Energy Bill [Lords]

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The reality is that the Government have committed to those targets, as has the whole House, because the law has already been passed. We have the carbon budgets, one to six; I think we exceeded one, two, three and four, but we are on track for five, and a few weeks ago, I set out in “Powering Up Britain” how we plan to meet carbon budget six as well. The conversation about whether the regulator has an individual duty is an interesting one, but the reality is that in truth, we are all headed towards that cleaner energy system.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will recognise that, to keep costs down, to get electricity to the places where it is needed and to avoid us having to pay offshore wind producers to switch off when there is no capacity, we need something like 600 km of electricity wires between now and 2031. Over the past eight years, we have built only about 32 km. Can I press him on the proposal in the 1922 Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee report that there should be a new planning allowance to have those cables going down the side of transport corridors such as motorways and train lines?

[Grant Shapps]

I met my right hon. Friend to discuss some of the ideas in the report and I am grateful for all of them, including the idea of cables running along existing transport routes. I am pleased to let her know that we are taking forward many of the suggestions from that particular committee, as well as those from elsewhere in the House. There is much in the Bill to assist with organising and planning, but there is much more to do as well. I am grateful for her assistance in all this.

By introducing business models, we want to get the advantage of that long-term potential geological storage, with revenues and a potential CCUS industry that could support something like 50,000 jobs, with another 12,000 in hydrogen by 2030. We will also build the market for low-carbon heat pumps to 600,000 installations a year by 2028, and accelerate the transition to ultra-efficient electric heat pumps to reduce our reliance on the volatile global gas market and improve our own energy security in return.

We will also bring forward reforms to test new methods of decarbonising heating, which is where we come back to the hydrogen trials. We will have a first-of-its-kind hydrogen village trial that will convert up to 2,000 properties to hydrogen for heating, instead of natural gas, and repurpose the existing gas network infrastructure for 100% hydrogen. Through that, we can find out about the efficiency, or otherwise, of building a hydrogen heating network. I put on record that I understand there are challenges, which is why we want to test this first.