Oral Answers to Questions

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

1. What steps he is taking to support UK-based low-carbon industries.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Alok Sharma)]

Supporting low-carbon industries is central to my Department’s mission to deliver our net zero target. We are backing our ambition with action. Since 2012, coal use on the grid has fallen from 40% to less than 3% in 2019, and renewable electricity generation has quadrupled since 2010, with low-carbon electricity providing more than 50% of our total energy needs.

[Seema Malhotra]

In 2018, investment in acquisitions in the UK’s solar dropped to just £0.3 billion, from £1.6 billion in 2015. Should the Government not be doing more to support renewable power, in the light of the net zero target—which the Secretary of State mentioned—and the closure of the feed-in tariff, especially given that German, Italian and Spanish companies are now investing over six times more than UK companies in low-carbon technologies?

[Alok Sharma]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has raised the issue of solar power, because, as she will know, solar photovoltaics is a UK success story. There has been rapid deployment over the past eight years, and more than 99% of the UK’s solar PV capacity has been deployed since May 2010. The latest figures indicate that we now have more than 1 million solar installations, or 13.4 GW, of capacity installed.