09:25 Miatta Fahnbulleh (Labour)

These draft regulations were laid before the House on 20 October 2024. Last week, the Secretary of State updated the House on COP29 and reiterated what we already knew—that speeding up our transition to clean power is in our national interest. It is the best way to bolster our energy security, getting us off the rollercoaster of fossil fuels, which we do not control. It is the best way to spark economic growth across the country, with hundreds of thousands of new jobs, particularly in our industrial heartlands, and to tackle the climate crisis for today’s and future generations. That is why this Government are running at our clean power by 2030 mission, and this instrument will contribute towards that march.

The CfD scheme did not previously have a policy on repowering built into it; these regulations will ensure that we do, to ensure that eligible generation capacity can apply for CfDs. In designing this policy, we are ensuring that we balance our objectives around decarbonisation, consumer value for money and security of supply by enabling repowering only for projects that both align with the fundamental aims of our CfD programme and, critically, have reached the end of their life and their operating life.

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09:32 Andrew Bowie (Conservative)

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Government have backed down from claims of saving households £300 on their energy bills. It is clear that this rush for electricity decarbonisation by 2030 will see bills going up and up; the industry admits that. The signal to the market from the Secretary of State is “renewables at any price”—they will pay exorbitant amounts to create the capacity to achieve a hugely ambitious political target. We cannot be naive about the economic implications of that political choice.

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09:34 Miatta Fahnbulleh (Labour)

Let me respond directly to the question on bills. We are as exercised by and committed to protecting consumers through the transition to net zero. I say this is as the Minister for Energy whose job it is to protect consumers. Our judgment is that we have seen sky-high energy prices as a result of our dependence on international fossil fuel markets. Families at the moment are suffering the impacts of that reliance. The way that we break that is to break the dependence on fossil fuels and make the transition to clean power. All our analysis suggests that if we get this right, combined with interventions on energy efficiency and upgrading people’s homes, we will bear down on bills.

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