Contribution
I agree that the opportunities are vast. We have all heard incredible enthusiasm from the Secretary of State for DESNZ in particular about grasping those opportunities for Cornwall with both hands. I am pleased that that will hopefully happen.
We already know and recognise the potential for wind and solar in Cornwall. The Duchy benefits from regular south-westerly winds, which would complement those in other parts of the country. Solar has its place as well. Much of it in my constituency at present is comprised of large solar farms that cluster around the spot where the power supply is broken down into smaller distribution networks. That is only halfway down Cornwall at Indian Queens. The community benefits of those schemes are mixed, and developers have tended to focus on agricultural land that has previously been used for crops—grade 3b land, which is used for potatoes, cauliflowers and daffodils among other things.
We have geothermal solutions as well, both grid-connected with contracts for difference in place and planning permissions, such as for Geothermal Engineering Ltd, and offgrid, such as Kensa heat pumps, which I mentioned earlier. At present, there are two deep geothermal wells with the potential for three more on council farms. Geothermal is a base source producing energy day and night, and whichever way the wind blows, and the 190° water that comes out of the wells has a great scope to heat homes.
It is worth noting that there is significant Cornish capability for developing tidal streams in the UK, Europe and beyond, such as Inyanga Marine Energy Group in my constituency. There is rising demand for clean energy from critical industries such as the tech metals industry and from new communities in my constituency, such as the build of Langarth garden village.
Cornwall is blessed to have resources of tin, lithium and geothermal heat that are simply not available anywhere else. Tin is used in the manufacture of virtually every single electrical device that we use, and it is crucial to our transition to a fossil-free economy. Demand for tin over the past decade or so has driven prices even higher —so much so that is now commercially viable to reopen some of our historical mines. Investment is already coming into Cornwall, most demonstrably at South Crofty mine, where pumping out water from the flooded mine chamber is already well underway, and that of course uses an awful lot of energy.
Lithium, which is a vital component of electric vehicle batteries, is another critical mineral that we have in abundance in Cornwall. We currently import 100% of our lithium, and yet Cornwall has the largest lithium deposits in Europe. We have enough to extract 50,000 tonnes per year. Those critical minerals are currently imported from east Asia and Latin America, where they are mined in a hugely damaging way. The process in Cornwall is completely different. There is a great story to tell here: we have a way to feed the new battery factory in Somerset and to give a shot in the arm to our automotive industry without being reliant on foreign imports in a more dangerous geopolitical environment.
Floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea is the next frontier in the UK’s clean energy transition. We are positioned to unlock up to 4 GW of power by 2035, which is enough to power 4 million homes. There are huge opportunities here for Cornwall, as the Celtic sea is all around us. The ambition to put floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea, where it would complement other offshore arrays, and the opportunities that would arise from it for Cornwall to expand supply chains, the economy and the number of good, skilled jobs are vast.
However, to be brutal, ambition is so far all that it is. Test and demonstration models are planned and ready to go—smaller, non-commercial pilot projects that prove the technology works to give confidence to investors— but the most ready is stalled by too low a price from previous contracts for difference rounds, while others are stalled by planning issues.