Energy: Wind Turbines

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I am confident that we can meet our target. It is a very interesting point: the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, comes from Cornwall, as we all know, where they have embraced onshore wind turbines. Of course in other parts of the country they are not going to embrace them. Scotland has embraced wind power very substantially but in other parts of the country it has not been embraced. It is very important that the local communities decide whether they want to embrace this form of electricity, and if they do we will of course achieve our target and we will be able to supply electricity for years to come.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, the noble Lord the Minister has drawn attention to the intermittency of wind power. Will he tell the House what arrangements are in place to ensure that emergency supplies of conventional power are available to ensure that when wind is intermittent the lights stay on?

[Lord Marland]

That is a very valuable point. The reality is that we have back-up supply but we must not forget—as the noble Baroness knows, because she was in the energy world herself—that a lot of the back-up supplies that she is referring to work only intermittently. Nuclear is operating on a 60 per cent load factor; gas is on roughly the same figure. We need all forms of supply to sustain twice the electricity demand that we will have by 2050.