Energy Supplies Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Lord Teverson
Main Page: Lord Teverson (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Teverson's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord makes an important point. A number of scare stories have been circulating, although I would gently point out that many parts of America are much less densely populated than many parts of the UK.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, it is well understood that fracking will take some time to develop, and it is more expensive than many renewables. As an alternative, solar is renewable, a lot cheaper and can be implemented much more quickly. Can the Government guarantee that they will not restrict further the rollout of solar in the country during the next couple of years?
Lord Callanan (Con)
Not only can I guarantee that but we will be expanding renewables production. We need to do both. We need to roll out renewables, which have a good track record. They are relatively cheap, but they are intermittent—it is no good telling people that they can keep their lights on for only 60% of the time. The real watchword is that we need diversity of supply. We need more renewables; we need gas; we need nuclear; we need biomass production—we need all of them.