Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Viscount Trenchard and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Grand Committee

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Offord’s Amendments 111 and 112, to which I have added my name. It has become increasingly apparent, from many points of view, that impact assessments are necessary. In particular, in exercising its functions, GBE should be required to consider the environmental impact and the effect on sea-birds and marine life of its installation of offshore wind facilities, as well as of its decommissioning of oil and gas structures.

I also support my noble friend Lord Fuller’s Amendment 113, which seeks to place the same obligation on GBE with reference to tidal energy projects. I have looked for information on both the Sound of Islay project and the Bristol Channel project, both of which I was reasonably familiar with some years ago but about which I have heard nothing in recent years. I am heartened by my noble friend’s enthusiasm for the sector and look forward to hearing whether the Minister expects that GBE will be encouraged to make investments in it. As my noble friend Lord Fuller said, this is a slim Bill with fat consequences. We have to make sure that GBE will act in the public interest.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Offord and Lord Fuller for tabling the three amendments in this group, all of which I support. I want to address a few remarks to Amendment 111.

I had not realised that we are the second-largest renewable energy market in the world. Most of the equipment is made outside the UK; I hope this is something we will do better on in future. I do not think my noble friend referred to the position of porpoises and dolphins, which have been causing me great concern over the past few years for the same reasons that my noble friend Lord Offord gave. We took evidence on this from the RSPB and from the department of ocean systems—I think it was called that—at the University of Plymouth in 2020-21.

Two issues arose from that which I would like to put to the Minister. The first, from the RSPB, said that “substantial sums” are being made, which really should be

“reinvested back into the natural environment from which”

these sums are derived. Is that something the Government are keen to do? The reason I ask is simple: I asked for a moratorium at that time, when we were under a Conservative Administration, until we had established what the impact was on birds and other marine life, such as whales, porpoises and dolphins. Over the last five years, we have had a number of inexplicable bankings of whales in particular but also of dolphins and porpoises. It is up to the industry to fund this work, so that we better understand why this is happening. If, as my noble friend Lord Offord argued, there is interference with the sonar of marine life, that should be established before we build the next stage of these massive developments at sea.