Energy Grid Resilience
Debate between Bill Esterson and Nusrat Ghani(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
There are some inconvenient truths for those on the Opposition Benches who wish to blame low-carbon energy for what happened in Spain and Portugal. As the Minister has said, the cause of the outage is unknown at this stage. In 2003, when there was a blackout in Switzerland and Italy, and in 2006, when the same happened in Germany, affecting the whole of the continent, there were no renewables in the system. That goes to show that it is far too early to speculate.
Gas sets the price for our electricity 98% of the time in this country. Those who oppose the transition to low-carbon energy generation are opposing energy security for this country. They are opposing lower prices for our constituents and good, well-paid jobs. That is what this agenda is really about.
North Sea Energy
Debate between Bill Esterson and Nusrat Ghani(2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Minister was right to remind us that the North sea is a mature basin, she was right to remind us that 70,000 jobs have been lost there in the last 10 years, and she was right to praise the highly skilled engineers who have made such a contribution in the North sea and to the country. She mentioned the skills passport, and said that the Government were making progress with the industry in finding alternatives in the jobs transition. The Select Committee has heard, a number of times, evidence that one of the challenges is the fact that pay in the North sea is significantly higher than pay in equivalent jobs in the renewable sector, and offshore wind in particular. What, at this stage, are the Minister�s thoughts on how we can make pay more attractive for workers moving from oil and gas into renewables?