Great British Energy Bill

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I express my admiration for the maiden speech we have already heard, and I look forward to the one that will follow immediately.

The Bill seeks to establish the parameters and rules affecting a new government-owned clean energy company that will pursue the objectives of a transition to clean energy. The name of this enterprise conforms to those of Great British Nuclear and Great British Railways. These are boastful and grandiloquent titles that tend to conceal a lack of substance.

It is too early to pass judgment on Great British Energy, but so far we have scant information regarding its programme. Some indication of its purpose can be gathered from a policy paper titled Great British Energy Founding Statement, published in July this year. Here we learn that Great British Energy seeks to

“clear a path for those emerging technologies which could revolutionise the entire sector”.

Examples that are given in the document concern

“floating offshore wind, tidal, hydrogen generation and storage, and carbon capture”.

There is also mention of nuclear power, which falls under the auspices of Great British Nuclear. It is yet to be determined how the functions of Great British Nuclear can be aligned with those of Great British Energy. However, a clear impression is conveyed that nuclear energy is to be regarded as a secondary consideration.

The Great British Energy project seeks to redress the failures of the privatised energy industry. At present the Government have little leverage over the privatised companies that dominate the energy sector. They cannot easily guide them towards their vision for the future. It is unrealistic to propose that this can be achieved by renationalising the UK electricity-generating companies. They are controlled by foreign energy conglomerates and international financial consortia, which remit to their owners substantial dividends and interest payments.

The considerable financial resources that would be required to renationalise the companies and to compensate their owners are not available to the Government. Prior to privatisation, the supply of electricity was governed by the Central Electricity Generating Board, and the profits of the industry were fungible. They could be devoted to the maintenance of the generating capacity of the national grid, and they could be used to aid the research and development that was undertaken by the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Nowadays, the only way in which the industry’s profits could be deployed for such purposes is by imposing levies on the private companies of the industry. The previous Government did this hesitantly by imposing levies on the oil and gas companies. But this has been a temporary measure to defray the exorbitant energy bills that have been affecting domestic consumers. It appears that the present Government share these inhibitions. Nevertheless, there are indications that the levies will continue and that the money raised will be used to support the transition to clean energy.

Perhaps it is hoped that, eventually, Great British Energy will become a major player in the energy markets, capable of deriving large profits that could be deployed for the maintenance and development of energy infrastructure. The company will be sustained by a grant of £8.3 billon for the duration of the current Parliament. It will be encouraged to pursue joint enterprises with private industry and to seek capital funds from institutional investors. It has been declared that the Secretary of State will be the sole shareholder of the company. This seems to impose a limitation on its ability to raise finance.

Since it would be precluded from issuing shares, it will have no opportunity for attracting individual personal investments from ordinary citizens. If it were able to do so, this might be one way of avoiding the danger of its falling into the hands of institutional investors intent on reaping excessive returns.

I feel it appropriate now to broaden the discussion to consider more generally the strategy for a transition to a carbon-free economy, and to question what appear to be some of the Government’s assumptions. I am perplexed by the lack of attention being paid to the intermittence of the so-called renewable sources of energy, which are the energies of the wind, sun and tides. The energy from tides should be described as variable, as opposed to intermittent, but at present that energy contributes little to the total supply.

In electricity generation, the intermittence of renewable energy is redressed by activating gas-fired power stations that are on standby. To achieve the target for staunching the emissions of carbon dioxide these must be eliminated, or else their emissions must be captured and stored, but the technology for large-scale carbon capture and storage is not available. Notwithstanding the reliance placed upon it by some parties, one is inclined to be sceptical about its prospects. Nor, given the insecurity of its supplies and the volatility of its price, does it seem appropriate to continue to rely on natural gas as a major source of energy.

Another way of redressing the intermittence of renewables is to rely on supplies of electricity generated abroad and imported via cables. This implies an undesirable dependence on supplies that are largely beyond our control. In the case of a temporary restriction of supply, it is possible to limit the demand for electricity by raising its price to encourage consumers to limit their usage and manufacturers to suspend their operations, but this is bound to have damaging consequences.

A heavy dependence on renewable sources of energy implies a need to store the energy by accumulating it when it is plentiful and drawing upon its stores when it is scarce. The only viable means of storing energy on a large scale is to use its surpluses to generate hydrogen. The gas can be used to power electricity generators when there is a dearth in the supply of renewable energy. For this option to be viable, a vast and expensive infrastructure is needed for generating, storing and using the hydrogen. When these facilities are taken into account, the costs of using renewable energy on a large scale seem excessive.

It should be observed that the storage of hydrogen would be in direct competition with the storage of carbon dioxide captured from the emissions of industrial processes. Both gases would require to be sequestered in caverns, which could be salt caverns on land or exhausted oil wells at sea. At present, Britain has a dearth of facilities for gas storage. This is because we have been able to rely in the past on plentiful supplies of North Sea gas, which could be treated as if they were on tap.

This analysis points inevitably to the need to exploit nuclear energy to generate our electricity. The need to generate hydrogen, to be used either as a store of energy or directly in industrial processes, could be met most effectively by high-temperature electrolysis powered by nuclear energy. The conclusion must be that it would be cheaper to rely on nuclear power for satisfying most of our energy requirements than to depend upon renewable sources of energy.

Nuclear power is a tried and tested technology that can be implemented rapidly. However, Britain’s nuclear programme has been beset by hesitation and delay. It seems that we are intent on relying on foreign suppliers to create a fleet of small modular reactors. We have failed to support our native projects that have been pursuing advanced nuclear technologies, and we have driven away some promising projects of foreign origin that have sought to establish themselves in Britain.