14:30 Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)

I look forward to today’s debate, and it is encouraging to see so many colleagues in attendance. Tapping into the abundant energy stored in the heat beneath the Earth’s surface is not a new idea, but exploiting those vast resources has often been overlooked in favour of other forms of renewables that are more readily captured on top of the ground. We have come a long way since first using sources such as onshore or offshore wind, tidal and solar energy to decarbonise our electricity supplies, and Scotland now produces about 97.4% of its electricity consumption from renewables.

There is a still a long way to go on decarbonising heat, with heating and hot water making up around 40% of the UK’s energy consumption. The potential for geothermal energy to help plug the gap, providing an indigenous, low-carbon and green alternative for heating homes, is huge. The British Geological Survey’s report into unlocking geothermal potential estimates that resources in the UK

For communities devastated by the pit closures, it would be a fantastic change of fortune to see the legacy of the industrial past being repurposed for a green energy future. I have a particularly keen interest in this option for my constituency of Midlothian, which has a long coalmining history and a vast labyrinth of old pits beneath the ground. We are from unique, as an estimated quarter of UK homes are situated on former coalfields. Repurposing the infrastructure to extract energy from the coalmines yet again, but this time in a sustainable way, is an tremendously exciting prospect.

That is vital to understanding the role that shallow mine-heat energy could have in decarbonising our energy supply, the risk involved in environmental management, and the regulation needed.

“contributing ever more significantly to the decarbonisation of the energy mix”,

Among the steps that need to be taken are a reliable financial incentive for geothermal technology and clear, more streamlined regulations to underpin projects. It is fair to say that the Government’s commitment to renewable energy has been half-baked at best so far—remembering the former Prime Minister David Cameron’s flip-flop from “the greenest government ever” to getting rid of the “green crap”. I am sure that there is now an honest enthusiasm for geothermal, but there is ground to be made up, and that requires a commitment to drive things forwards. We need a clear geothermal roadmap, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plan in her response.

The timing of the debate is critical, as COP26 is just around the corner and the climate crisis is already upon us. I urge Governments of all nations to put aside their differences and work together to find practical solutions, not just warm words, to address it. Let us put meat on the bones of our ambitious geothermal technologies, and help them contribute much more significantly to our low-carbon energy mix. Let us get the policies right and make geothermal a critical part of the green revolution.

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14:44 Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)

As we are now only 43 days away from the COP26 conference in Glasgow, this is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the vital work that British companies are doing to pioneer green technologies, including the use of geothermal energy. In particular, let me tell the House about the incredible work that Titan Electricity, based in my constituency of Birkenhead, is doing with the support of the University of Liverpool and the Manufacturing Technology Centre. It has developed an artificially enhanced geothermal process that uses abandoned oil infrastructure to provide deep wells, in a process called thermogenesis. The oil in abandoned wells is converted into geothermal heat. These very hot fluids are then used to power a geo-engine, which has been designed by Titan and developed with the help of Lloyd’s Register, using a UK Energy Catalyst award.

The process is net zero, with no emissions, and the by-product is large volumes of cheap and clean hydrogen. While oil reservoirs on the UK’s continental shelf are commonly considered to have little future on the road to our 2050 net zero targets, the technology could have the potential to convert those fields into a net zero energy resource for generations to come. I urge the Minister to look seriously at the role that this technology could play in delivering green energy and highly skilled jobs, and in helping to meet the Government’s pledge to achieve 5 GW of hydrogen capacity by 2030. The large quantities of hydrogen created by this process can also be used to power the dismantling of legacy oil infrastructure, with as few emissions being released as possible.

Titan’s invention, made in the north-west, has immense possibilities to create green energy and reduce carbon emissions, not just here in the UK but across the world. Domestically, its manufacture would also create thousands of skilled jobs and apprenticeships in my town of Birkenhead and in the many left-behind communities like it that the Government have promised to level up.

Today I ask the Minister whether the Government will prove they are committed to making the UK a world leader in the innovation of green technology by helping to roll out the geo-engine and get it to market. Far too often, the Government’s record on green energy has failed to live up to their rhetoric. A commitment today to support this invention would provide an example for our presidency of COP26, by showing the world that the UK’s words are matched by our actions.

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14:47 Kieran Mullan (Conservative)

I will also put on the record my thanks to the Minister for the time she has given to date to those of us who are interested in this issue. I have been very grateful for the interest that she has shown, because this really is a critical time for us to get things right in this country. We know that we have huge challenges when it comes to switching to renewable energy and, perhaps even more relevantly, switching to heating our homes in a greener way. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to getting this process right, but we will not deliver if we are not using all the tools in all the toolbox when it comes to going green, and I believe that geothermal is a vital tool in that toolbox, with huge potential in some parts of the UK to heat millions of homes and provide energy as well.

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14:53 Jim Shannon (DUP)

Across the United Kingdom, we see a growth in businesses with methodologies and ways of harnessing renewable energy. There is an exhibition at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre about Northern Ireland’s centenary and about businesses in Northern Ireland. I was about to tell the hon. Member for Midlothian about one of those businesses, which is not geothermal but it is in the renewable sector, but he was called to speak and I did not get the chance to tell him much.

The business is not just about harnessing renewable energy, but storing it. It is called the Electric Storage Company and Chris Doherty, its programme manager, told me how it can galvanise renewable energy and store it in a battery system for such times as it can be used on the grid. Again, this is innovative, thought-provoking and workable. I have to say that, in all honesty, I do not have a lot of knowledge of what the hon. Member for Midlothian has presented today, but I like to learn. Even though I might be of an age, that does not mean that I do not want to learn. I learn something every day, and today, by listening to other speakers, especially the hon. Gentleman, I have learned a wee bit. I have also done a wee bit of research about geothermal energy in order the understand how it works.

I have always had a particular interest in green energy. As everyone knows, I represent the Strangford constituency, the door to which is the Strangford lough, which the constituency is named after and which used to have a SeaGen tidal turbine. At one stage, it was said to be large enough to meet the electricity needs of one large town or perhaps a couple of large villages close by. The Electric Storage Company has told me today that it is discussing how the sea turbine in Strangford lough can be put to better use. Queen’s University Belfast, through its biology station in Portaferry, has been instrumental in that process. This is about having really good ideas, being visionary for the future and making those possibilities real. With SeaGen, we have the potential to become less reliant on overseas production and more reliant on what God has given us—a reliable, twice-daily tide and strong undersea currents. The Electric Storage Company says that it is about harnessing nature’s energy, and that is also true of the project referred to by the hon. Gentleman.

Although we cannot write a blank cheque to fund research into renewable energy, we must still invest in producing energy that does not harm this beautiful country. Geothermal energy is one such approach and it has massive potential to reduce the impact on the countryside that we love. I am not as knowledgeable on the subject as the hon. Gentleman, but I am intrigued enough to want to know more and understand how it can be used to help the environment.

I have been excited by the plans to build a large-scale renewable energy park in Aberdeenshire, which the hon. Member for Midlothian referred to and which I know the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), will mention as well—designed to deliver up to 200 MW of environmentally friendly power to the Scottish grid. I am anxious to see the results of that, but I am concerned, and I am happy to put this on record—I hope the hon. Member for Midlothian does not mind my saying so—that the funding for it is coming from Chinese investment.

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15:03 Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)

Crucially, the technology supports our transition to net zero. As we look to reduce our carbon footprint through a circular economy based on the principles of reducing, reusing and recycling, it is fitting that Stoke-on-Trent is at the forefront of this movement. The Potteries, home of pots and pits, retains a huge underground maze of former mine tunnels. The coal from those mines fired the kilns and the steelworks, and blackened the skies across the city at the height of its heavy industrial past. We are now powering our city up again, but this time as part of a new green industrial revolution, reducing pollution by investing in improved public transport, growing our nature recovery network, reusing the infrastructure of a former polluting industry to deliver new, clean energy, and recycling the hot water within the mine tunnels through our district heat networks.

As we approach COP26 and call on our global partners to step up their commitments towards achieving net zero, it is right that we should consider how we can harness the UK’s potential. Does the Minister agree that shovel-ready projects, such as the geothermal project in Stoke-on-Trent, are vital in developing this key energy source ahead of other countries, further demonstrating our commitment to carbon reduction?

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15:08 Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)

I thank my friend and colleague the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for bringing forward this debate. As he said, it is not a new idea, but it is certainly a good one. As part of the mix of renewable energies, it must have its place. In every single speech I have heard the word “potential”, but we need to take it further. We need a road map, commitment and investment. From Lothian to Birkenhead, to Strangford, to Stoke-on-Trent—North and Central—and to Crewe and Nantwich, there is a hunger to see this succeed.

We have heard about a number of potential sources, but primarily it has been mine water. I want to add unused railway tunnels to the list, and not just because I have miles of them within my constituency of Inverclyde. Whenever a new technology comes along, there will inevitably be a cost associated with developing it, but I would venture that when it comes to clean, green renewable energy, we should factor into that the material cost to our planet if we do not develop clean, green renewable energy. We will get to a tipping point, when no amount of money, research or ingenuity will save our planet from overheating. That is the true cost of not investing in renewables now, and it is a cost that nobody wants to pay. In conclusion, I sincerely hope that the UK Government do not bury their heads in their sand, when we could be burying deep thermal bores into the ground instead.

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15:12 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

As hon. Members have mentioned, we have this tremendous resource in front of us in the UK. In a recent report, the Renewable Energy Association estimated that if we delivered, say, 12 heat projects per year over the next 30 years, the UK could expect to generate up to 50,000 GWh of heat annually by 2050 and about 400 GWe—a huge contribution, in particular to net zero energy extraction and use. As hon. Members have said, geothermal is about the cleanest energy configuration that we can think of. It is infinitely renewable and completely reliable, as it just carries on producing the heat and electricity for ever and a day once it is in place.

I want to say to the Minister—I hope and trust that she will still be the Minister at the end of this afternoon’s proceedings although, more likely, she will still be a Minister, but in a much more elevated position—assuming that I am still talking to her tomorrow, that when she goes back to the Department and looks at the progress of the heat and buildings strategy, which I think is still being discussed and not quite out yet, but almost ready to go, she should jump up and down, and thump on the table, and insist that the strategy contains a serious planning mention of the role that geothermal energy can play in the process over the next period. As we have heard this afternoon, it could play a tremendous role. It would be simply unthinkable if, over the next few years, we were not to exploit that resource to the best of our ability, because we need to—for net zero purposes, for clean energy purposes, and for local energy that does the business for local communities from what is absolutely under their feet as they go about their business.

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15:25 The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)

Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing this very important debate. It is so important that we focus on making the best use of all our renewable resources in the enormous challenge of achieving net zero by 2050. That is our contribution to the global challenge of reducing the climate change shocks that are affecting not only the most vulnerable countries around the world, but all of us in our own communities.

The Government are committed to decarbonising our energy system, while supporting our economic recovery from covid-19, with investment in existing, emerging and new low-carbon technologies and the creation of new green jobs. We have made significant progress on decarbonising electricity, and we continue to take action to decarbonise our transportation need. However, as highlighted by the Climate Change Committee, decarbonising our heat requirements is a significant challenge ahead of us.

With that in mind, we are supporting the development of low-carbon heat networks and looking at the best ways to harness low-carbon heat through developing capacity and capabilities in new sources, one of which could be geothermal energy—although, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) said, geothermal energy is not new and is already proving its worth in Southampton. That said, the UK has limited access at the moment to the large naturally occurring geothermal resources that other countries, like Iceland, have tapped into much more intensively in order to decarbonise. There are challenges to overcome to exploit our geothermal energy to the degree that some other countries have.

Opportunities in the UK are perhaps more local and regional in nature. I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, as ever, for the science lesson. I enjoyed the geology lesson. That is new in our repartee over the last few months, so I thank him for that. It is a really important point: there are very clear regional and geological areas in which geothermal could be considered as one of a range of technologies that we might deploy to meet our climate change targets. A number of hon. Members have, of course, set out how that might be achieved in their own areas.

The Government must balance their support for renewable heat sources with the reality that not all of these schemes will be economically viable with the technology available at the moment, given that the quantity and temperature of the extracted water can vary considerably from scheme to scheme, and there may be alternative renewable heat sources that are better suited to a specific community’s needs. Having said that, I recognise the potential role in supporting our heat decarbonisation objectives, and that is why geothermal heat projects are eligible for the Government’s heat network support.

The Government have also invested £31 million in UK Geoenergy Observatories, which will provide a world-class infrastructure for a wide range of geoenergy-related research. Publicly run, owned and funded, each observatory will contribute to world-class science that puts the UK at the forefront of delivering clean energy at the scale required to help us achieve the net zero target that we have set ourselves by 2050.

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