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897 National Policy Statements 1 DECEMBER 2010 National Policy Statements 898
identified that £1 in every £4 of Government spending
was borrowed, believed that that position was unsustainable
and had to make difficult, tough choices about the right
way forward.
Several hon. Members rose—
Charles Hendry: I would give way to my hon. Friend
the Member for Dover, but he was the one who made
me depart from my extremely consensual speech into
this area of great contention. I am keen that we should
get on to the issues of planning policy that are at the
heart of our debate.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con): To come
back to the future of nuclear power in the UK and the
comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for
Dover (Charlie Elphicke) about keeping the lights on,
Germany is now considering extending the lives of its
reactors by up to 12 years. I am a great supporter of the
idea that we need to replace our nuclear reactors with
new nuclear reactors, but is there any scope in the
Department’s plan to extend the lives of our current
reactors to try to bridge that gap?
Charles Hendry: My hon. Friend raises an important
issue. The situation in Germany is very different from
the situation here. The plan in Germany had been to
have an artificially early closure of the nuclear fleet, and
Chancellor Merkel’s Government have allowed them to
operate for their full lives. They have reversed a decision
that would have brought about early closure. The approach
that we have always taken in the United Kingdom is
that plants should operate for their safe life. If there is
an independent assessment that they can operate for
longer than had been planned, that should be considered.
The case here is based on safety and security issues and
some recent life extensions have been given, which we
welcome. At the end of the day the extensions are a
bonus rather than a building block in energy policy, but
my hon. Friend makes an important point.
I want to get back to some of the key areas of the
debate. Our concern is that the existing market framework
will not deliver the scale of investment needed in renewables,
nuclear and carbon capture and storage, all of which
have significant up-front costs. Our electricity market
reform programme will examine the reforms necessary
to restructure the electricity market to decarbonise the
power sector by the 2030s while maintaining security of
supply and affordable prices. We must move quickly to
give investors certainty about our reforms because of
the long lead-times in developing new generation capacity.
Our reform of the planning system for major infrastructure,
including for major energy infrastructure, also has an
important role, as does the consultation on the revised
draft energy national policy statements.
Reducing demand for electricity wherever possible is
important in meeting our energy objectives. Our 2050
pathways analysis shows that total UK energy demand
from all sources will need to fall significantly by 2050.
As I have mentioned, the green deal will save energy in
the home and non-domestic buildings. We will also roll
out smart meters to help to reduce demand. However,
those savings will be offset by increases in other areas,
such as the increased use of electricity in industrial and
domestic heating and in transport. Our 2050 pathways
analysis suggests that demand for electricity may even
double by 2050, as we plug into the grid to power our
cars and heat our homes.
Decarbonising surface transport is essential to meet
our target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by
2050, as we are required to do by law. We expect
electrification to play a major role in achieving that.
While electric vehicles can be powered up overnight by
fluctuating electricity generation, trains, for example,
will need more base load generation. We have already
announced £900 million of investment in the electrification
of train lines from London to Didcot, Newbury and
Oxford, and for lines serving Liverpool, Manchester,
Preston and Blackpool. In the new year, we will consult
on the next steps for building a national high-speed rail
network, which will free up capacity to allow a shift of
freight from road to rail and provide an attractive
low-carbon option for travelling between our major
cities.
Some 80% of journeys in the UK are currently made
by car, and cars will continue to play an essential part in
our national transport infrastructure. The Government
announced in the spending review investment of more
than £400 million in measures to promote the uptake of
ultra-low-carbon vehicle technologies. That includes the
plug-in car grant, which will be available from January
2011 and which will provide a grant of 25% of the
vehicle price up to £5,000. We are also continuing
the plugged-in places programme, which supports the
development of electric vehicle recharging infrastructure
in strategic locations. As part of the coalition agreement,
we have also undertaken to mandate a national network
of vehicle recharging facilities.
We want to see more decentralised and community
energy systems, such as microgeneration, make a
contribution to our targets on reducing carbon emissions
and increasing energy security. However, we do not
believe that decentralised and community energy systems
are likely to lead to the significant replacement of
large-scale energy infrastructure, which is why there is
an urgent need for new major energy infrastructure.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con): I have flicked through
the plans, and I cannot see any reference to hydro-power
in the context of micro-schemes. Do the Government
intend to support hydro-power and particularly small-scale
projects?
Charles Hendry: The Government are committed to
taking us forward, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s
support in that respect. Hydro has an important
contribution to make. The Minister of State, Department
of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the
Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), who
has responsibility for climate change, set out how we
can hope to achieve that ambition in his recent speech
on the subject. Most issues that we are discussing today
relate to major applications of more than 50 MW. Most
hydro schemes will fall below that threshold and will
therefore be subject to local planning decisions.
The section of the energy policy statement that deals
with renewable energy does not cover major hydro
schemes, such as major schemes involving tidal flow,
because at this stage there is no evidence of a serious
application for such a scheme of more than 50 MW. If
that happens, we will need either to review the national