Oral Answers to Questions
Siobhan Baillie Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Andrew Bowie)
The civil nuclear road map reconfirmed the Government’s ambition to deploy up to 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050. It sets out plans to make investment decisions about 3 GW to 7 GW every five years between 2030 and 2044.
Andrew Bowie
It is indeed a very exciting time for fusion in this country. Our Fusion Futures programme will provide up to £55 million over five years to train more than 2,200 people, helping meet the demands of our growing fusion sector. That will expand our existing fusion training programmes through work with universities such as the University of Lincoln, colleges and employers, and provide a pipeline of highly skilled scientists, engineers and technicians at all career levels, from apprentice to post-doctoral fellow.
Siobhan Baillie
Berkeley has secured incredibly exciting investment in nuclear innovation with a consortium involving Rolls-Royce and the University of Bristol. A low-carbon energy park with international status at Berkeley and Oldbury, next door, go hand in hand as the Severn Edge project. The Government have a good opportunity to meet their energy security ambitions and lead the way. Will my hon. Friend provide assurances that he will work with Western Gateway on Severn Edge? I heard him say that the competition has to run its course, but will the course be run ahead of the summer recess?
Andrew Bowie
My hon. Friend is tempting me. Oldbury is a candidate for new nuclear, and one of a number of potential sites that could host civil nuclear projects. It is exciting and encouraging to see the number of sites and projects coming forward for investment. As I said, the competition has to run its course, and no decision on sites has been made, but it is very encouraging to see such interest across the country in our great nuclear future.
Energy Bill [Lords]
Siobhan Baillie ExcerptsTuesday 5th September 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
These solar farms make absolutely no sense to people when we are in a food security crisis, but also, tenant farmers are being ousted. The landowners often live miles and miles away and could not give two hoots about the land they are selling off, and it does not work. We need a really strong steer from Government, which we were promised in our prime ministerial leadership campaigns last year.
Alicia Kearns
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: farmers want to conserve and to grow the food of this nation. They do not want to turn to solar, which landowners are often doing.
Energy Infrastructure
Siobhan Baillie Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
In following the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), I want to say that he and I probably agree that there should not be all doom about the future, and that the protesters who tell our children that it will all be awful should pipe down and look to the things that we are achieving in this country and our technology. I also would say to him, respectfully, not to meet doom with doom, because we will not get anywhere.
Andrew Bridgen
Is the hon. Lady aware that Just Stop Oil protesters are paid up to £500 a day by their sponsors to take part so vigorously in protests? It is good money if you can get it.
Siobhan Baillie
I was not aware of that, but to anyone I meet and to schoolchildren when I go to schools, I say, “Do not lie down in the road, do not glue yourself to stuff and do not get arrested. Go and do your maths and your science, and you will be the champions of the future.”
My constituency is so packed with innovation and technology businesses that I could talk all day about it. I have chewed the Minister’s ear off about my hydrogen internal combustion engine campaign, so I will leave that for the moment. I will constrain my comments to two areas and projects that affect my constituents. The first is the Severn Edge nuclear site at Berkeley, where Western Gateway is doing an awful lot of work. The second is radiator sludge, which I have mentioned before and will expand on.
On nuclear, I do not understand why it is not completely popular across absolutely everybody. It is a zero-emission clean-energy source that the environmentalists should be entirely pro. The Severn Edge project, Berkeley Green, is a decommissioned nuclear site with a long history in the Stroud and Gloucestershire area. When I knock on doors every week, I get to meet nuclear scientists all the time. Some are retired, but it means we have fertile ground for the future generations of nuclear scientists. The Cotswold Canal Trust, packed full of volunteers, is stocked full of nuclear scientists sorting out the engineering. I give credit to the board at Berkeley. John Stanton is a good friend of mine now and keeps me up to date on what is going on.
Unfortunately, the Severn Edge gang lost out on the fusion bid. I think that was the wrong decision. I am very happy for Nottinghamshire, but the UK Atomic Energy Authority did a phenomenal job and so did we. We had a cross-party group of politicians—Gloucestershire County Council leader Mark Hawthorne, who was excellent; South Gloucestershire Council and the district councils—and we now want a small modular reactor. If the Minister can give me a bit of a nod about how nuclear is moving, I will get the band back together.
When we show what Berkeley and Oldbury can do, it is a really exciting prospect for the country. The Western Gateway has not rested. It has generated significant interest in the Severn Edge sites after the conclusion of the STEP—spherical tokamak for energy production—fusion process. They are, evidently, very attractive sites and they are ready to go with infrastructure and supply chains. Because the UKAEA did such a phenomenally thorough job on fusion, my sites have been literally investigated up the wazoo, so there is nothing we do not know about them. For any international and domestic investors who are interested, we can provide key information.
On what I want to see from Government, Government investment in accelerating the clarity and regulatory approaches for Great British Nuclear is critical. The international investors we speak to are presenting as funded and ready to go, but understandably they need surety for the route through regulation. We have the Berkeley Green University Technical College. I had students up today, young women in science, technology, engineering and maths, and they, too, are raring to go. They want apprenticeships, they want to be working. The Western Gateway is ready to support the UK Government in live discussions with investors about policy, because we can play a major role. One of the greatest things the Western Gateway did, and what we all did in our fusion project, was to bring the south-west together but also bring Wales in too, so it is a cross-country project.
If I may, I will run through a few of the selling points; I decided that we could use the Hansard record of this speech as something to send out about Berkeley and Severn Edge. As I said, the sites are ready to go and flexible, with a partnership of landowners and local authorities in support of the development. We have access to skills and a specialist workforce, with complementary industry and supply chain opportunities. We have Hinkley power plant, Barnwood, and world-leading strengths in advanced manufacturing, robotics and cyber. We also have a brilliant company called Vulcain in Stroud. It places people in the nuclear industry, so it knows where all the people and the jobs are. Our sites are well connected, with motorway connections. The Gloucestershire services on the M5 won the best services in the country award—it is a very good place for coffee. And we have a very understanding and supportive community, partly because of the history of nuclear in the area, which I mentioned, but also because we did a lot of work with the consultation for fusion, so we know that local people and children are really interested in this work.
Working with the Western Gateway teams, I will happily help them lead. A number of MPs have worked on this—it is not just me—from all sides of House and they are really keen. I want to give credit to our local press. The local BBC Radio Gloucestershire is having a bit of a tough time at the moment, but when we were working together for Berkeley and Oldbury, we had BBC Radio Gloucestershire; BBC Gloucestershire Tellybox people; Stroud News and Journal; Stroud Times; Ian Mean, a very experienced journalist who sits on Business West, writing for us; and Mark from Punchline Gloucester, who is absolutely brilliant. It is rare to get so much business and media collectively working together so much, but it is because we have such a good opportunity here. We need the investment from the Government and the pace to make progress.
The second thing I want to mention—I will not take up too much more time—is radiator sludge. It is becoming one of my favourite things to talk about and it is something I absolutely did not expect to be talking about when I entered this place. It is basically about energy efficiency. I want to draw attention to the significance of water treatment in heating systems, which I have learnt about through a company in my patch called ADEY International. It is a low-cost intervention, is already available and would have immediate and sustained positive impacts on energy consumption and carbon reduction.
The reason I am raising it with the Government, even on an estimates day, is that it is not going to cost much money. The Government have a campaign and a website to show people how they can make their homes energy efficient, but there is nothing about water treatment facilities and magnetic filtration. I have taken a little gadget in to the Secretary of State to give him a live demonstration of what magnetic filtration can do to boilers. It is my understanding that Worcester Bosch is already attaching these things to its boilers. Plumbers up and down the land already know that it is good, but the public do not, so I want to see it in the Government’s gov.uk campaign. ADEY International is a leading expert. It is in Gloucestershire providing jobs for us locally and we should be using its expertise.
Research shows that, without effective system testing, cleaning and protection from corrosion in boilers and radiators, energy efficiency drops up to 7% and up to 7% more carbon is emitted. Poor water quality is also the biggest cause of boiler breakdown, reducing the lifespan of a domestic gas boiler by up to seven years. Radiator sludge sounds quite funny, but it is quite serious and is having an impact on everybody’s homes. Research on 100,000 homes showed that 42% of homes are not working to the required efficiency, and are not protected from the risk of rising bills and boiler breakdown. That also applies to commercial properties. I would like the Government to look a bit more lively on that ahead of next winter and I would be very happy to assist the Minister with any of that information.
Powering Up Britain
Siobhan Baillie Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Graham Stuart
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. Perhaps we can follow up offline on that. As appropriate, I would certainly be happy to engage with my colleagues in the MOD. As a Minister for energy security, I keep all that under advisement. We will formally notify him of my intention to come to his constituency and, whether next week or another time, we can discuss this matter further and make sure I can reassure him on what are very well expressed concerns.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
I love the energy the Government are putting behind energy, particularly nuclear. I hope that Berkeley and Oldbury will get a small modular reactor, because the western gateway is working really hard. Supersmart Stroud businesses are still coming up against things like planning barriers for solar rooftop and tracking, and Competition and Markets Authority problems for financing options for renewables. The UK also needs to look really lively to win the race on the hydrogen ICE—internal combustion engine. I welcome the big announcements today, but will the Government move the machine to resolve a raft of smaller daily frustrations, so we can unleash some amazing British businesses, many of which are in the Stroud district?
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If there was one priority above all else in the Department, it would be ensuring that we get the grid sorted and the infrastructure in place to allow that transformation. We will publish an action plan this year in response to the Electricity Networks Commissioner Nick Winser’s recommendations, when he reports in June on halving the development time for transmission network projects. However, across the piece, we need to speed up connections, and sort out the queue and perverse incentives in that system. We have a lot to do and we are working at it. Only last week in No. 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister hosted an event looking at the networks piece. The offshore wind acceleration taskforce had its final meeting this week, which looked at grids, among other things.
I thank the offshore wind champion Tim Pick for all his work, as well as Nick Winser. I also take the opportunity to thank officials in the new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, who have put a huge amount of work into producing all these policies and are working hard to ensure that implementation can follow as fast as possible. Officials in my new Department have absolutely shone and I look forward to taking forward our work with their help.
Oral Answers to Questions
Siobhan Baillie Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Grant Shapps)
The Government have made good progress, with 47% of homes in England now having reached the Government’s 2035 target of achieving energy performance certificate level C and above, which is up from 14% in 2010.
Siobhan Baillie
I want to talk about radiator sludge, as I went to see ADEY Innovation Ltd, a company in my constituency, where I learned that dirty radiators increase energy bills by 7% and people may be getting 47% less heat through poor water quality. Yet in the Government’s £25 million energy efficiency advice campaign there is nowt about the benefits of magnetic filtration and other affordable things that companies such as ADEY Innovation offer households. Will my right hon. Friend agree to work with me to include this advice and meet to discuss this?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right to worry about radiator sludge, and I fully support her in her concerns. I am pleased to tell her that in this Parliament and into the next we have committed £12.6 billion to campaigns to ensure not just that we tackle the radiator sludge, but that we do things throughout homes to improve their insulation and other technologies. I would be happy to meet her.