Electricity Generation

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely aware that we need to ensure that we are also being cost-sensitive to the consumer. Consumers cannot be bearing the brunt of us closing plants down and putting the prices up.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to Mitsubishi Electric. My noble friend mentioned interconnectors; does she agree that it is not just a question of the Iceland possibility? We could get electricity from Norway and Denmark, wind electricity from Ireland, or via other interconnectors from France and Belgium. Does she agree that all these prospects are there and could contribute vastly to our electricity supply, and will she confirm that the Government are encouraging all of them?

[Baroness Verma]

I am extremely grateful for my noble friend’s intervention. Yes, of course those countries are very important to us and, through the cap and floor regime introduced by Ofgem, we have seen five interconnector projects in its first application. There is a lot of good work going on with the interconnectors.