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Renewables Obligation (Amendment) Order 2010

Will the noble Lord he deal with the question that I asked about security of supply? It is a very important matter and needs the attention of the Government. We are to rely to quite a large extent on 20,000 megawatts of wind power, both at sea and on land—incidentally, the facilities at sea will be subject to stormy weather and difficult to maintain in winter. Therefore, if we are to maintain security of supply with advanced gas reactors, and existing oil-fired power stations and certain coal-fired power stations coming offline, wind power will have to be augmented by new baseload power. The Government should be seriously considering what will happen over the next 10 years when all these power stations are taken out of service to be replaced only by wind. If we are to replace the wind power with a similar amount of conventional generating power, it will be a very costly exercise indeed.