Great British Energy Bill

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I live and work in Derby, so it is a particular delight to see the noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, make her maiden speech. She is a living legend in the city of Derby, having served Derby South for 41 years—an incredible achievement.

I declare my interests, including as a chief engineer for AtkinsRéalis and a director of Peers for the Planet. I support the Bill; as the Minister said, it is a means of supporting more private investment in the industry and much-needed investment in energy in the UK. However, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on the benefits to the House of being able to see the strategic priorities and plans in order to allow us to assess the aims in more detail as the Bill progresses through your Lordships’ House.

I will make three high-level points. First, there is the issue of cost, which was put across very well by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. It is at times like this that I regret the inability to use visual aids in your Lordships’ House. If I could, I would have projected a graph on one of the screens showing the changes in industrial electricity prices over the past five years, by country. In Italy and Germany, prices have increased by around 50%. In France, the figure is 93%, and in the UK there has been a 124% increase in industrial electricity prices over the period since 2019, which highlights the particular challenge of energy prices here. In the USA, prices have increased by 21% over that period and are now a quarter of the price we see in the UK.

Beside the obvious effects on bill payers for households and businesses, this has a real effect on the number one mission of the Government, the highest-priority mission, which is getting economic growth going again in the United Kingdom. Many companies I have spoken to in recent months have set out that they want to invest in the UK but cannot make the numbers and the business case stack up, due to that high electricity price, if they are energy-intensive users. That really needs some focus. The reason I mention it in the context of the Bill is that, looking at the objects of Great British Energy, we see set out, quite clearly, decarbonisation, sustainability and security of supply. But we do not see cost, which is conspicuous by its absence.

I would come at this from the point of view of join-up across the other agencies within government that are looking at the energy system—for example, the National Energy System Operator. The legislation that set up NESO, the Energy Act 2023, clearly set out its responsibilities in terms of costs, sustainability and security—the three sides of the energy trilemma. From the point of view of consistency and systems alignment, there is a real opportunity here for the Government to consider that as an object or duty for Great British Energy, given its priority for economic growth and the other missions.

My second point is on systems governance. It is welcome how the Government have set out the importance of local governance in terms of the energy system. In recent years we have seen a lot of work done on top-down energy system governance, but we have not seen the corresponding plan for how the energy system is to be governed from the bottom up, from local authorities up to regions up to the national level. That is vital if we are to deliver a coherent energy transformation to net zero over the coming years. It has been really encouraging to hear about the potential role of Great British Energy, as the Ministers set out in their remarks here and in the other place, in local power plans and local area energy planning. The issue we have seen over recent years with local area energy plans is their patchwork nature—varying levels of quality and robustness in how they are set out within local authorities. But they are essential in delivering the scale of investment we need for net zero. So I urge the Government to use the Bill as an opportunity to more clearly set out how that local governance structure is going to work, particularly in the context of NESO, which is responsible for the regional energy strategic planner role. If Great British Energy has a separate role within the energy system, that energy governance needs to be set out more clearly in the Bill.

My third point is on nuclear. The Minister in the other place set out quite clearly, as did the Minister here in his remarks, the need for a separation between Great British Nuclear and Great British Energy, which is absolutely the right way to go. Great British Nuclear needs that clear role and stakeholders on its board who have expertise in nuclear. But we need to see the roles and responsibilities more clearly set out and split between Great British Nuclear and Great British Energy, so I would welcome clarity on that.

I will finish with a few final questions. One of the objects is the distribution of clean energy. Can the Minister clarify what the role of Great British Energy is in relation to NESO in this respect? Another object is on security of supply, but that can encompass many things, from reliability to fuel security to physical security to cybersecurity. Can the Minister say how the Government would define security of supply within the Bill?

I look forward to working with the Minister and his team as this Bill goes forward to Committee.

King’s Speech

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, like others, I very much welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to their roles. I very much enjoyed working with them both in the last Parliaments and look forward to continuing to do so. First, I declare my interests. I am a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis in the energy sector, a director of Peers for the Planet and co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear.

In the gracious Speech and in the Minister’s opening remarks, I was very pleased to see the level of ambition from the new Government in the energy sector and the targets in place, particularly the 2030 target for decarbonisation of the electricity grid. It is really important, going forward, to have these ambitious targets to work towards, but there are obviously risks involved. The number one risk that is flashing up red on the dashboard in terms of delivery of all the required infrastructure is with our planning system. I know the Government get this, and I was very pleased to see the planning and infrastructure Bill in the gracious Speech. In fact, I met the National Energy System Operator earlier today, and its work on the spatial strategic energy plan will also be central to derisking this. However, we have seen a number of issues with our infrastructure projects coming through the system, and I shall give noble Lords a few examples.

In my sector—the nuclear sector—the environmental assessments for the Hinkley Point C reactor ran to around 20,000 pages and those for Sizewell C to around 44,000 pages. That is a stack of paper around 5 metres high—the height of a double-decker bus. As a broader example, the planning application for the lower Thames crossing, which was mentioned earlier, ran to 359,000 pages. If you put all that documentation end to end, it would be around 61 miles, about five times the length of the crossing itself. That is just one metric, but it clearly illustrates that we have issues with our planning system that we need to resolve to get Britain building. This is important not just for the energy system but, more broadly, to get economic growth going again in this country.

In the last Parliament, we made some important progress on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act with an amendment I put forward on town and country planning, which was supported by both current Ministers on the Front Bench. We got a great concession from the Government, but we spent part of the last Session thinking about what more we could do for large infrastructure projects. We have a number of proposals following our consultation with industry, which I hope the Minister will be interested in.

One issue in the nuclear industry is that when, for example, the environmental regulators look at infra- structure, their concern is with the environmental considerations for the piece of land on which the asset is situated. They do not take the broader societal benefits to net zero and energy security into account. We need a way of framing this and putting a net-zero duty on the Environment Agency and the other statutory consultees in the process for these large infrastructure projects. We believe that could be a very good way of balancing local environmental considerations with the broader benefits that large infrastructure projects bring. This was supported in the last Session by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, when she brought forward an amendment proposing a net-zero duty for Ofgem. We should embed this more broadly across the regulators. I would very much welcome further discussions on that.

The habitats regulations have been highlighted as a specific area of concern. At Hinkley Point C, an infamous acoustic fish deterrent system was put forward to prevent the problem of fish stocks in the cooling water intakes for the plant. It led to millions of pounds of spend and years of delay. We need a more sensible regime for these compensatory events in terms of impact on the environment. In the Energy Act 2023, the previous Government took powers to modify the habitats regulations for offshore projects and oil and gas so that there could be a more sensible regime where compensatory measures are pooled rather than considered as individual cases. Considering the impact that those regulations have had, looking at a minor amendment to that Act to give the Government more powers to look at the habitats regulations and speed these projects through the system would be very sensible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, laid out an excellent pitch for the nuclear industry, which I will not repeat. In his opening remarks, the Minister made some great points about the impact of the war in Ukraine on our energy security. We have made really good progress there in the last few years, but our nuclear industry is still dependent on Russia for nuclear fuel in some of our reactor fleet. We clearly need to address this urgently from the perspectives of national security and energy security. The Government need to look at legislating to ban Russian nuclear fuel in the near term.

It is important to note that our allies, such as the United States, which are much more exposed to Russian nuclear fuel have taken the step of legislating to ban. That would also benefit our domestic industries by bringing up our own domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. I very much welcome the opportunity to meet the Ministers to discuss these issues in the context of the forthcoming legislation, and I look forward to working with them both in the coming Session.