Rosebank and Jackdaw Oilfields

Debate between Michael Shanks and Olivia Blake

Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I give credit to the hon. Lady for the ingenious way she got that important question into the urgent question. She makes the good point that, as well as ensuring we have built the clean power system for the needs of the future, we want to reduce as much as possible the need for households to heat their homes by making them much warmer in the first place. We are doing that by improving the standard of homes through the work being done by the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh) on the warm homes plan. We know that some of the poorest people in our country live in substandard homes that are cold and that take far too much of their monthly budgets to heat. We are determined to do something about that, as well as working across the piece on energy-efficiency measures that reduce demand in the years ahead.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

The remaining global carbon budget is extremely small, amounting to just five years’ worth of present global emissions. There is significant evidence that burning all oil and gas in existing fields globally would exceed the 1.5°C global limit. The climate pollution from burning Rosebank’s reserves would be more than the combined annual CO₂ emissions of all 28 of the lowest income countries in the world. Does the Minister agree that we should focus on a fair transition for our communities and workers as we move to other forms of energy, rather than giving CPR to an already declining industry?

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend outlines again the importance of tackling the climate crisis that is with us now. That is why the Government have been determined to move faster, through our clean power action plan and through the Department’s wider work to decarbonise across our economy. That is incredibly important and we do not have a moment to waste.

A fair transition is key to ensuring that we move away from a carbon-based economy. We have already closed the last of our coal power stations, which was an important moment, and my visit to Ratcliffe on Soar was an important moment for me to recognise how a transition can be done well—[Interruption.] I hear the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), chuntering that that was done under a Conservative Government. It was an example of where the Conservative Government recognised that the coal industry was declining and that a transition was necessary, but he seems not to recognise that the same is true of the oil and gas industry, which is declining. If we do not start planning for that future now, we will leave those workers with nothing.

Biomass Generation

Debate between Michael Shanks and Olivia Blake

Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

Reports show that Drax has behaved appallingly, and under the last Government it seemingly had pretty free rein. I welcome the fact that this settlement includes a drastic reduction in subsidy, an upping of sustainability in supply chains to 100%, and a windfall tax principle that will deliver value for the British bill payer. I also welcome the further consultations the Minister has outlined, but this raises the question: why were the last Government unable to get anywhere near to this deal?

[Michael Shanks]

I am tempted to say that we will have to ask the Conservatives that question, but they are under new management, so they do not know why the previous Government that they were all Ministers in made the decisions that they did. The truth is that for far too long—under, I think, eight different Conservative Energy Ministers—they signed off deal after deal with Drax with uncapped profits and nowhere near the sustainability criteria that they should have had, letting Drax do whatever it wanted with that power station. We have put a stop to that. Let us be really clear: we have halved the subsidy, taking £6 off every single bill in this country every single year, we have increased sustainability to 100%, and we are delivering the energy security this country needs, but we should not have been in the position on coming into office where there were nowhere near enough long-term plans for the future of our energy system.