Energy: Home Battery Storage Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Campbell-Savours
Main Page: Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Campbell-Savours's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, at this stage, I do not want to get into the wider question of Hinkley C costs. I think it would be rather dangerous for me to go down that route. My noble friend is right to say that increased use of home battery storage, possible greater use of batteries in cars as a means of storage in years to come and greater use of other forms of storage, which the noble Baroness and my noble friend referred to—he is probably aware that we already have about 5 gigawatts of storage in the system, which is mainly pumped hydroelectricity—have implications for costs throughout the grid, which will need to be addressed.
Has an audit been carried out of lithium resources worldwide or has it all been left to market forces?
My Lords, so far, we have seen the cost of lithium-ion batteries drop by some 50% over the last five years, since 2012. That implies that resources of lithium are more or less okay and that market forces are driving costs down. I do not have the figures on long-term estimates of quantities of lithium, but that will be taken into account by the market in due course.