12:36 Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

( Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero to make a statement on the Government’s plan to build new gas-fired power stations.

The second consultation of the review of electricity market arrangements was launched yesterday. It sets out the choices that we need to make to deliver a fully decarbonised electricity system by 2035. Since 2010, the Government have reduced emissions from power by 65% and thus made the UK the first major economy in the world to halve emissions overall. We have built record volumes of renewables, from less than 7% of electricity supply in 2010 to nearly 50% today, allowing us to remove coal altogether by October this year.

While low-carbon technologies scale up, we will extend the life of our existing gas assets, but a limited amount of new build gas capacity will also be required in the short term to replace expiring plants as it is the only mature technology capable of providing sustained flexible capacity. We remain committed to delivering a fully decarbonised electricity supply by 2035, subject to security of supply, and we expect most new gas capacity to be built net zero-ready. The Government have committed £20 billion to carbon capture, usage and storage, and are developing comprehensive support for hydrogen. In the future, unabated gas plants will run for only a limited number of hours a year, so emissions will be entirely in line with our legally binding carbon budgets.

I am a bit tired of this Government shunning any scrutiny of their climate record and instead relying on a past record, because while the UK may indeed be the first major economy to cut its territorial emissions by half since 1990, we are not on track to achieve our 2030 targets, and if we factor in consumption emissions, the UK has cut emissions by only 23%. So let’s have a little less complacency from the Minister. He will know that the Government’s announcement on new gas-fired power stations does in fact, contrary to what he claimed, risk undermining our climate targets and leaving the country reliant on imports of expensive gas. Members should have been given the opportunity to question the Minister on its implications for the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy system by 2035, with 95% of UK electricity being low carbon by 2030.

First, why was the statement not made in Parliament? Why was it made instead at Chatham House, where Members were not able to question the Minister on the impact of this decision? Secondly, will the Minister explain how this proposal differs from the functioning of the existing capacity market, or will he admit that it is just the Government’s latest attempt to stoke a culture war on climate? Thirdly, the Climate Change Committee is clear that no new unabated gas plants should be built after 2030, so what is the Government’s timeline for developing these new gas-fired power stations?

The hon. Lady is confused, as she often is, because she is so political. She would appear to set politics always ahead of climate. She struggles to recognise that that United Nations framework convention on climate change rules are about territorial emissions—countries own the emissions in the territory where they take place. Her numbers on embedded emissions are wrong, but she does not care about that; she just carries on with a political diatribe against the Government, who have done more than any other in any major economy on this Earth to decarbonise their economy. And we have done it not as the hon. Lady would have us do it—by being reduced to living in yurts—but while growing the economy by 82%. It is people like the hon. Lady who make people on my side of the Chamber at times think that we are perhaps engaged in some form of madness; we are not, but she doesn’t half make it sound like we are.

Can these new gas plants be consistent with the Government’s commitment to decarbonise the power sector by 2035? Our published net zero scenarios for the power sector—I invite the hon. Lady to read them—show that building new gas capacity is consistent with decarbonising electricity by 2035. From those scenarios we expect that, even with new gas capacity, rather than the 38% of electricity generation which in 2022 came from gas, that figure will be down to 1% by 2035—or, if we follow the scenario set out by the Climate Change Committee, perhaps 2%. We are going to have that as a back-up. It is sensible insurance; it is about keeping the lights on while we carry on the remarkable transformation this Government have achieved in moving from the appalling legacy of the Labour party of less than 7% of electricity coming from renewables to nearly 50% today.

The announcement on gas-fired power stations is extremely welcome, but at the moment a kilowatt-hour of electricity in the UK costs 44 cents, against 17 cents in the US and 8 cents in both China and India. We have become fundamentally uncompetitive because of this green obsession. We want cheap electricity and we should have gas and we should have coal, and we should postpone net zero indefinitely because we are only 1% of global emissions. We are making no difference, and the US economy is growing consistently faster than ours because of cheap energy. This is a good first step against the net zero obsession. We need to go further.

I would chide my right hon. Friend with the science and evidence that are emerging all the time. There is a climate challenge and emergency, which is why we are looking to reduce our emissions. He is quite right to challenge that by saying, “We are less than 1% of global emissions, so how does this make sense?” That is why we hosted COP26 and got the rest of the world to commit to following us. We are bringing in the carbon border adjustment mechanism from 2027 precisely to ensure that we create an economically rational system that supports jobs in this country, while meeting the climate challenge that needs to be met.

I am little puzzled about what all this is about. The Committee on Climate Change and all credible energy experts have said that we will need a small residual of unabated gas in the system for the medium term, and that is consistent with a fully decarbonised power system. No one disputes that, and it is barely worth an announcement. We should extend the lives of existing plants to meet that need. If new-build plants are needed in the short term to replace some of those retiring gas-fired power stations, there is no disagreement, provided they are capable of converting to hydrogen or carbon capture, as the Government say they must be.

We are a world leader, having announced £20 billion for CCUS. The hon. Gentleman will remember, because he has been around a long time, that in 2003 the then Labour Government said that carbon capture, utilisation and storage was urgent and that there was no route to 2050 without it, but then they proceeded to do nothing about it. This Government are getting on with it. We are putting our money where our mouth is and developing technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen, in a way that the Labour Government failed to do—as they did with renewables, to boot. All they do is talk about climate, but the truth is that the greatest climate risk to this country is if the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) destroys the market and starts some state-run quango, which will wreck the renewables growth that we have seen.

I welcome the announcement. The independent Committee On Climate Change recognises that we will need unabated gas in the electricity market right up until 2035 and beyond, and more widely that even in 2050, 25% of our energy needs will come from hydrocarbons. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is exactly the right way to maintain lower energy production costs, while still meeting our net zero targets?

What a cluster—it is unbelievable that we are in this situation. In the Secretary of State’s letter to Members today, she said that the Government are taking steps to make sure the lights stay on. That is the legacy of 14 years of the Conservatives in charge of energy. Uncomfortably, I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg). This is a significant departure, and one we should be alarmed about. Where is the Government’s precious nuclear baseload now? Where is the exemplar of CCUS working at the necessary scale, from which the Government are taking inspiration? Would it not have been an elegant solution to have unabated gas winding down at the same time as battery storage and long-duration pump storage was winding up? We cannot have that, because the Government have dragged their feet on both things. What does the Minister say to people who are having infrastructure for transmission put throughout their communities and are being told to suck it up because that is what we need to get gas out the system, when the same Government are now building gas-fired power stations?

I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I suggested, on different scenarios, about 1% or 2% of total generation coming from gas in future, compared with 38% in 2022, on an annualised basis. Clearly, as the hon. Gentleman should know better than anybody here with his deep knowledge of the subject, it is based on intermittency. It depends on how much the sun shines and how much the wind blows, but we will ensure we have a robust system. That is exactly what we are doing. I would love it if people could celebrate this country’s global leadership and the fact that we are driving this forward, especially those such as members of the Green party, who are supposed to care about climate change. We are doing this in a way that maintains security of supply and, by bringing in more and more renewables, with the lowest-cost and most flexible system to back it up, doing so in a more and more economical fashion.

I welcome the announcement today. It is pure common sense. When the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, we need security of supply. Although we need to deal with climate change in the medium to long term, we must also deal with security of supply in the short term, so I welcome the announcement. Does the Minister agree that for medium and longer-term security of supply, we must upscale what we are doing in the hydrogen sector, with more hydrogen production and usage, and be a world leader in hydrogen? For the moment, we are slipping behind a bit.

I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of hydrogen. Where I disagree with him is that, having seen the projects in hydrogen allocation round 1—eight projects, I think—I do not think there is any indication that we are slipping behind. The truth is that the whole world needs to do this, because everyone’s analysis, from the International Energy Agency to the Climate Change Committee to my own Department, suggests that hydrogen and carbon capture are necessary to bring about the decarbonised system we seek. He is absolutely right on the importance of hydrogen. He can expect more developments, because this country is leading on that, as it is on CCUS.

I was with the hon. Gentleman nearly all the way. He is right: the whole world is looking at carbon capture and hydrogen, because that is what the science says. Everybody who analyses it says that we need it bur that it is not yet at a great level of maturity. Just as in so many other areas, this country is leading the way. We have cut emissions more than anyone else. He knows the dire legacy left by his party in 2010, with less than 7% of electricity from renewables, which was just appalling, and the real danger if we go back to that. That is why we have gas power as a back-up, so that we have a completely sound system. We will seek to deliver a decarbonised system by 2035. The biggest risk to that would be if the right hon. Member for Doncaster North were to come in and start to mess with a system that has lifted us from the back to the front of climate leadership. That is the real danger, and that is what we need to avoid.

Oil and gas are the energy sources of the past, and we need an intermittent energy source. Gas power plants are not intermittent. They sit there, and then because there is too much renewable energy it is shut off, and gas—the carbon energy—continues to flow. That is the reality of today: we are wasting renewable energy. The Government do not recognise that reality, and do not respond to it.

I meet representatives of the oil and gas industry a lot, because the truth is that even given our world leadership—and we have cut emissions by more than any other major economy on the planet—75% of our primary energy today is still from oil and gas. We will still be dependent on oil and gas in 2050, when we are at net zero. That is why it is so crazy that the Opposition parties, including that of the hon. Lady, believe in opposing licences when we are actually dependent on the product. All that ending licences would do is lead to the loss of British jobs and the import of higher-emission products from abroad. I really do hope that Opposition Members will think a bit more deeply and we can hear some common sense. I hear it in the Corridors from Back Benchers, but from the Front Benchers and the hon. Lady I hear nothing but nonsense.

I hope that this decision is indicative of a realisation that seems to be slowly dawning on the Government about the impact of the madness of their net zero policy, which has damaged the UK economy. We have higher electricity prices than most of the other G7 countries, we have lost vast numbers of jobs in energy-intensive industries, and now it has been recognised that because of the intermittency of wind and solar there is a risk of blackouts.

The right hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong: we have record levels of employment, and we overtook France recently to become the eighth largest manufacturer in the world. I would not expect him to join the dismal party opposite in talking this country down. In truth, we are leading the world in tackling climate change, and we have created more jobs than at any time in British history. Going forward into the 2030s, by harnessing more and more British low-carbon, renewable energy we will lower bills for families and increase our competitiveness. As I have said, in a world that is increasingly recognising the need for action and seeking to introduce measures such as the carbon border adjustment mechanism—effectively, carbon taxes at the border—the UK is in pole position to grow from its already strong economic position into an even stronger one as a result of the net zero policies of this Government.

After their years of delaying meaningful investment in clean, cheaper, reliable renewable energy technologies such as tidal and long-duration pumped hydro storage, it is no surprise that the Government are now having to scramble to create new dirty gas-powered plants. How much does the Department estimate the new plants will cost, where is it suggesting they should be built, and what does the Minister mean by carbon-capture-ready? Does he mean carbon-capture-operational?

As I have said, further legislation will come forward in the not-too-distant future, and the hon. Lady will be able to scrutinise it—but it is extraordinary that she should say of a country whose renewable energy generation has risen from less than 7% to approaching 50% that we have gone slow on renewables. We have decarbonised our power system faster than any other major economy on the planet.

The Minister said earlier that we faced a climate challenge, after struggling for words to describe what we are facing. Why can the Government not join the global consensus and admit that what we are facing is a climate emergency? As the Secretary-General of the United Nations has said, the year of climate warming is over and we are in an era of climate burning.

Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I am not primarily concerned with words—I am primarily concerned with action—but in fact I did use the “emergency” word. I do not know whether I broke some golden rule which says that Ministers should not use it, but I do treat this as an emergency. I see the world warming up, I see the negative impacts of climate change, and that is why I spend every single day feeling proud to be part of the Department that is decarbonising its country faster than any other in the world. The hon. Gentleman should get away from rhetoric and start to focus on action.

I thank the Minister for all his answers. While there is certainly an urge to prioritise our net zero promises, I am grateful to the Government for taking back-up precautions into consideration. As the Minister has often recognised in responding to questions from me, Northern Ireland plays an important role in our contribution to meeting the net zero targets. Will he therefore ensure that Northern Ireland is prioritised as a leading location for any new gas-powered stations that are to be built?

The hon. Gentleman sometimes gives the impression that he would like me to be running the energy system in Northern Ireland, but it is devolved—and we have Ministers there again, which is a cause for celebration. I will work closely with Ministers in Northern Ireland, as I do with Ministers in other devolved Administrations, because if we are to meet our net zero targets, Northern Ireland must deliver its own targets. Scotland has to deliver its targets, as does Wales.

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