Nuclear Energy: Hydrogen Production Targets

Lord Teverson 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.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I certainly do not agree with the premise of the noble Lord’s question. Sizewell C will use only 35% of its heat, with the rest being discharged into the sea. If we can use that excess heat to produce blue hydrogen, that has to be a very good factor in achieving net zero by 2050.