Energy White Paper

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest in this area as in the register. This is a highly impressive and very ambitious programme, not least on the nuclear front, which the Minister has just been talking about. I want to ask about carbon-free home heating. There are 23 million homes in the United Kingdom—so the White Paper says—connected to the gas grid for heating, hot water and cooking. If, as we have been told, it will cost between £5,000 and £8,000 to convert each one, and if the whole national gas grid has to be upgraded to accommodate the smaller hydrogen molecules, we are talking about an astronomical sum of money and decades to complete it. Does my noble friend agree that a lot more reassurance is needed for all householders about how much it will cost each of them and how much disruption there will be in every home, and that this really is the best use of resources in the main task of combating global climate change?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments and particularly for his comment that the White Paper is highly ambitious. He might want to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, on that. Of course, he is right to point out the immense challenge that faces us in decarbonising heat and buildings. We will publish our heat and buildings strategy next year, but there are a number of elements to that: investing in building insulation through schemes such as the ECO scheme and the Green Homes Grant; and investing in the production of hydrogen and in the various experiments and research and development on the potential for hydrogen to replace gas in the domestic grid. My noble friend is perfectly right that this is ambitious. It is an area that needs further work and study, but we are making progress. A new heat network transformation programme is launching next year, starting with £122 million of funding, which was confirmed at the spending review. The White Paper is laying the foundations for reducing the emissions from buildings, which we will build on in the study next year.