Geothermal Energy

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I thank my friend and colleague the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for bringing forward this debate. As he said, it is not a new idea, but it is certainly a good one. As part of the mix of renewable energies, it must have its place. In every single speech I have heard the word “potential”, but we need to take it further. We need a road map, commitment and investment. From Lothian to Birkenhead, to Strangford, to Stoke-on-Trent—North and Central—and to Crewe and Nantwich, there is a hunger to see this succeed.

The scars that our landscape left behind after the decimation of the coal mining industry could finally pay a legacy, which would be a fitting tribute to generations of proud coal miners. As we transition from oil and gas, we must not let those skills be lost to foreign investment or simply discarded.

Today I am wearing my James Watt tie. He was a fellow Grenockian who has sometimes been wrongly credited with inventing the steam engine. What Watt did was look at ineffective technology and refine it—in his case, with the steam condenser. Hey presto! We had steam engines that were powerful, safe and practical. The industrial revolution was born. Bearing in mind the damage that that might have caused the planet, we may want to debate on another day whether that has been a good thing, but today I see those comparisons. The viability of geothermal heat has increased with every report that has been produced by the House of Commons Library since 2012. Technology that seemed to be just too expensive to be practical has become viable. Rather than add to the pollution, geothermal harnesses the Earth’s natural energy.

We have heard about a number of potential sources, but primarily it has been mine water. I want to add unused railway tunnels to the list, and not just because I have miles of them within my constituency of Inverclyde. Whenever a new technology comes along, there will inevitably be a cost associated with developing it, but I would venture that when it comes to clean, green renewable energy, we should factor into that the material cost to our planet if we do not develop clean, green renewable energy. We will get to a tipping point, when no amount of money, research or ingenuity will save our planet from overheating. That is the true cost of not investing in renewables now, and it is a cost that nobody wants to pay. In conclusion, I sincerely hope that the UK Government do not bury their heads in their sand, when we could be burying deep thermal bores into the ground instead.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

There are days when I genuinely have to thank God that the Labour party is the Opposition and not the Government of this country. We have £1.3 trillion of outward stock invested, including things like pension funds that British people will depend on for their prosperity. Were we to abandon the concept of investor-state dispute resolutions, what would happen to the protections for our investment overseas? The Labour party needs to start to think about the wider interests of this country.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

4. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services are excluded from future trade deals.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps the Government are taking to ensure that contracts for the delivery of (a) NHS and (b) other public services will be excluded from future trade deals.

[The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)]

Existing EU trade agreements, such as the EU-Canada comprehensive economic and trade agreement and the EU-Japan economic partnership agreement, contain provisions that ensure that it remains for the United Kingdom to decide how our public services are run. As we leave the EU, the Government will ensure that all future trade agreements continue to protect the UK’s right to regulate public services.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Technically, there is little that MPs and the public can do to prevent the Government from signing trade deals that could negatively impact on the NHS. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will expand the transparency and scrutiny mechanisms that pertain to any future trade deals?

[Dr Fox]

I recommend the Government’s Command Paper on this issue, which we published last week. It sets out the scrutiny plans that will provide greater scrutiny in this country than most of our fellow countries in the European Union have.