Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tom Pursglove and Andrea Leadsom(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
If my hon. Friend is referring to the taskforce for the interconnector with Iceland, let me say that I am a huge fan of that, and there will be a statement shortly about the progress that he will be aware has been made between the leaders of the UK and Iceland. I seriously hope we will be able to make progress with all sorts of bilateral energy deals in the future.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
2. What steps her Department has taken to increase the use of British steel in energy infrastructure projects.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
Officials in my Department regularly meet developers to make clear the importance we place on sourcing UK content, including steel, in infrastructure projects. For example, EDF says it expects that a large proportion of the steel for Hinkley Point C sourced by its supply chain will come from UK companies.
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer. As she will know, the Corby steelworks plays a vital role in manufacturing steel tubes which can be used for fracking purposes. Does she agree it is very important that, wherever possible, we use British steel, not just because it supports the industry and the jobs it provides, but because the quality and safety of the product is far superior to that of foreign competitors?
Andrea Leadsom
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I have had a number of meetings with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to discuss exactly this point. In its 2014 report “Getting ready for UK shale gas” Ernst & Young said there would be significant benefits for jobs and growth from a successful UK shale industry, including a projected need for over £2 billion-worth of steel.
Feed-in Tariffs (Amendment) (No. 3) Order 2015
Debate between Tom Pursglove and Andrea Leadsom
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I draw the attention of the Committee to my declaration of interest as director of Together Against Wind. When reaching these policy decisions, do Ministers take into account the real challenges that our manufacturing industries are experiencing? Spiralling energy costs have made it difficult in recent years for them to compete on a global playing field. It is important that we control costs and we must not see them increase in what are already difficult circumstances.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right to point that out. The balance we are seeking to achieve is to be fair to the industry and fair to those consumers, including businesses—we have seen this a lot of recent weeks and months—who are really struggling to meet their electricity costs and to be competitive. As I said, overall the changes will save at least £7.6 billion from energy bills over the next 20 years.
Members of the Committee will recognise that this Government were elected with a clear manifesto commitment to keep bills as low as possible, so controlling costs under the LCF is a key part of delivering that commitment. Urgent action was needed to bring projected FIT scheme spend down in order to manage LCF spend responsibly and to protect consumers. It is simply not acceptable to continue with an unconstrained scheme.
This amending instrument makes a number of changes to the FIT scheme, including, first, the introduction of deployment caps, limiting the aggregate total installed capacity of installations that can be applied for within any quarter. That will enable us to limit spend on the scheme to £100 million up to the end of 2018-19. Such caps are necessary if the scheme is to continue and if its impacts on consumer bills are to be properly controlled. I tell the hon. Member for Southampton, Test that currently, if the technology does not reach its quarterly cap, the underspend is rolled over to the next quarterly cap.
Secondly, the order reintroduces pre-accreditation. That would not have been appropriate without the security provided by the deployment caps. It will therefore also mitigate some of the uncertainty inherent in a system of capped deployment.
Thirdly, the order removes the right to receive a generation tariff for extensions to existing installations. That is intended to incentivise generators to install the maximum capacity achievable and to eliminate the potential for gaming of tariffs.
Fourthly, the order introduces a cap on the amount of green overseas electricity by which suppliers are exempted from paying FIT policy costs.
The rest of the measures from the review are implemented through amendments to licence conditions. First, there are changes to the generation tariffs. Tariffs have been revised following consultation to ensure a viable scheme while maximising value for money for bill payers. Secondly, there are modifications to both default and contingent degression tied to the quarterly system of budgetary caps. Thirdly, there are changes to energy efficiency criteria to require that an energy performance certificate—an EPC—is obtained prior to the commissioning date of solar PV installations under 50 kW. That change has been made to encourage improvements to the energy efficiency of properties more generally.
Prior to making the changes, my Department carried out an extensive stakeholder consultation. DECC officials met stakeholders across England, Scotland and Wales, and received and analysed just under 55,000 consultation responses. We listened carefully to the views of industry, in particular the £1 plan of the Solar Trade Association, and we took account of its responses in redesigning our scheme. I myself held a roundtable for all industry associations to hear their views. As a result of our stake- holder engagement, we revised tariffs upwards to reflect the findings of the evidence provided. We allocated more budget to solar under our £100 million cap and we implemented a cap system that will allow us to recycle underspend and to consider the balance of caps between years.
Our changes combine the visibility that industry asked for with the robust cost control that the Government need.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tom Pursglove and Andrea Leadsom(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
2. What estimate she has made of the number of onshore wind applications made since June 2015.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)
My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that we are delivering on our manifesto commitment to end new subsidies for onshore wind and to change the law so that local people have the final say on onshore wind farm applications. As of 14 March, 64 onshore wind farm applications above 1 MW had been submitted across the UK since 18 June 2015, only five of which were in England.
Tom Pursglove
As the director of the national anti-wind farm campaign, I obviously declare an interest. What impact is this change to the subsidy regime having on ensuring that emerging generation technologies can come forward, which ultimately is what the subsidies are intended to encourage?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government want to promote a wide range of energy sources, including renewables, to help us to meet our de-carbonisation targets, while keeping the lights on and bills down. For example, the Chancellor announced in the Budget our intention to hold three contracts for difference allocation rounds over this Parliament, allocating £730 million of annual support over the three auctions for new and emerging technologies such as, very importantly, offshore wind. As he rightly points out, however, as the cost of technologies comes down, we will make sure that subsidies do so as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tom Pursglove and Andrea Leadsom(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman’s right hon. Friend Lord Hutton’s report on public service pensions was adopted by the Government in 2013 and set out the direction of travel for all public sector pensions. We are in close discussion with the NDA on how we can implement that, bearing in mind the particular sensitivities of Sellafield and other nuclear sites. I am very happy to meet the unions to talk about it, as I have previously.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Chinese steel dumped on the European market is bad not only for British business but for the environment, so does the Minister agree that the best thing to do for the environment and for securing greener growth is to buy British?