Electric Vehicles: Impact on Household Energy Bills

Earl of Shrewsbury Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

We pledged a further £582 million in grants for those purchasing zero-emission or ultra-low-emission vehicles to make them cheaper to buy, alongside generous tax incentives. We are also working with industry to deliver a market-led countrywide rollout of charging infrastructure. Our infrastructure strategy, which will be published later this year, will set out how we intend to measure progress in charging infrastructure provision and to ensure that there are enough in the right locations to support the phasing out of petrol and diesel vehicles.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I know that my noble friend is very aware that the move to electric vehicles will introduce significant new challenges to the grid, but can she provide an assurance that Her Majesty’s Government are also taking into account the requirements on the electricity grid to enable 600,000 new heat pumps each year? Can she share with the House what estimates exist for the cost of upgrading the grid to support the mass introduction of both electric vehicles and heat pumps?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: we do expect the transition to electric vehicles and heat pumps to create significant new demands for electricity. Ensuring that local electricity networks are prepared for current and future demand is the responsibility of the distribution network operators—the DNOs—who are incentivised to do this through the regulatory framework known as price control, set by Ofgem. This includes making additional funding available via uncertainty mechanisms, which allow DNOs to access funding for net-zero-related projects that were uncertain at the start of price control but become more certain later on. As electricity becomes a common fuel, it will bring certain challenges, which the Government are endeavouring to address.