Energy Security Strategy

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Geraint Davies (in the Chair)]

I have great pleasure in inviting Mick Whitley to move the motion.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the British energy security strategy.

It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I am grateful to Members for participating in this important debate. The issue of energy security has never been so important. Putin’s onslaught on the Ukrainian people, the obscene profiteering of the oil and energy giants and the petrol retailers’ opportunist price hikes have led to soaring energy bills, with Ofgem warning that up to 12 million households could be plunged into fuel poverty this year. Too many of my constituents are grappling with the terrible dilemma of whether to heat their homes or put a warm meal on the table. Meanwhile, Putin’s efforts to weaponise Russian gas and oil have forced Europe to reckon with the challenge of charting a course towards energy independence. All the while, the window for avoiding climate catastrophe is rapidly closing, with the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stating clearly that we must decarbonise at a speed previously thought to be unimaginable.

The forthcoming energy security Bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever to be brought before Parliament, but the strategy outlined by the Government fails to come near the task of tackling the scale of the crisis we face. The energy security strategy offered the Government the opportunity to harness the potential of our wind, tide and sun and deliver a greener and more independent energy system. However, while the Government have gone beyond their manifesto commitment and even the recommendations of the Climate Change Committee with the target of delivering 50 GW of offshore wind power by 2030, that scale of ambition is not matched for other renewables. The Government’s refusal to support new onshore wind developments is particularly disappointing, given the massive public support for new wind farms.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

What back-up would we need if we became even more dependent on wind? There are days when the wind does not blow and then we get no wind power.

[Mick Whitley]

I will try to cover that later in my speech.

Onshore wind can meet the growing demand for electricity as our economy decarbonises, but also, importantly, it could help us to transform the economic fortune of left-behind communities, with the potential to boost the UK economy by more than £45 billion and create 57,000 new jobs. By accelerating the development of the 649 individual solar and wind farms that have already been granted planning permission, we can eradicate the need for Russian gas imports entirely. Putin’s ransom demands can be safely ignored.

There are many of us who had hoped that the Prime Minister might undo the draconian planning restrictions for onshore wind, introduced by the Cameron Government, that have made it virtually impossible to build new wind farms in all but a handful of local authorities. In 2020, the Prime Minister reversed his predecessor’s decision to exclude onshore wind from the contracts for difference scheme. Our hopes for a repeat performance were bolstered in the weeks running up to the publication of the energy security strategy, which appeared to commit the Government to tripling onshore wind capacity by 2035. That would have been a bold, progressive policy and a sign of a Government who understand both the needs of our country and the public mood. However, the plans were strangled at birth by Tory Back Benchers and their allies in the Cabinet, some of whom have happily taken small fortunes from fossil fuel giants and so-called climate sceptics. Now, the strategy explicitly rules out the planning reforms that are essential to unlocking the promise of onshore wind.

It is not just onshore wind that is being ignored by the Government; the UK has half of all Europe’s tidal energy capacity and many experts agree that no country anywhere in the world is better placed to exploit the remarkable power of the tide.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Given that we have the amazing River Mersey separating our two constituencies, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to operate at speed to support the Mersey tidal power project?

[Mick Whitley]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Mersey tidal project alone has the potential to power more than 1 million homes and produce almost as much electricity as Hinkley Point C at a fraction of the cost, yet around 14 GW of tidal capacity has been cancelled, lies dormant or is languishing in the early stages of development. The strategy makes no commitment to supporting tidal power—an omission that has rightly been described by the British Hydropower Association as “incomprehensible”.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Is it not absurd that a lot of tidal power projects are rejected on the basis of cost, yet nuclear is the most expensive way of producing energy?

[Mick Whitley]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point. The Minister will point towards the considerable up-front costs of tidal power as a barrier to progress, but such a view ignores the fact that all renewable technologies are expensive in their infancy, as well as the fact that some of these installations could have lifespans of more than a century.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is to be congratulated on getting this debate organised. My constituency of Weston-super-Mare fronts on to the Bristol channel, which is the largest source of potential tidal power. He is right, of course, about the up-front costs being significant and the lifetime costs being lower. However, even factoring that in, the total lifetime levelised costs of tidal power are, from all the figures I have seen, dramatically higher than anything else out there. Has the hon. Gentleman seen figures that I have not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mick Whitley]

I have only the information that we have received, and it has all been fact-checked. Quibbles about the costs of tidal power look frankly laughable when we consider the strategy’s proposals for new nuclear capacity. The Prime Minister’s refusal to unleash the full force of the renewable revolution has left him with no choice other than to bet big on nuclear power, with a target of more than tripling our current capacity by 2050. That is perhaps the most radical segment of the strategy, requiring as many as eight new facilities to be given approval in as many years and calling for the roll-out of new nuclear—including small modular reactors that are as yet commercially untested—at an unprecedented rate.

I want to be clear: I have never been opposed to nuclear power. It has a vital role to play in meeting new electricity demand in the coming decades, and it is right that we begin to undo decades of under-investment and invest again in jobs and skills in the nuclear industry. However, we must question the viability of the plans. The Government are calling for the roll-out of new nuclear at a speed and scale never before seen in this country, and the risk of falling short, without having adequately invested in alternative forms of energy, is enormous.

Even more dangerous to our future are the strategy’s proposals for the future of North sea gas and oil. For the UK, the question of how we end our reliance on Russian gas and oil is critical; however, for the millions of Ukrainians whose homeland is being devastated by a Russian war machine fed largely by energy exports to the west, it is truly a matter of life and death. That is why I fully support the Government’s commitment to phase out Russian oil imports by the end of the year.

However, we must be careful that in standing up to Putin’s aggression we do not end up dealing a devastating blow to our efforts to tackle the threat of climate change. It is quite frankly absurd that instead of using the crisis to begin to end our fossil fuel addiction once and for all, the energy security strategy instead looks to authorise the North Sea Transition Authority to begin a new round of licensing this autumn. It will take an average of 28 years for these installations to begin production, meaning that they will do nothing to improve our energy security or reduce prices in the short term, while locking us into new fuel consumption that the UN Secretary-General has correctly described as “moral and economic madness”.

I warn the Minister: future generations will not forgive this Government for failing to lay the foundations for a fossil-free future. They will not look kindly on Conservative Governments’ abysmal record on improving energy efficiency, from the Cameron Government’s decision to cut the “green crap”, which sent the number of loft and cavity wall insulations plummeting by 92% and 74%, to the collapse of the green homes grant scheme, which ended up costing precious jobs in my region of the north-west.

Our country has one of the oldest and least energy-efficient housing stocks in Europe, and that is costing millions of people dearly every month when they get their energy bills. The energy strategy is totally devoid of any credible solutions to make mass insulation a reality. I urge the Minister, in the national interest, to reach out to the shadow Secretary of State for climate change and net zero, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), and get to work to implement his proposals to insulate 19 million homes over the next decade.

Another issue that the energy security strategy ignores is the enormous potential for community energy to contribute to a more secure and resilient energy supply in the UK. Had the Government backed community energy schemes back in 2014, we could now be producing up to 3 GW in community energy. Instead, there has been almost no growth over the past eight years. That is the consequence of the Government’s fundamental failure to reform energy markets and licensing rules, which forced community energy schemes to assume around £1 million in up-front costs if they wanted to build renewable generation infrastructure.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I agree with some of what the hon. Gentleman says and disagree with other points. I represent a largely rural constituency in Suffolk where many homes are reliant on heating oil. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that more needs to be done to support those homes to transition to a different type of energy, with more incentives in the system to do that?

[Mick Whitley]

I agree. We need to look into hydrogen as well as oil for people living in rural areas of the country. It is a problem, but one that we can overcome.

There can be no more secure a form of energy than that owned and produced by local communities and sold directly to local residents. With the energy security strategy soon to come before Parliament, I urge the Minister to take on the proposals of last year’s Local Electricity Bill and to empower community energy schemes to sell their power to local consumers.

I want to mention something that I know is anathema to the Minister and his colleagues, but which is essential to deliver the fundamental changes to our energy system that are so desperately needed. We need to recognise that the sector should be a service working for the public good. It should be taken back into public ownership. The handover of gas and electricity in the 1980s to Sid the shareholder and his mates down the street was always a cruel deception. The energy companies were bought and run by corporate giants. They were privatised to provide profits for the big stock market players, and poor Sid was bought out before he could turn a penny. It resulted not in a shareholders’ democracy but a corporate plutocracy.

At the very beginning of the current crisis, the chaotic system of private ownership was a serious blow to our energy security. Not only has it meant that ordinary people are victims of soaring energy prices in a way unseen anywhere else in Europe, but it left the whole energy market in the hands of private monopolies with little concern for the interests of our country or its people. It has tied the hands of successive Governments when developing the responses to the climate crisis that we desperately and urgently need.

By taking energy back into public hands, we can plough profits into driving the decarbonisation of our energy grid and funding a state-owned renewables company to pioneer technological innovation in the sector. We can ensure that the British people get to decide what happens to resources that should belong to us all. We can ensure that the pace of the green transition is dictated by the demands of the crisis we face and not by the whims of private shareholders.

I am looking forward to what I hope will be a lively and wide-ranging debate. Let me reiterate that the decisions that Ministers make in the coming months will not only have implications for whether we can keep our country running during the approaching winter and whether we can defeat Putin’s use of gas as a ransom demand in his war against the Ukrainian people; they will determine the existential question of whether we leave future generations a planet ravaged by climate and ecological breakdown, or one that is greener and more secure than ever before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mick Whitley]

I am grateful to all Members for their powerful contributions, including the Minister, even though he likes to have a little pop now and again—we take that with a pinch of salt.

I will take the Minister up on what he said about major tidal projects, and I will write to him about them. I thank him for taking the time to participate in the debate, but I warn him once again that he must not let the Government falter in their ambition to deliver a greener and more secure energy system that serves the interest of many, not just the privileged few.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the British energy security strategy.