Miatta Fahnbulleh

I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for securing a debate on this important issue and for prosecuting his case for floating solar with such flourish. I also wish to put on the record that the Minister for Energy, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), was desperate to be here and is very sorry that he cannot be, but I am glad that I am able to stand here in his place. I am also glad that the hon. and gallant Gentleman was able to make his speech today, as I know he was not able to intervene in the recent solar debate. Let me start by saying that I absolutely agree. The Government are very clear that, like the hon. and gallant Gentleman, we believe there is an exciting role for floating solar. It is a new technology, but one that we think has huge potential. Developers around the world started to come forward with utility-scale proposals in the past decade, and several large projects have been constructed in recent years, including installations with the capacity to generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity, which have mainly been in China. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has very effectively set out the upsides of floating solar, so I will not reiterate them. However, I want to put on the record that we agree, and that we recognise many of those upsides. I will say a little about the state of floating solar in the UK today. There has been some deployment of floating solar in the UK. Lightsource led a project on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir, which is just outside the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, as he mentioned. The project uses 24,000 solar panels to generate around 20% of the site’s electricity needs. It was, at the time of construction, Europe’s largest floating solar installation. There are now other, smaller projects across the country, but the scale is still nascent and very limited.