So Will The Lights Go Out? Lord Hunt Says They Will Not!

Further extracts below from the Daily Hansard record of the House of Lords debate yesterday, Lord Hunt replies to re-assure Baroness Wilcox that with 20GW of new power generation consented/under construction/recently completed the lights will not go out .............


[BARONESS WILCOX]

"........The Government’s indecision on nuclear power will
have huge consequences. Last year, figures were released
showing that the Government were predicting power
cuts from 2017, starting with a shortfall of 3,000
megawatt hours a year and rising to 7,000 megawatt
hours by 2025. We seem to be back in the 1970s. We
have an enormous government deficit, public sector
strikes and, now, government-sanctioned power cuts. I
hope that the Minister will tell uswhether this assessment
still stands. Are the Government still expecting power
cuts between 2017 and 2025?........"


[LORD HUNT OF KINGS HEATH]

".......Two issues have been put forward by noble Lords.
First, it is said that we face severe energy issues over
the next 10 years and, secondly, there is a criticism that
we are putting too much emphasis on renewable energy.
I shall respond, first, to the noble Lord, Lord Reay,
and the noble Baroness, LadyWilcox, about the so-called
question of the lights going out. Of course, I read the
reports produced by Ofgem with interest. Ofgem is an
economic regulator; it is not charged with energy
policy. Sometimes I think that Ofgem needs to reflect
on what it is there to do, rather than produce rather
speculative reports from time to time. It is the
Government’s responsibility to establish policy in relation
to energy and it is our job to ensure that there is
security of supply. We will do that. Plenty of energy
generation is due to go out of commission over the
next 10 or 15 years but, even taking on board the
impact of the emission standards legislation from
Europe and the natural decommissioning of many of
our nuclear power stations, the fact is that over 20 gigawatts
of energy supply have just been constructed, are in
construction or have received all planning consents,
and more gigawatts are coming along in the pipeline.
The noble Lord, Lord Reay, raised the question of
UKCS. I know that we disagree about the amount of
gas that will be required in 2020, and it is really a
question of the calculation made about reduced demand,
but our best estimate is that in 2020 UKCS could still
provide about 50 per cent of our gas requirement. We
have seen a big increase in our import capacity. There
are many storage projects in the pipeline.When people
talk about blackouts in 2017, they sometimes refer to
an appendix in a document produced by my department.
That appendix refers to outages which happen at the
moment—short-term, temporary outages. That is very
different from suggesting that suddenly our whole
energy supply will collapse at some time in the next
decade. That is simply not going to happen."