Albert Owen
Main Page: Albert Owen (Labour - Ynys Môn)
Chris Huhne
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and yes, we are doing that. We have an enormous potential market with a lot of expertise, particularly in offshore wind, as she well knows. I had the pleasure of opening in her company what was at the time the largest offshore wind farm, quite near to her constituency. We can have an enormous supply chain, and we have to send out clear signals of our commitment, as we are doing. We are also getting the costs down to £100 per megawatt hour, and we can have an enormous and effective industry.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
We all want to see an affordable, secure and low-carbon supply of electricity. On affordability and price, the Secretary of State will know that people who live in peripheral areas of the United Kingdom pay more for their electricity. Is there anything in the White Paper that can assist them, particularly as those areas produce the electricity in the first place?
Chris Huhne
That is a good point. One thing that Ofgem is currently examining is the transmission review, and we will have to wait and see. The point that I and a number of other people have been making is that in future, in a world in which electricity will not be generated very close to centres of population—we will no longer be siting power stations in the middle of our cities, like Battersea power station; they may instead be far away from cities, as they will have to be where the wind blows or where the tides are—we will have to reconsider transmission charging to ensure that renewable types of energy are not penalised. That will go for distant communities as well.