Contribution
I will touch on the Crown Estate later in my speech. On that specific point, I am afraid that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that devolving the Crown Estate is the answer, and I take issue with the suggestion that the Crown Estate’s considerations in Wales somehow come from Whitehall. I have met a number of representatives of the Crown Estate, and they are in engaged with the Welsh Government and with communities in Wales. If we can do more on that, I am very happy to reach out to the Crown Estate, although I am not directly responsible for it and it is not accountable to me. Of course, it has published a number of strategies recently and there is more coming on the long-term vision for the Celtic sea and other parts of the Crown Estate in Wales. It is about partnership work, which includes not just bringing together the Crown Estate but how we look at the planning system and consenting, as well as the strategic spatial energy plan more broadly to plan for the long term. I will come back to some of those points later.
Although marine renewables are not at the centre of that clean power action plan to 2030, they will hugely benefit from the actions that we will deliver through it, not least on grid connections. Grid connections are all about future-proofing the grid in this country so that it can meet the demand of the future, and prioritising a grid queue that has got out of control with over 700 GW waiting to connect, which is simply not deliverable.
I would like to turn to the issue of funding, but first I wish a happy birthday to the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), who does not look a day over 21—but that is the last time I will pander to the Lib Dems. He raised a point about Great British Energy, as did a number of other hon. Members, many of whom I cannot help but notice did not vote for it, but now want it to be headquartered in their constituencies and deliver significant amounts of funding. Great British Energy will play a role in this space. It is our first publicly owned energy champion, and it will deliver and deploy clean power across the country and help with some of the innovation and development work.
Marine renewables are exactly the kind of technology that Great British Energy might invest in at an early stage and have a significant impact on, rather than technologies that are at a more confident stage. Hon. Members may not have had the opportunity to reach out to Great British Energy—the Bill is still going through the House of Lords, so it does not technically exist yet—but the start-up chair, Jürgen Maier, has had a number of meetings across the UK, has engaged on questions about a whole range of technologies and is keen to continue to do so. It will be for Great British Energy, as an independent company, to make its own investment decisions based on a whole range of factors, including the return on investment potential, but I see marine renewable technology as a potential benefit for it.
We think that tidal stream energy will play a significant role, particularly beyond 2030. As many Members raised, tidal stream will bring balancing benefits to a future electricity system that will have renewables at its heart. The balancing role that tidal can play—as a baseload, in the traditional way of thinking about the electricity system—would be important. Currently over half of the world’s tidal stream deployment is situated in UK waters. However, this Government want to go further and faster, as the technology has huge potential.
Aside from having one of the world’s best tidal resources, the UK also hosts world-leading marine energy hubs. Many hon. Members spoke about the EMEC. I have been pleased to speak to the EMEC over the last few months; the Minister for Climate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), visited recently and I hope to get to Orkney to do the same at some point.
When we came into power, the Government took the contracts for difference option that had been started by the previous Government and increased the budget to try to get as many projects as we could over the line. That led to a 50% increase in the ringfence for tidal stream to £15 million in the last allocation round. That demonstrated our commitment to the technology and ensured that 28 MW of tidal stream was secured in allocation round 6, including 9 MW for projects based in Orkney.