Renewable Energy: Generation Licences

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

It is an interesting concept. As the noble Lord knows, the smart export guarantee is a market-driven mechanism, and it is for suppliers to determine the value of the exported electricity to them, taking account of their administrative costs. There are a number of schemes, such as the one mentioned by the noble Lord, and I am certainly very happy to look at it. However, we always have to bear in mind that any subsidy offered to certain generators is paid for by every other customer on the network.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, all this talk of tidal power makes one think of ships. Noble Lords will be glad to hear that I am not going to ask a question about ships. There is going to be a huge growth in demand for electrical power. The only certain way of providing electrical power, no matter what the weather and completely green, is nuclear. What is the actual percentage that we are looking for in the provision of nuclear power, looking to the future of electrical supply within this country?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord is right: we need to expand our nuclear production. We have just agreed the contract for Sizewell, only a couple of weeks ago, and other developments are planned. We have not set a specific target for nuclear production, but we will need to replace a lot of the aging plants that will come offline in the next 10 or 15 years or so.