabinet committee on climate change is welcome, we need to do more to embed climate consideration in policy-making across government and consider the systems nature of net-zero delivery. Will the Government consider establishing a cross-departmental body to oversee the delivery of net zero and mitigate the siloed thinking inherent in individual departmental responsibilities?
Lord Callanan
The noble Lord is correct: the net-zero challenge is fundamentally cross-cutting. That is why in the run-up to the COP 26 summit we will bring forward ambitious plans across key sectors of the economy, including an energy White Paper, a transport decarbonisation plan and a heat and building strategy. We need to avoid siloed thinking in government across these endeavours.
Space Science and Technology
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for tabling this debate. Project Apollo was and remains a great technical achievement of humankind. It has inspired millions around the world and it is an honour to have the opportunity to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the moon landings today.
Everything about Apollo astounds. When President Kennedy set the goal of a manned moon landing in 1961, only a single American had flown in space on a suborbital flight, yet the President had the ambition—almost the audacity—to commit the nation to a moon landing before the end of the decade. The resulting machine, the Saturn V moon rocket, was the most powerful machine ever built.
I am a nuclear engineer. Designing nuclear reactors is not quite rocket science, although it gets close at times and makes me appreciate the engineering genius behind Apollo all the more. I remember how inspirational Apollo was to me as a child. Sadly, I cannot claim to recall where I was at the time of the moon landings, but I pored over the details of the mission. It played a key part in my decision to pursue a career in engineering. It is that ability to be inspired and excited by the future that gets children interested in science and engineering, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, pointed out. That is one of the great legacy benefits of the programme.
The dreams that many had in the 1960s about the future of space flight never quite transpired, yet we are at a critical juncture in the history of space flight, driven in the main by the development of reusable rockets by private industry in America. I believe they will transform the economics of space flight and will lead to many opportunities and growth in the sector. On the 50th anniversary of Apollo, it seems wholly appropriate that space is becoming really exciting again.
The UK has an excellent, thriving industry in the production of satellites, which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to. It would be really inspirational to get the capability to launch those satellites back in the UK. I note the really positive developments with spaceports in Cornwall and Scotland. Several private companies in the UK are looking at developing launch technology—for example, small launch vehicles and engines for reusable launch vehicles—and the Government should look closely at the funding of those efforts. Contracts to kick-start private investment in those areas could pay dividends, mirroring the approach used so successfully in America. There is an opportunity to capture that before it is lost to others.
I finish with something about the spirit of Apollo. It was a great endeavour, with the whole nation united to achieve a single goal. Maybe that same spirit is what we need to resolve the climate challenges of today.
Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019
Lord Ravensdale Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Lilley
Absolutely. That is what we ought to do in this House: look closely at these things. That does not mean to say we reject them. Unless we know the cost of this measure, which is potentially enormously costly, we are really buying a pig in a poke. I hope the House will focus on that point: should we go ahead and pass this without an impact assessment, or should we at least demand that the Treasury comes forward with such an impact assessment and a distributional assessment as soon as possible?
That distributional assessment is important, because these measures tend to fall disproportionately on low-income households. We have seen that in any country where the cost of climate change measures has come into political contention, those on modest incomes have tended to vote against them. We saw it in Australia and Canada; we have seen the gilets jaunes in France. We should beware and be aware that we are imposing large costs on ordinary households, and we should not go ahead and do that lightly and without knowledge of the figures.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as an engineer working in the energy industry.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, as noble Lords have already said, this target will involve significant technical challenges. I want to introduce a different slant to the debate today by talking about some of the technical challenges that will be need to be met, the key areas of uncertainty and the options for mitigating them. A comprehensive review of how this target will be met is critical and I hope to see more detail of this in the forthcoming energy White Paper.
The key risk areas we need to consider within the scope of the amendment are on-demand power generation and hydrogen. It is widely accepted that a 100% renewables power generation system is impracticable barring any unforeseen technical advances. This is partly due to the technological limitations of energy storage and the implications of grid stability with a variable power supply. A large amount of on-demand power will be required to counter the variability of renewables and there are two options for that at a high level—gas turbines with carbon capture and storage, or nuclear.
Gas turbines with carbon capture and storage are an attractive option to meet our commitments, but there are several uncertainties with large-scale carbon capture and storage. One uncertainty is the capture rates that are feasible with the technology—whether it can capture the amount of carbon that we need it to—and another is that the economic viability of the technology is still unknown. If capture rates are lower or the technology is more expensive than anticipated, alternatives will have to be sought to large-scale use of carbon capture and storage. It is critical that there is a pilot project from the Government to consider scaling up this technology and the viability of it in more detail.
The concerns are well known about the economic viability of nuclear compared with renewables. It is worth noting that the costs of large nuclear are currently less than the existing offshore wind capacity that has been built. However, the future offshore wind capacity will be cheaper than current large nuclear. It is difficult to make the comparison between nuclear and renewables because of the different characteristics of these technologies in terms of costs.
It is critical that the industry responds to the cost challenge set out in the nuclear sector deal and brings down the costs of nuclear from the £90 per megawatt hour we have seen with Hinkley to around £60 per megawatt hour. Given the doubts over whether large nuclear can deliver, we need to focus on several things to meet that cost challenge: first, small modular reactors, as a fallback and to complement large nuclear, are critical; and, secondly, advanced nuclear technology.
How will these technologies solve the cost issue with nuclear? The first way is through modularisation, which is inherent in small modular reactor design and is already used in other high safety integrity industries such as shipping and air transport. We need to look at moving the production of reactor modules to factories off-site to reduce the cost of reactor technology and to bring down the capital costs of nuclear plants. Secondly, with advanced nuclear, there are several designs out there which are passively safe, simpler and of a much higher thermal efficiency than existing plants and will help in that regard.
Government investment is required to see these promising designs through to fruition and to get them off the ground. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on what happened with offshore wind, we can replicate that with nuclear and use it to bring down the cost of the technology and help us meet our 2050 targets.
Hydrogen also has a key role to play in a net zero economy, whether through heating buildings, energy storage or fuel for heavy vehicles. However, there are many uncertainties about the best means of producing, distributing and storing hydrogen. For example, as has been pointed out by other noble Lords, the preferred means of production—steam methane reforming—will involve large-scale carbon capture and storage and the issues with that that I have pointed out.
Can the Minister say how the Government intend to de-risk these key areas of uncertainty—hydrogen, carbon capture and storage and nuclear—to ensure that the UK can meet the 2050 target as planned? The timing for large investments could not be more fortuitous in many ways, with the Government able to borrow for 50 years at less than 1.5%.