Renewables Obligation Closure (Amendment) Order 2015

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, may I ask the Minister a general question about the role of solar PV in our energy strategy? Quite large amounts of electricity are being planned and spoken about, as the Minister told us. I assume it is the case that photovoltaic generation is available only during daylight and is negligible after dark. Therefore, I assume that this capacity will not be available when we have peak demand, which occurs after dark, typically in the early hours of darkness. Therefore, are we in a sense subsidising capacity that will not be available when we need electricity most?

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for presenting this order and for the comments from the right reverend Prelate. This is a very good example of a difficult balancing act; clearly, having intervened in the market to take on important decisions about where we put money, which technology to support, how much it should cost and at what volumes, it is challenging.

However, it is true in all of this that we have to think about investor confidence. Just today an article appeared in the Telegraph saying that a lack of clarity over UK energy policy is forcing the UK’s ranking in the green power league down; we are now at number eight, having dropped a place. Also, if you look at where we are in the ranking of renewable energy deployment in the EU, we are almost in the relegation zone, at the bottom of that league table when you look at energy across the piece, with a very modest deployment of renewable energy into all primary energy, with only the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Malta below us in that table in the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

I am a simple soul in a complicated world and, no doubt, speak as a fool. Still, there is a syllogism that solar PV is not available after dark but peak demand arises after dark, so solar PV capacity is not available at times of peak demand. It is a relatively simple logical proposition, and I wonder whether the Minister is denying or agreeing with it.

[Baroness Worthington]

That is a fair point. However, peaks may shift. We may have a summer peak, especially if we have very hot summers and need air conditioning, due to climate change. Summer peaks happen quite a lot on the continent. We have probably dealt with this question—we will have storage. There will be times when we have a great deal of solar power during the day going into storage to be used at night. These are engineering problems that can be solved.