Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)

It is my pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gustafsson, on her maiden speech and again welcome her to the House. Most of us will be feeling enormously grateful that we did not have to give our maiden speeches under such pressure and on such a challenging and complex area. She has clearly mastered her brief with great skill, and it is encouraging to hear her passion for this important area. I will make just a few comments. On the urgency and timescales, we have heard about a range of positive developments but there is an optimism on timing that worries me. The noble Baroness talked about business models being designed for hydrogen storage; they are not yet available, but the desire is for infrastructure to be delivered by 2030. She is a mathematician so I do not need to remind her that it is only five years away, yet those sorts of infrastructure projects typically take seven to 10 years—that was the shortest kind of timescale. We have to recognise that some of this will not be delivered by 2030, but we also need to make sure that we are driving this and, as many noble Lords said, taking appropriate risks to really try to accelerate, use the new technologies and deliver the cost reduction through implementation, because that is the only way we will reduce the cost of these new technologies. I hope we will start to see more evidence of the public engagement that we need, and get the public on board with the changes that the future energy system is going to deliver, whether that is getting them to understand that we need pylons, even though they do not like them, or that hydrogen storage near their homes, for example, will be done in a way that genuinely will be safe. We need to start to see that public engagement, and I do not think it is yet happening or visible. The Minister has said many positive things which I very much endorse, but I am still concerned that we need clarity about a strategic energy reserve. Do the Government see this as a reserve of energy—of joules—or do they see it as a generating capacity issue? Talk about a cap-and-floor mechanism for long-duration energy storage makes me worry that we have not quite got the concept of a strategic energy reserve. If we incentivise the development of a strategic energy reserve—meaning that you make money by moving energy in and out of it—then almost certainly it will not be full when the Dunkelflaute happens. We really need clarity on how the Government see a strategic energy reserve and whether they are thinking that we perhaps need a reserve, as the report suggested, that the Government own. It is hard to see how to make a business model for keeping a lot of something that is quite expensive to use just in case it is needed every 10, 20 or 30 years. I want to make absolutely sure that we have got that very important point across. Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, who has given me a timely reminder that I need to fill in my tax return. He reminded me of some useful numbers that will be appearing on it, and that I need to take the advice of our report and just get on with it. I commend the report to the House.