Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman says one. That is, of course, more than the zero to which his hon. Friend referred. This is exactly why we will be looking at the capacity market again, to ensure it delivers new gas.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

4. What plans she has to support the development of electricity storage.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)]

Energy storage was identified in 2012 as one of the eight great technologies where the UK can lead the world, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I am a very keen supporter. More than £80 million of public sector support has been committed to UK energy storage research and development since 2012. We now are looking at what more we can do to improve the incentives for electricity storage in particular. We will be publishing a call for evidence soon. I do hope he will put his thoughts into that call for evidence.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the Minister for her answer, but may I be a bit more specific? As a spin-off from developing battery-driven cars, domestic battery storage is now becoming practicable and commercially viable, and indeed in America it is now taking off. What are the Government specifically doing to promote the adoption of domestic battery storage in homes?

[Andrea Leadsom]

As I say, we will shortly issue a call for evidence on energy storage at grid level—at battery generation level—to try to ensure that we give as much scope and capacity to energy storage in the system. At domestic level, people are starting to look at those systems and, as part of the improvement of house-building performance, builders are required to look at other opportunities such as battery storage, solar panels and the like. There will be more work on that, but, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, it is still at a fairly early stage as things stand.