Marine Renewables Industry

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Michael Shanks

Thursday 16th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Michael Shanks]

I won’t. Hopefully, it was not the upcoming speeches from me and the shadow Minister that drove her from Chamber. In any event, it is a delight to be here.

I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) not just for securing this debate and the customary way that he introduced it, but for the engagement we have had since I came into this post on this issue and many others. He is a great champion not just of marine renewables, but of Orkney and Shetland. In fact, in the last debate we had in this Chamber, he declared that God came from Orkney and Shetland. I am glad that we did not get into the theological nature of the debate this afternoon.

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to this wide-ranging debate. I pay tribute to the various policy teams and organisations that have clearly done a very effective job of getting a consistent set of lines out to Members of Parliament; they have certainly earned their salary this week. Those are important points, and I will address each of them.

As hon. Members have said, the sector has enormous potential relating not just to energy outcomes, but to the many positive opportunities in skills, supply chains and innovation. The UK can export that innovation to the rest of the world. I will say at the very beginning that the Government are hugely supportive of marine energy, and we want to do what we can to support it.

I will start by giving some context on the Government’s position. As Members will be aware—many have raised it today—we published the “Clean Power 2030” action plan just before Christmas. That was an important step in providing some considerable detail on how the Government will deliver on our mission of clean power by 2030, which is hugely ambitious but achievable. It picks up on some of the strands that Members have raised this afternoon, including how we will deliver more effective grid connections and connections reform, as well as look at the planning system and consenting. It is about all the various things that Members have raised that hold back so much of the delivery of such projects across the country.

Clean power by 2030 is not some ideological project, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), and others in the Conservative party might like to suggest. It is a critical pathway for how we deliver energy security in the long term; all our constituents have been facing a considerable cost of living crisis as a result of us not having home-grown energy security. The clean power mission is about ensuring that we not only have that energy security but tackle the climate crisis and deliver economic growth. I make no apologies for the fact that we are a Government moving at pace, because it is important that we grasp the opportunities for the implementation of both marine technologies and the many other innovative technologies that Britain can be a world leader in delivering. It is also our best opportunity to deliver cheaper energy for people across the country.

I want to pick up specifically on the point made by the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) and the shadow Minister on the clean power action plan. It is right to say that marine renewables are not in the top lines of the pathways to clean power by 2030, because we do not think that that technology is quite at the point where it will be deployed at scale to help us to achieve that mission. That does not mean that we do not hope that projects will come onstream before 2030.

Although we are sprinting to deliver clean power by 2030, that will not be the end of the journey. By 2050, we estimate that the electricity demand in this country will have doubled, so this journey will require us to harness all possible technologies to continue to expand our energy supply over the coming decades. That is where I think marine renewables will start to play more of an important role, as they get past the commercialisation challenges and their price comes down, and as we have some more confidence in the technology.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I do not know whether the Minister will touch on the Crown Estate, so I am taking the opportunity now. On the point about electricity demand doubling, there is such potential in areas such as Wales and Cornwall, if it so wishes. The concept that the Crown Estate should be so centralised in the United Kingdom works badly in the interests of not only Wales but areas such as Cornwall. What does the Minister tell his Welsh Labour colleagues about why that issue cannot be devolved, when it would make such a difference to our local economies?

[Michael Shanks]

I will touch on the Crown Estate later in my speech. On that specific point, I am afraid that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that devolving the Crown Estate is the answer, and I take issue with the suggestion that the Crown Estate’s considerations in Wales somehow come from Whitehall. I have met a number of representatives of the Crown Estate, and they are in engaged with the Welsh Government and with communities in Wales. If we can do more on that, I am very happy to reach out to the Crown Estate, although I am not directly responsible for it and it is not accountable to me. Of course, it has published a number of strategies recently and there is more coming on the long-term vision for the Celtic sea and other parts of the Crown Estate in Wales. It is about partnership work, which includes not just bringing together the Crown Estate but how we look at the planning system and consenting, as well as the strategic spatial energy plan more broadly to plan for the long term. I will come back to some of those points later.

Although marine renewables are not at the centre of that clean power action plan to 2030, they will hugely benefit from the actions that we will deliver through it, not least on grid connections. Grid connections are all about future-proofing the grid in this country so that it can meet the demand of the future, and prioritising a grid queue that has got out of control with over 700 GW waiting to connect, which is simply not deliverable.

I would like to turn to the issue of funding, but first I wish a happy birthday to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), who does not look a day over 21—but that is the last time I will pander to the Lib Dems. He raised a point about Great British Energy, as did a number of other hon. Members, many of whom I cannot help but notice did not vote for it, but now want it to be headquartered in their constituencies and deliver significant amounts of funding. Great British Energy will play a role in this space. It is our first publicly owned energy champion, and it will deliver and deploy clean power across the country and help with some of the innovation and development work.

Marine renewables are exactly the kind of technology that Great British Energy might invest in at an early stage and have a significant impact on, rather than technologies that are at a more confident stage. Hon. Members may not have had the opportunity to reach out to Great British Energy—the Bill is still going through the House of Lords, so it does not technically exist yet—but the start-up chair, Jürgen Maier, has had a number of meetings across the UK, has engaged on questions about a whole range of technologies and is keen to continue to do so. It will be for Great British Energy, as an independent company, to make its own investment decisions based on a whole range of factors, including the return on investment potential, but I see marine renewable technology as a potential benefit for it.

We think that tidal stream energy will play a significant role, particularly beyond 2030. As many Members raised, tidal stream will bring balancing benefits to a future electricity system that will have renewables at its heart. The balancing role that tidal can play—as a baseload, in the traditional way of thinking about the electricity system—would be important. Currently over half of the world’s tidal stream deployment is situated in UK waters. However, this Government want to go further and faster, as the technology has huge potential.

Aside from having one of the world’s best tidal resources, the UK also hosts world-leading marine energy hubs. Many hon. Members spoke about the EMEC. I have been pleased to speak to the EMEC over the last few months; the Minister for Climate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), visited recently and I hope to get to Orkney to do the same at some point.

When we came into power, the Government took the contracts for difference option that had been started by the previous Government and increased the budget to try to get as many projects as we could over the line. That led to a 50% increase in the ringfence for tidal stream to £15 million in the last allocation round. That demonstrated our commitment to the technology and ensured that 28 MW of tidal stream was secured in allocation round 6, including 9 MW for projects based in Orkney.