National Policy Statements (Energy)

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Charles Hendry]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We have considered that, and I look forward to giving evidence to him and his colleagues on the Select Committee tomorrow morning.

This is a permissive framework, which involves planning consents. It is not a case of people going ahead and building the plants. A range of other investment decisions need to be made in order for the final decision to be made, but at this stage what is critical is the establishment of a structure so that people understand how the planning system will work.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

The number of gas-fired power stations that are under way, constructed or at an advanced stage of planning substantially exceeds the figures set out in EN-1. Would the Minister be prepared to table amendments to it, in the light of the reality of actual construction as opposed to what is in the document?

[Charles Hendry]

I hope I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that that will not be necessary. When the decision is finally made, it will be legitimate to take account of the fact that if the disbenefits were considered to outweigh the benefits, consent would not need to be given. If it were felt that consent was being given to too much higher-carbon generation capacity and therefore that environmental issues—low-carbon issues—were seen to be more important, that would be a material factor to be taken into account. That can already be done through the system. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out that we have a significant amount of consented gas for which there is not currently construction. That also brings us to part of the problem: at the moment, we are not seeing anything like enough investment and construction work in our energy infrastructure.

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[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Perhaps I should send the Minister a copy of what I would have said and ask him to respond to it.

I wish to draw attention to the need to get right the future capacity. The documents—EN-1 in particular—conclude that we will require 133 GW of installed capacity by the early 2020s. The figure appears to have come from nowhere and is not supported by the accompanying updated energy provision documents. Indeed, recent pronouncements by the National Grid appear to suggest that that is a considerable overestimate of the likely capacity required to enable us to keep the lights on.

EN-1 is an over-arching policy document, so that conclusion spreads throughout the rest of the documents before us. They determine what energy mix we will have, including not whether we should have any further nuclear power but whether the new nuclear programme should be extensive. Even the UEP figures on enhanced capacity suggest that we will not have the amount of nuclear power that the Government suggest we want.

We need to get the capacity figures right. The National Grid Company’s projection that we will need about 100 GW of installed capacity by the early 2020s to balance the system along with a little additional interconnection and a little work on energy demand—but not an enormous amount—is in stark contrast to what appears to be the guesswork in these overarching documents. My plea to the Minister is that, irrespective of whether we pass these documents tonight, we should have an early review of how much capacity we will need over the next few years, bearing in mind all the various things that are under way. We do not need these finger-in-the-air suggestions—people saying that we need an enormous amount of extra power and coming to a figure that seems about right but not on the basis of entirely standing by our own projections. I hope that the Minister will undertake that work and come back with different projections to inform future documents.