Introduction Good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here although I have spent the past 15 months as Energy Minister reading Cornwall Insight’s insights and it is therefore with some trepidation I step into the breach to speak to you. But now is a good time to be talking about energy. Your insights often focus not just on what is changing in our energy system, but on why it matters. Not just taking the pulse of...
Introduction Good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here although I have spent the past 15 months as Energy Minister reading Cornwall Insight’s insights and it is therefore with some trepidation I step into the breach to speak to you. But now is a good time to be talking about energy. Your insights often focus not just on what is changing in our energy system, but on why it matters. Not just taking the pulse of energy in the UK, but turning that into foresight. And there has surely not been a time in recent memory when energy is such an active topic of conversation, not just among us nerds, but in the press, and the public discourse, and yes, on social media too – although I would discourage you from reading the variety of offensive replies I get almost every day. Energy matters. Not just energy bills, energy shocks, but some of the more technical stuff once found only in the pages of industry journals. The future of our energy mix, the transmission network, long duration energy storage, energy jobs, our North Sea, the current focus on energy points to a wider truth. As a country we are at a fork in the road, and face some major decisions about our future. The system that has powered our homes and businesses, kept the lights on, underpinned the fabric of everyday life, was constructed, both physically and ideologically, in the 20th century. And it is not working for working people as it once did, not just because the infrastructure is ageing, but because, ideologically, the idea that we can have energy security while dependent on fossil fuels whose prices are set globally has come crashing down. We need an energy system for this new era of global insecurity. But we face choices, huge choices, about how we get there. There are 2 paths ahead of us. Frequently in our political discourse today is the yellow brick road of the easy answer. The mirage of nostalgia, prolonging the status quo a little longer. And we all know where that road leads – to stagnation, managed decline, and never tackling the deep rooted, complex challenges that hold our country back. And, on the other hand, the hard work of renewal – accepting the reality that there are no easy answers, or quick fixes, and that the status quo isn’t working, and hasn’t been for far too long. And this choice applies to the 3 fundamental questions I face as energy minister, which I am going to talk to you about today. Where will our energy come from? How will we get it to where it’s needed? And how will we take the country with us as we transition to a 21st century energy system? Where will our energy come from? Let me start with the first one. Not just because ‘where will our energy come from’ is a fairly fundamental question for the Minister for Energy, but because it is critical for the future of our country. For a very, very long time most people on these islands haven’t thought very much about what happens when they flick on the light switch. Electrons flow, the system responds. But in truth, behind the curtain, the system is struggling as a result of decades of underinvestment and a lack of strategic planning. Neglect. Decline. We are still heavily reliant on gas, and yet half our existing fleet of gas plants is more than 20 years old with many approaching retirement in less than 10 years. The year before I was born was the last time a UK government took a decision to build a new nuclear power station that is currently generating electricity – 1987. We haven’t brought a new nuclear power station onto the system since I started primary school. Our transmission system is creaking under the weight of demand it cannot meet and the failure to invest over decades. Now some – those seekers of the easy answer – would suggest we simply generate more electricity with gas, and worry about the threat of climate change another time. They compare the wholesale cost of gas without any of the capital costs of construction with the total cost of building new renewable generation and hope nobody notices the difference. But in truth, our ageing gas fleet means that we would need to rebuild a new, more expensive version of our existing power system and impose the costs onto consumers, while leaving us more exposed than ever to the global price of fossil fuels, over which we have no control. Showing that we have learned nothing from the hardship people up and down the country have suffered since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Without taking a penny off our bills, we would be turning our back on every climate commitment that a succession of governments of all parties have made over the last 20 years. Abandoning our children and grandchildren, who will have to face the effects of the climate crisis, and swimming against the unstoppable global tide, where $2 trillion is now being invested in clean energy each year - twice as much as fossil fuels. The path of decline, stagnation, easy answers. But our answer is a different plan. Homegrown clean power. Solar and wind power are substantially cheaper to install and run than new gas. And supported by nuclear, storage and other technologies, our clean power system will: reduce our exposure as a country to fossil fuel price hikes help us to take back control of our energy cut our bills by reducing the wholesale costs of electricity protect our way of life for future generations by tackling the climate crisis, and push Britain to the front of the global race to clean power, so that we can seize the jobs and opportunities of the future That is why we have been sprinting to achieve clean power. Deploying renewables at a scale that will push gas off as the price setter and bring down bills – in the first 15 months approving enough projects to power 7.5 million homes. Investing in the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century, and making sure the UK is at the forefront of new nuclear technology. Establishing our first publicly owned energy champion in 70 years in Great British Energy And kickstart our hydrogen and carbon capture industries across the country. And we are just getting started. How will we get our energy to where it’s needed? But this leads me to the second question. How do we get this power to where it’s needed? Here we inherited a familiar tale of ambition turned to stagnation. Much of our electricity grid was built in the 1960s and hasn’t been upgraded since. The National Grid was the first of its kind in the world, a product of 20th century big government through ambitious intervention, building things to improve people’s lives. A spirit that has been replaced by a shrug of the shoulders and blinkered short-termism. But we can’t afford to be short-termist as a country any longer. We have arrived at the age of electric vehicles, data centres and artificial intelligence, and a demand for electricity demand that is expected to more than double by 2050. Do we take the easy road? Patch up what we have, hope it lasts to the next election and leave it to someone else to sort? If we do, then consumers will need to help pay up to £4 billion in constraint payments by 2030. If we do we will fail to meet the economic growth opportunities coming our way in the years ahead. We’ll fail to keep up with the coming electricity demand. So, we are taking the second road. We choose to build, reform, innovate and invest. We have ended the first come first serve grid connections queue. We have introduced the biggest reform of planning in a generation. And we know that the way the electricity market works needed to change. That is why, this summer, we announced a new Reformed National Pricing Programme which, along with the upcoming Strategic Spatial Energy Plan, will allow us to reform our power market and build a power system based on centralised, strategic, big-picture planning, instead of slow and uncoordinated fragmentation. So that new energy sources are built where they’re needed most, and as the power grid grows, it will keep up with the energy we’ll need and send it where it needs to go. This is how we will deliver security, prevent volatility, cut constraint payments for consumers, encourage investment, and build a network for the 21st century. How will we take the country with us? For any of this to work, however, we need to take people with us. How we do that is the third question. We as a country are still coming to terms with the consequences of sudden change that happens to communities, rather than for them, and with them. Deindustrialisation has left its scars, and they run deep across our old industrial heartlands. So let me make one point abundantly clear. If we accept that a historic moment of industrial change is needed, then the lessons from the past must be learned. We must build a Britain for the British people. Take the North Sea. The oil and gas workers there have helped to power our country and the world for more than half a century and will continue to do so for decades to come, with oil and gas retaining an important role within our energy system. But we cannot accept the status quo, barely managed decline of the last decade, which has seen more than a third of jobs in this industry lost and other countries getting ahead in the technologies that should be safeguarding our energy future. If we want to create new good jobs and revitalise our industrial regions, then we must build on their legacy and the expertise of these workers to make Britain a world-leading centre of clean energy. The momentum is with us. According to the CBI , the net zero sector is now growing 3 times faster than the overall UK economy. And employment in clean energy sectors is up 10%, with those jobs paying 15% higher than average. I’ve been lucky enough to see what that means in reality, up and down the country, from the proud offshore workers in Scotland and the North East of England, pursuing new opportunities in new industries, to the new nuclear projects from Suffolk to Hartlepool, launching fantastic careers for young people right at the forefront of energy innovation, without having to move hundreds of miles from home. This is the second path, the path to a brighter future, in action. And last week, we published our Clean Energy Jobs Plan, showcasing not just the hundreds of thousands of good jobs that you in the room here today and others are already supporting in this sector, but the jobs of the future, as we aim to almost triple the number in Scotland, double the number in Wales, Northern Ireland and almost every region of England, and reach 860,000 clean energy jobs by the end of the decade. Conclusion Sometimes, amidst the comments, the headlines, the sound and the fury of the debates around what our energy future should look like, we forget that we all want the same thing - a modern energy system that can make our lives better. So, the 2 paths I set out today are not divided by intention, they are separated by their levels of ambition. The ambition we are offering is huge. It will be hard. It is hard. But the role of government is to do hard things. Perhaps after years of stagnation, we have forgotten that. But this government has a mission to seize the opportunities of clean energy, and we will do the difficult things to achieve it. Let me leave you with this, for those who doubt whether we can achieve our mission. A few weeks ago, if you happened to be awake at 3:30am and turned the light on to find your phone or check on the kids, then you were making use of the first 100% low-carbon electricity this country has ever had. For 1 hour we were generating enough from renewables, nuclear, and biomass alone to meet our entire national electricity demand. The first time, but not the last. If we all work together, we can get there. And we can write the next chapter in this country’s proud energy history. But only if we marry action with ambition, and take the road that goes forward, not backwards, to a fairer, more secure, more prosperous future. Thank you.
Speech Brief