Energy Security

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

It is good that the electorate know what they will be getting if they vote for the Labour party. With us, they will be getting local consent: if people locally are happy to see such power production, they will get it. With them, they will get it willy-nilly.

I want to correct the hon. Gentleman on one fact: the cost projections on new forms of energy supply show that offshore wind is the cheapest available in the next likely bidding round.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s focus on securing energy security domestically, but does he agree that that must happen alongside food security, not over the top of it? We have vast swathes of land being taken for solar farms, while warehouse and factory owners cannot install solar because the grid cannot take the power. What is being done to ensure that rooftop solar can happen?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about rooftop solar; I have had it on my own house for the past 11 years, and once it is there, it just carries on producing power. We need to expand that, both domestically and on factory roofs. I will be looking at things like permitted development rights, which enable those panels to go up on top of roofs. There are currently limits to the size of the panels that can be put in place, and I think they are a fruitful source of additional power.