Nuclear Energy: Hydrogen Production Targets

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, can we keep questions short please?

[Lord Teverson (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in Aldustria Ltd. Surely to use an extremely expensive form of energy such as nuclear power to produce another form of energy such as hydrogen, with all the efficiency losses that that entails, cannot make sense. With the Prime Minister’s call for a massive increase in offshore renewables, surely what we need now is not more baseload energy but counter variable, flexible sources such as interconnectors, demand response and energy storage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

Investment was a point made very powerfully by Bill Gates in his new book. We recognise the importance of ambition and a supportive policy framework in building investor confidence in the development of low-carbon technologies in the UK. The Government’s dedicated hydrogen strategy, which will be published in the second quarter of this year, will have more detail on how we work with industry to meet the 2030 ambition, but it will also incorporate a “minded to” paper—that is Civil Service speak—on ways that we could finance these large projects.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed, and we now come to the third Oral Question.