Gas-fired Power Stations

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I would chide my right hon. Friend with the science and evidence that are emerging all the time. There is a climate challenge and emergency, which is why we are looking to reduce our emissions. He is quite right to challenge that by saying, “We are less than 1% of global emissions, so how does this make sense?” That is why we hosted COP26 and got the rest of the world to commit to following us. We are bringing in the carbon border adjustment mechanism from 2027 precisely to ensure that we create an economically rational system that supports jobs in this country, while meeting the climate challenge that needs to be met.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I am little puzzled about what all this is about. The Committee on Climate Change and all credible energy experts have said that we will need a small residual of unabated gas in the system for the medium term, and that is consistent with a fully decarbonised power system. No one disputes that, and it is barely worth an announcement. We should extend the lives of existing plants to meet that need. If new-build plants are needed in the short term to replace some of those retiring gas-fired power stations, there is no disagreement, provided they are capable of converting to hydrogen or carbon capture, as the Government say they must be.

However, that is not what the Secretary of State said yesterday at the Chatham House meeting. The Government’s own analysis published yesterday shows that 24 GW of existing gas capacity could be maintained via life extension and refurbishment, and 9 GW of new capacity is already in the baseline under existing capacity market arrangements. That is an uncontroversial position and analysis, and hardly something worth making a huge fuss about. But again, that was not what the Secretary of State talked about at yesterday’s Chatham House conference.

Given that analysis, could the Minister enlighten us with the number of new gas plants that the Government are hoping to build, given there is no mention of that in the 1,500 pages of documents that were published yesterday? That is an important point, because it appears to show the Government’s intention to go beyond what is already in the analysis and build a large number of new gas-fired power stations for the future.

There is a great deal in the review of electricity market arrangements published yesterday that is worth discussing, not least the Government’s glaring failure to bring forward low-carbon flexible technologies such as long-duration storage, which everyone knows we will need. It is a shame that the Minister has not properly addressed that. Will he give us clarity on whether this is a meaningless announcement within existing policy arrangements? Or, as has been said, is it an attempt to conjure a culture war out of climate and energy policy, with announcements with no substance or value that show that the Government have no serious plan for energy in our country?

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[Graham Stuart]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. The point is to have a wide range of back-up capacity, but not to use it very much with fossil fuels, and, as I think has long been the case, to ensure that any new gas generation should be carbon capture-ready. We look forward to it being hydrogen-ready, too. We are in a very similar position to Germany and other countries that are looking at exactly that. For instance, I think both Germany and Ireland, as part of their growth in renewables, recognise the need for gas, albeit used less and less, to ensure that the lights stay on and there is appropriate insurance in place.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

What a cluster—it is unbelievable that we are in this situation. In the Secretary of State’s letter to Members today, she said that the Government are taking steps to make sure the lights stay on. That is the legacy of 14 years of the Conservatives in charge of energy. Uncomfortably, I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg). This is a significant departure, and one we should be alarmed about. Where is the Government’s precious nuclear baseload now? Where is the exemplar of CCUS working at the necessary scale, from which the Government are taking inspiration? Would it not have been an elegant solution to have unabated gas winding down at the same time as battery storage and long-duration pump storage was winding up? We cannot have that, because the Government have dragged their feet on both things. What does the Minister say to people who are having infrastructure for transmission put throughout their communities and are being told to suck it up because that is what we need to get gas out the system, when the same Government are now building gas-fired power stations?

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend. He and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) are absolutely right to focus on the economics. We have to get the economics right. We have used an auction-type mechanism in the capacity market to ensure flexible capacity. We are incentivising more and more of that to be low carbon, with batteries coming in at scale, as well as pumps and potentially hydrostorage. We also need hydrogen and carbon capture. We are ensuring a balanced system with discipline built into it to drive costs down. When CBAMs and so on come on stream, I firmly expect that in the 2030s we will have lower-cost energy than our neighbours and we will, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset referred to, be more economically competitive.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker—tapadh leibh.

It is concerning that this was announced in Chatham House and not here in the House, and that the Secretary of State is not here today. Off-piste speeches have cost in the past. My Committee heard this morning that an Energy Minister made a speech a decade ago that, with the effect it had on investment, cost 1,000 jobs. The Minister says that this is a consultation, but have the Government picked a winner? What room have they given for storage to be in the mix? Are they confusing energy security—we have learned from the Ukraine war important how that is—with continual electricity supply? Given what the Minister says about the percentage of gas used by 2030 and after, what percentage of capacity will this provide, and what percentage does he envisage will be used day to day? What thought has been given to consideration of other technologies in his gigawatt demand?