Energy Grid Resilience

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I will take that interesting point on surge protection away and speak to my colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

On the wider point around inertia, as the system changes, there is a constant balancing job for the National Energy System Operator to make sure that we design a system that is resilient. We are deploying technologies to ensure that the system is resilient and there is sufficient inertia by procuring the alternative technologies that my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger) referenced, but we will keep it under constant review.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

May I assure the House that, not wishing to inflict a by-election on the citizens of East Antrim, I will not be running any marathons—not now or at any other time in future?

The Minister has rightly said that the cause of the outage in Spain is yet to be identified, but the fact is that it is linked to 53% of electricity on that day being generated from renewable sources. That should be a sobering warning to all in this House who have been championing the decarbonisation of electricity and the net zero policy.

I am glad that there is inertia built into the system, but the Minister has already accepted that that increases the cost of electricity every week because we have to build a new network to deal with the spikes in electricity; build battery storage, which increases the cost of electricity; and keep gas generators idling over expensively, the cost of which is added to consumer bills, in order to bring them on grid when the wind drops.

I know that the Minister has to defend the policy of his boss that we will get cheaper electricity, even though there is no evidence of that, but will he accept that building inertia into the system will add considerably to consumers’ bills?

[Michael Shanks]

I am afraid that I do not accept anything that the right hon. Gentleman has just said. He said in his first breath that it was right to wait for the outcomes of an investigation and then prejudged that investigation with his own conclusions. I want to wait for some evidence from the authorities on that.

The right hon. Gentleman is also wrong about the cost. People often forget that gas in our electricity system does not just appear out of thin air; it comes with a cost. It comes with the cost of building new gas power stations in the first place, which we would have to do if we did not move gas off the system. It also comes with the volatility of being an internationally traded commodity—all our constituents are still paying the price of the energy crisis of a number of years ago. We will have to build infrastructure. If we were not building clean power infrastructure, the grid would still be critical because we have to get electricity to people’s houses. It is important to say that there are no zero-cost options here. We are investing now in a clean power system that delivers considerably cheaper power in the long term.