Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Debate between Michael Shanks and Ben Obese-Jecty

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I thought for a moment that my hon. Friend was going to make a bid for GB Energy to be headquartered in Wales, which is one thing that I cannot commit to. She raises a really important point. One of the missions of GB Energy will be around the idea of community-owned power. We have to bring two things together: we want communities to be in the driving seat of much of this in the future, but also to have some sense of ownership of the assets. We also know that some of the smaller generation projects can be the most successful. If we can bring together the benefits of community ownership with smaller-scale generation projects, that would deal with some of the issues regarding the grid and network, because we would not be trying to bring power to communities from far away. There is real appetite for that, and it is some of the early work that GB Energy will do.

The Government have moved quickly on two aspects, one of which is onshore wind. We swept away some of the significant barriers that have held us back for far too long. Within 72 hours of coming into office, we removed the de facto ban on onshore wind in England that meant that just a single objection to a wind turbine prevented it from being built. Onshore wind is quick and cheap to build, and it becomes one of the cheapest sources of power that we have. Under the ban, in place for nearly a decade under the Conservative party, only two onshore wind turbines were built in the whole of England, and the pipeline of projects shrank by nearly 90%. We are now consulting on bringing large onshore projects back into the nationally significant infrastructure projects regime, and we have established an onshore wind taskforce to tackle the depleted pipeline of projects, to help us on our way to doubling onshore wind by the end of the decade.

We also have to speed up the roll-out of solar power. That means not leaving planning decisions languishing on desks for month after month, but getting on with making decisions. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State consented to 1.3 GW of solar, powering the equivalent of 400,000 homes.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

The Minister talks of solar farms. In Huntingdon, the proposed East Park Energy solar farm stretches for six miles, from Great Staughton to across the constituency boundary, and is, at 1,800 acres, larger than Gatwick airport. Local residents have grave concerns about the scale of that development. What commitment will he make to our rural communities that they will have a say over the Labour Government allowing large solar farms to be built in local areas, given the detrimental impact on them?

[Michael Shanks]

The hon. Gentleman is right to represent his constituents, of course, and we will not in any way remove the ability of communities to be part of the consultation process and the planning system, but the issue is that this has not been happening for so long. We need to move forward with some of this infrastructure. We want to look at the benefit that communities will get from it—a range of options are being looked at—but at some point we need national recognition that some infrastructure is necessary and nationally significant. Some communities will have to host that infrastructure, and there should be benefits for them to doing so; it does not mean that we should stop doing these things. The days of the Government passing the buck to a future generation to fix the issues are gone. We need to tackle the crisis, and that means that we will build projects in communities—with consultation, of course—because nationally significant projects will have to go ahead if we want to reach our targets by 2030.

In one week, more solar capacity was delivered by this Government than through all previous solar projects consented to by the Department and its predecessors combined. We have reconvened the solar taskforce to explore what else Government and industry can do to help us to treble solar power by 2030.

Underpinning a renewables-based system will be a baseload of nuclear power. We want to see Hinkley Point C operational this decade, with extensions to the currently operating fleet, and we are also supporting the development of new sites such as Sizewell C. Meanwhile, Great British Nuclear is continuing to drive forward the competition for small modular reactors, with bids currently being evaluated by the Department.

There has been much debate about the role the North sea will play and what a just transition will look like. The reality, as I mentioned earlier, is that the North sea is a mature basin with declining reserves. Figures from the Office for National Statistics suggest that the number of direct jobs supported by the oil and gas industry has already fallen by more than a third since 2014.