Energy: Onshore Wind

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right about the importance of onshore wind, but it is already delivering for us. On that basis, we are convinced that the mix of other renewables, together with nuclear and CCS, means that the challenging commitments that we indeed have on heat and transport are deliverable.

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

My Lords, as we learn from experience which type of renewable to back and which not to back, and as wind turbines have shown themselves to produce extremely expensive electricity due to their intermittency, would the Minister consider moving on to one of the greatest developments of our age, which is small nuclear reactors? That means that, instead of having one huge nuclear power station that probably takes 10 to 14 years to develop, you could have 10 factory-built nuclear units in a row—if one is closed down for maintenance, the other nine continue to work. This is the technology of tomorrow, which will give us limitless CO₂-free cheap energy. Will the Government consider putting some serious resource into this to make Britain a world leader in this technology?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, renewables are important, but it is absolutely right that some renewables are intermittent and we therefore need back-up. Nuclear is certainly vital to us and we need it. We are looking at the possibility—I put it no stronger than that—of smaller nuclear as an additional part of the mix.