Renewable Energy: Costs

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord, Lord Frost, starting this debate. He did so in the way I anticipated he would, repeating what was said in the debate a couple of weeks ago. Rather than following him into his arguments, the House needs to recognise that even if the costs of renewables, including of construction, carbon capture and storage and so forth, prove to be double the estimates made under the previous Government—and which are still supported by the Conservatives and by the new systems operator—they would still be substantially cheaper than the estimated cost of gas.

Of course, the electricity price in this country, contrary to what the noble Lord has said and to what the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said the other week, is higher than in other countries at various points because it is based on the price of gas. We have to pay the world price for gas, which went up considerably. It does not matter whether the gas is from the North Sea or from overseas: that gas price determines our electricity supply. The mechanism is explicit and implicit.

The real problem with our attempt to move to net zero is that we have failed to do certain complementary things, and on that I would largely agree with the noble Lord. We have failed to develop storage, switching capacity and aspects of the grid. We have failed to provide an offshore grid so that different arrays and wind farms can land at one place, rather than creating a planning problem in different parts of the country. On the other hand, we have failed to develop nuclear power or to return to nuclear power early enough. We have also failed to develop the long-term investment in tidal and wind power, which we have plenty of around our coast and which would not be intermittent. But that is very different from denying the whole ability to provide at relatively cheap cost predominantly renewable energy and to get back on to the trajectory, around which there was a degree of political consensus a year or two ago.

There are other problems, as well, with the policy so far. Effectively, we have failed to produce a supply chain for renewable energy in this country to any great extent. Most of the blades and paraphernalia for wind farms come from abroad. I applaud the Prime Minister’s announcement a few days ago on investment in manufacturing blades in Hull. I hope that that is only part of a new industrial policy that takes into account the need to provide alternative employment through training, retraining and recruitment of those who hitherto worked in areas that were supportive of North Sea activity, so they have jobs in the new industry. The actual techniques used in the jobs are not that different, so retraining can relatively easily be done; but we also need a new generation who can support the renewable energy sector.

I do not think that the noble Lord makes the case for changing significantly our trajectory, but he does make the case for ensuring that these back-up arrangements are in place and provide jobs and income for this country’s businesses and workforce.

The other reason I put down my name for this debate is my deep anxiety that, while it is obviously right to query costs, particular technologies and their effect on employment and business within Britain, what are essentially queries about particular projects—whether on who pays for it, the environmental impact of, for example, solar farms on agricultural land, or the total cost—have been used by some people to support what appears to be a growing international degree of ending the consensus on climate change. Some of that is reflected in what is going on in Baku now and the near failure of the COP process so far. We need to get back to that consensus, with all-party support for the trajectory that, a few years ago, seemed to be agreed by us all.