Seamus Logan

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for securing this important debate and for his excellent and very well-informed contribution. I wish him not only a happy birthday but success with his new heat pump. The future of the gas grid will impact all these islands. Gas is a critical component for more than half a million businesses across the country and all the workers that they employ. Research by Robert Gordon University suggests that if Scotland is successful in delivering its 2030 energy ambitions, the workforce—currently about 80,000—will increase by 25%. However, if it is unsuccessful, the workforce could fall by about 40%, with the loss of key skills, capabilities and associated supply chains. A green future offers the possibility of new jobs by creating certainty for industry and investors. According to the UK Government’s 2021 hydrogen strategy, transitioning to green gases could create 12,000 jobs by 2030 and 100,000 by 2050. That would contribute to a thriving UK economy, increased production, improved public services and global leadership on the climate agenda. New jobs and the associated economic growth will also complement electrification. Many workers in the gas industry have the very skills needed to secure a net zero future, and that future will be built in, and with, communities with a rich energy heritage, especially those in Scotland, as former fossil fuel jobs are replaced with green jobs. Low-carbon hydrogen is required for all net zero scenarios. The UK needs to act fast and at scale to ensure energy security and independence to meet decarbonisation targets and achieve its legally binding net zero 2050 commitments. I appreciate that the Minister fully understands these matters. Existing gas infrastructure can be adapted to deliver low-cost and low-impact net zero solutions. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase mentioned, renewable biomethane gas can play a significantly larger role in the transition to net zero, reducing the overall cost of the transition and benefiting energy customers. Many of our European counterparts are already making very significant progress in these areas, and we need to catch up. The Scottish gas network is already fuelling 10% of households in Scotland on their network with biomethane, and there are plans to grow that to 1 million homes by 2031. The prize on offer is not only a green gas that can sustainably decarbonise energy-intensive industries and retain jobs, but the growth of a new sector that will add up to 12,000 jobs by 2030 and £13 billion in gross value added. A word about Peterhead power station in my constituency: commissioned in 1982, the power station continues to play a critical role in our energy supply, and also has the potential to play a major role in our future systems. The Peterhead carbon capture power station is a joint venture with Equinor, and the plan is to build a new 900 MW power station that will use technology to capture a minimum of 90% of carbon emissions. As I say, that is a minimum: SSE tells me that it could be as much as 95%. The station would connect to a shared infrastructure being developed by the Scottish cluster, meaning that CO₂ captured from the power station will be safely transported and stored offshore at the Acorn storage site. The existing station directly supports 80 full- time employees, three graduates, 13 apprentices and 30 contractors, but with the new development we could be talking about 1,000 new jobs during construction and 240 new jobs on an ongoing basis. I will come back to the issue of sustainability, because construction is one thing but sustaining jobs into the future is quite another. I want to acknowledge the role of SSE Thermal in my local constituency in supporting local community projects. They are very important to local communities, particularly young people, schools, and businesses, as well as the environment. Lastly, I will turn to Acorn. As the Minister knows, £200 million was announced last week to support the Acorn carbon capture and underground storage project in my constituency. I am sure that others have heard in the Chamber that it has the potential to capture and store the amount of carbon gas emitted since before the industrial revolution—that is the scale of the project. The £200 million represented a start, but it is small compared with the £9.4 billion earmarked in the spending review for carbon capture, usage and storage before 2029. The investment is very welcome, especially in the context of the previous Government’s needless delays, but I also want to mention in connection with Acorn how important the connectivity with Grangemouth will be. Some of my colleagues asked me how many pipes there are between Acorn and Grangemouth. There are five, so there is no problem with the infrastructure. We do not need to spend billions of pounds building this thing; it is already there. That is really important to understand. Given what is at stake for the north-east—jobs, supply chain opportunities and our green industrial transformation as part of climate action and economic growth—Scotland must be given our fair share. Two hundred million pounds is a start, but we want to see that figure climb very quickly, once the final investment decision is made, to the scale of the £22 billion already invested in England. As this debate has shown, the future of the gas grid is about working in tandem with projects such as Acorn, so the availability and implementation of funding is something that we should all push for. I want to make one final point, from the workers’ perspective. I have spoken about the massive construction opportunities that will come with these projects. However, if we take a project such as the Viking project in the far north of Scotland, in Shetland, we are talking about 2,000 jobs during construction and a very small number—perhaps 200—afterwards, so it is fine to construct the projects, but we need to have solutions that work for people in the longer term. We need sustainability; we need regulation, so that workers are not taken advantage of; and we need to implement the Labour Government’s vision for better contractual terms and conditions. I look forward to a very bright future for the north-east of Scotland, playing its role in our transition to a new future for the gas grid.