Climate Change Assembly UK: The Path to Net Zero

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I add my voice to those who have welcomed assembly’s report. As an initiative with its roots in Parliament and an exercise in co-operation across the different Select Committees, it was innovative and courageous and something on which we should now look to make progress and to build.

My constituency has been at the heart of this nation’s energy supply for the past 40 years. As we have relied on hydrocarbons, we have been home, very successfully, to two of the largest oil terminals that bring in hydrocarbons —oil and gas both—from the North sea and latterly from the area to the west of Shetland. We have a long history of being central to this country’s energy supply. We are now coming to a phase of our nation’s history in which we anticipate that our reliance on hydrocarbons will wind down. My constituency remains equally committed to playing a full part in energy provision for our future needs. It is therefore somewhat frustrating for us still to find that the opportunities that we have to contribute to green renewable energy in the future are somewhat frustrated by a lack of action and recognition on the part of the Government in respect of the opportunities that exist.

I met the Minister earlier this year with the Marine Energy Council, from which he heard about the opportunities that exist in the development of wave and tidal power, which has been a long, slow burner. We have now reached the phase of having finished the research and development work but not yet being fully able to go to commercial deployment. Every technology goes through this phase; we know that because back in the 1980s we were at the forefront of the development of onshore wind. The prototype of many of the turbines now seen throughout the country was built not far from my house in Orkney, on Burgar Hill—it was initiated by Cecil Parkinson back in the day. We did the groundbreaking, leading work on developing the technology, but we did not then fund the next stage to get it to commercial deployment.

The risk now is that we will do the same thing with marine energy, and in particular the development of tidal energy. We have done the research and development; we now need to find something like an innovation power purchase agreement, or a similar mechanism, that will get the industry through to the point at which it can contribute its full potential through a mature technology. We know that we are not going to get there, but we know also that if we leave it to others, others will take the opportunity. Just in the past week or so we have heard that the European Union is coming forward with its draft marine energy strategy, and it now speaks about an altogether different scale of deployment and development.

My worry is that we are about to lose the opportunities in respect of not just generating power for use in our own country but the development of a home-grown supply chain, which could be crucial and central to providing the green jobs about which we all speak in this Chamber. The sums of money involved in an IPPA for the marine energy sector are relatively small; the opportunities that they could produce for the UK as a whole, and for Orkney and Shetland in particular, are enormous. The Minister has heard this from the industry’s mouth; I hope that when he comes to respond to the debate he will have some good news to tell the industry.