Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department will take in the event an energy supplier declines to install smart meters in their customers' homes.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government wants as many homes and small businesses as possible to be able to benefit from smart meters.
In order to drive continued rollout momentum, the Government has introduced minimum annual installation targets for energy suppliers. Energy suppliers are also obligated to take all reasonable steps to install a smart meter where a meter is fitted for the first time or when an existing meter needs to be replaced.
These licence conditions are regulated by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), which has a range of enforcement tools at its disposal.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an estimate of how many and what proportion of households have a smart meter installed in each local authority as of 10 October 2022.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government’s official statistics on the rollout of smart meters are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/smart-meters-statistics. These statistics are based on data from energy suppliers provided at Great Britain-level only.
The rollout is making good progress, with more than half of energy meters in Great Britain now smart. At end June 2022 there were 29.5 million smart and advanced meters in homes and small businesses across Great Britain, including 27.8 million smart meters in domestic properties.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for how many hydrogen schemes his Department (a) is providing support and (b) plans to provide support.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund will provide up to £240m to develop and construct new production plants, and the Hydrogen Business Model will provide revenue support to production projects.
The first joint allocation round for electrolytic hydrogen projects seeking support under both schemes closed on 12 October. Four CCUS-enabled hydrogen projects have also been shortlisted to proceed to the due diligence stage of the Phase-2 Cluster Sequencing process.
The Government has also committed to design, by 2025, new business models for hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure, and is currently consulting on these.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which hydrogen schemes in Scotland his Department has identified for government support.
Answered by Graham Stuart
We intend to deliver the Hydrogen Business Model and Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF) on a UK-wide basis. Projects will be selected on a competitive basis.
The Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, which includes hydrogen facilities, is a reserve Track-1 cluster.
We note the Scottish Government’s intention that funding available from the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund for hydrogen production will be complementary to, not duplicative of, the NZHF.
Government is also supporting industry to deliver projects that use hydrogen, including the H100 project in Fife, Levenmouth, which aims to trial the use of 100% hydrogen for heat in around 300 homes.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department will require energy suppliers to replace pre-paid energy meters with smart meters.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Energy suppliers are already obligated to take all reasonable steps to install a smart meter where a meter is fitted for the first time or when an existing meter needs to be replaced.
Smart meters can operate in credit or prepayment mode. Most recent figures showed 13% of all smart meters were in prepayment mode, broadly in line with the overall levels of prepayment meters in the market.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Energy Price Guarantee announced on 8 September 2022, what steps he plans to take to ensure that amounts paid to energy suppliers accurately reflect actual energy use for each relevant period.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government is engaging with energy suppliers, industry payment bodies, and Ofgem to ensure that suppliers are accurately compensated for their actual energy usage during the Energy Price Guarantee’s reconciliation period. The Government has considered which data flows will most accurately reflect total energy use and will publish more details in due course.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether any of the hydrogen projects announced in the Growth Plan 2022 will be located in Scotland.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Growth Plan sets out the infrastructure projects that government will prioritise for acceleration, across transport, energy, and digital infrastructure. The list includes projects up and down the country and shows the UK government’s commitment to growth.
The list is not exhaustive, and the Government will be looking at acceleration opportunities right across the portfolio.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to Answer of 23 September to Answer 51991, what checks were carried out to ensure voluntary commitments to sourcing UK supply chain work were made.
Answered by Graham Stuart
For all relevant projects covered by the North Sea Transition Deal, the North Sea Transition Authority uses the well-established Supply Chain Action Plan process to track and monitor these commitments to local content. Supply Chain Action Plans were introduced in 2018 to provide evidence that operators were deriving as much value as possible from their projects through open engagement with suppliers. The guidance was further updated earlier this summer to take account of the North Sea Transition Deal and Net Zero commitments.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to Answer of 23 September to Question 51992, whether a list of onshore sites used in decommissioning has been (a) complied and (b) made publicly available.
Answered by Graham Stuart
This Department has not compiled a list of onshore sites used in decommissioning. Offshore oil and gas operators are required to report on progress whilst decommissioning installations or pipelines. On completion of a decommissioning project a close out report will be submitted to the Department detailing how the work has been executed. These reports detail which onshore site was used for decommissioning and are publicly available on our website https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-and-gas-decommissioning-of-offshore-installations-and-pipelines.
Asked by: Kenny MacAskill (Alba Party - East Lothian)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which North Sea installations are in the process of being decommissioned as of September 2022; and at which yards that work is being conducted.
Answered by Graham Stuart
At present approximately 94 decommissioning projects have been approved, all of which are at various stages of execution from onshore planning to offshore removal works. The decommissioning programme often does not include the location of onshore work but must make a commitment to select appropriately licenced contractors and sites to perform the dismantlement work.