Thursday 21st July 2022

(1 year, 8 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Callanan Portrait Lord Callanan (Con)
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I thank the noble Baroness for her questions. I do not share her pessimism about the jet fuel initiative. It is very important that we deliver low-carbon jet fuel. After all, we want to enable her Green colleagues to continue to fly up to COP summits in a carbon-neutral manner. With regard to her comments about the other contributions we need to make, of course agriculture is a particular challenge. The energy sector is decarbonising well. Home emissions are difficult for the UK, given the age of our housing stock; something like 6 million homes were built before the First World War, and a third of our properties were built before the Second World War. That presents a fairly unique challenge in Europe, but it is one that we are tackling. Emissions are coming down, and we are proceeding well.

Lord Bellingham Portrait Lord Bellingham (Con)
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My Lords, surely a key aspect of reaching net zero is implementing the British Energy Security Strategy, which aims to increase the share of nuclear to 25%. Can the Minister tell the House what more the Government are doing to encourage modular nuclear systems and nuclear fusion?

Lord Callanan Portrait Lord Callanan (Con)
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My noble friend is absolutely right; I am sure he noticed the granting of planning permission to the Sizewell C reactor yesterday. We are supporting Rolls-Royce to the tune of over £100 million to support the production of designs for small modular reactors, and we think that they will have a significant contribution to make—albeit not for a number of years yet. Of course, the latest developments in fusion, which we are also supporting, are particularly exciting. If my noble friend wants to contribute to the debates on the Energy Bill, we are setting in place a regulatory framework for fusion.