Contribution
My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to a company deeply involved in the energy transition, particularly in some of the switching station construction, which, obviously, is the land-based part of the vast increase in electricity from wind pylons that is planned—necessary, in fact, for us to begin to get anywhere near the clean electricity volumes we require for the modern economy.
We all heard President Trump making some ambitious statements yesterday. He was very strong on the fact that vast investment would be required in clean electricity—indeed, electricity of all kinds, in his case—to cope with the great new data systems that he has persuaded private industry to co-operate with the state in building. I think he said it would be $500 billion, or £300 billion; whatever the figure was, it was enormous, and the amount of electricity will be colossal. Running the data centres that will be required, which we are trying to build here as well, can drain entire systems of electricity. The demand is vast. This relatively small area, worth £8.4 billion—he calls it “peanuts”, and it seems nothing compared with these figures—will be part of this, and it will obviously have a very large footprint: a major environmental impact.
My noble friend Lord Hamilton spoke about tidal power and the Thames Barrier. To give a little history—I am sorry, but it is relevant to where we are now—he will remember, because I know he has a crystal-clear memory, that, 40 years ago when he was my Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department of Energy, the first folder on my desk on day 1 of moving into the job was a gigantic report on the Severn barrage. The conclusion was that it would not work and would have a huge environmental impact on nature and the surroundings, rather on the scale of the idea that has now been floated down at Hinkley—that some kind of marshland development should be promoted, which will also have an enormous impact and is causing a lot of protest. So, this is not a new question. We have been talking about barrages and tidal energy and its capacities, and the undoubted impact it can have in specific areas on a rather small scale, for at least 40 years, and we will no doubt be talking for the next 40 years.
In a specific situation it makes sense but, generally, as part of the huge electricity supply that we are now contemplating, as NESO told us only yesterday, we are now moving towards the base camp, to use its language—to this colossal increase in clean electricity by 2030. Just as we are at that point, we can now see that these small additions help, but they will not be part of the central solution.
My noble friend Lord Fuller raised a number of very interesting questions. He also made a general point which is relevant to this amendment as well as others: where are we on new thinking about public purposes harnessing private money? It is an old and obvious question. It is particularly obvious now, when the modern state has vast amounts invested and huge duties to fulfil. In fact, some of them are too vast for the state to cope with in its present form. It has no money, or, rather, it is underwater in debt, as the entire nation is—indeed, the entire world is—and it is hesitant to raise more by taxation and therefore has to look to the poor old consumer and the taxpayer for anything it can raise.
The private sector has the money. The sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and investment pools around the world have vast amounts of money and are looking for places to invest it, but they cannot find them. Somewhere in between those two—the Government having all the demands and the private sector having all the money—there has to be a reinvention of the co-operation between the state and the private sector, which the ideologists in our various parties will not like at all, but that is where we are going. We had a try with the private finance initiative, which was invented by the Conservative Party and taken up with some enthusiasm by Labour, now in government again, and then it ran into difficulties.
I believe that there used to be a unit in the Cabinet Office looking at this whole new area—I hope it is still there somewhere—of having new kinds of co-operation in the digital age between the Government, or the state, and private sources of money. I would quite like to know from the Minister whether that unit is still operating and, I hope, having some very new ideas, and not just in this area. The same problem arises in a vast range of areas.
As to the impact on the environment, which this amendment so rightly focuses on, something of this kind has got to be included in the Bill. It would be a dishonest Bill if it did not have something addressing these issues. I mentioned the switching stations; I am not quite sure how many new ones we will require between now and 2030. I think that two have just been started. I have a figure of 13 switching stations around the coast of this country. Whether they will be built in time, I very much doubt but, if they are, I would like to know what sort of impact they will have on the environment.