Electricity Generation

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, the Government’s national policy statement for energy says that there is currently 85 gigawatts of total generating capacity in the UK, while the average demand across the year is only half that, so there is a 50% margin. Will the Minister tell us how the Government intend to reduce the peaks in demand, which could save us billions of pounds on investment, and how this might be brought into new energy legislation to ensure that we reduce the demand side as well as put up the supply side?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is absolutely right. Of course the Government recognise that we need to make sure that we are reducing demand. We are also making sure, through our energy Bill, that our capacity mechanism will be able to bring down prices, which is something that we all want to see.