Biomass: Power Generation

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I do not agree with the noble Baroness—I often do not agree with her. This is not a business scam. It is actually bill payers’ money, not taxpayers’ money, but we spend it on a number of different sources, including those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Birt. It is not an either/or equation; we need a variety of different sources of fuel for our electricity and our energy uses. If the energy crisis taught us anything, it is the importance of not relying on one particular source. Yes, we need wind, solar, biomass, nuclear and some gas-fired generation in the short term. We need a resilient energy mix across all the different sources.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, on the general subject of renewable energy, in the announcement yesterday of two new gas-fired power stations, an announcement was also made that there were times when renewable energy was not available to generate power. Does my noble friend agree that this simply is not true? Tidal power is constantly available.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord has asked me about this a number of times. As I have said to him, we are supportive of tidal power and are allocating funds to its development through the various CfD auctions. But I think he will recognise that it is not yet available at scale and in the quantities we would need. We are very proud of our renewable resources: almost 50% of our electricity production is now from renewables; we have the five biggest wind farms in the world; we are easily the biggest producer in Europe; and we are seeing lots of applications for solar development. Renewables are great, but it remains the case that they are not available all the time; we need more storage and back-up, and need other sources as well.