Contribution
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond for introducing his amendment, which leads this group, which is fundamentally concerned with the generation of energy on assets owned by the Crown Estate. This is even more important now that there is a formal relationship with GB Energy, which has been announced, although I accept that details of the relationship are quite thin on the ground. I entirely support the intention of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond to require the publication of a report on the potential for energy generation on the Crown Estate, and I draw attention to my Amendment 35, which would ensure that no new electricity generation licences are granted without confirmation that a corresponding grid connection exists.
The problem of grid capacity, connection and storage is real and important. In May of this year, a House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee report found that in order to achieve net zero targets,
“the transmission and distribution network must develop and expand alongside the growth in supply and demand”.
It concluded that renewable energy generation may be stunted by “slow grid connections” and “limited grid capacity”. That is the issue I am trying to fix, and that all noble Lords are very much focused on. The Government must continue to look at it urgently if they are to build on the previous Conservative Government’s progress toward our clean energy targets. However, it is not an easy task. Even Green Party parliamentarians have been known to be vociferously opposed to measures to boost national grid capacity. I hear a Liberal Democrat laughing, and I am not entirely sure that that is appropriate. However, in the face of that kind of opposition, I ask the Minister to reassure the House that the Government have a plan to get on with increasing our national grid capacity.
At this point, I think it worth pushing the Minister, although we will come back to this on a later group, on the partnership with Great British Energy, which was announced to great fanfare a few months ago. I am still at a loss to explain how the new partnership between the two organisations, the Crown Estate and Great British Energy, will work and what difference it will make; indeed, this is the point of my amendment.
When the previous Conservative Government announced in the 2023 Autumn Statement plans to work with the Crown Estate to increase offshore wind capacity, that was predicted to unlock a further 20 to 30 gigawatts of new offshore wind seabed rights by 2030—great; that seems very fair. The Government have claimed that this new partnership will
“cut the time it takes to get offshore wind projects operating and delivering power to homes by up to half”.
Okay, but their press release of 25 July 2024 stated:
“The Crown Estate estimates this partnership will lead to up to 20-30GW of new offshore wind developments reaching seabed lease stage by 2030”.
To coin a phrase, nothing has changed. What difference does the partnership with GB Energy actually make, or did the Crown Estate get it wrong when it was working with the previous Government? Noble Lords can see the issue I have here: I do not understand how the tie-up with GB Energy is going to benefit that organisation, the Crown Estate and, indeed, the nation.
That, among other reasons, is why I tabled Amendment 34, which also requires a report on the energy generation supported by the Crown Estate. Its scope is wider than Amendment 16 and it facilitates greater oversight via reporting. It requires the Crown Estate commissioners to report annually on not only the expected impact of the relationship between the Crown Estate and GB Energy, but the actual impact. It would also include the investment strategy for capital investment in the infrastructure, including port infrastructure. This is where I am confused, because when I speak to the port sector, it tells me that finances are not particularly an issue. In a report published last month, the British Ports Association recognised that the sheer scale and speed of the investment needed to meet the ports’ offshore energy ambitions is significant. However, it called for a carefully managed investment in ports that fills gaps in ports’ supply chains that cannot be met by the private sector. These gaps can be filled by, for example, the national wealth fund, the Crown Estate or Great British Energy. Can the Minister explain who is managing, and which organisation will be investing how much in what, and when? I, for one, am confused. It is right to get some insight into this now, and to monitor progress in the future.