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National Policy Statements

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. In response to the Energy and Climate Change Committee report examining the previous national policy statements the Government have accepted they need to undertake some sort of spatial planning arrangement which will look at the cumulative impacts between various arrangements as they progress. She is also absolutely right that in this NPS that question of decarbonisation of supply needs to be part of the process, not anterior to it. The current level of emissions of our energy supply means that if we are to get to that position, gas at about 450 grams per kWh unabated probably will have no part to play in the energy economy by 2030—when abated, it comes in at about 100 grams per kWh. What are we planning? What are we looking for in these overarching documents? According to EN-1, we are planning to require a capacity of about 113 GW of installed power sources by 2025, which is a substantial increase on 2010 levels because of the penetration of wind, in particular. According to the scenario of that capacity projection, wind needs greater capacity to balance its variability. So the 113 GW, which is an increase on the about 80 GW of installed capacity that we have at the moment, will need to be installed by that point. However, 22 GW are expected to go offline, including most nuclear plants and a number of power plants, under the large plant directive and the industrial emissions directive. So 59 GW of new power will need to be built between now and 2025, one way or another. If we reach the renewables targets for wind, and we probably will, given the amount of wind power already in planning, we will have about 33 GW of wind power on the grid. That means that we will need 26 GW of new build non-renewables or non-wind. Of whatever type, they will, for the reasons I have outlined, need to be low-carbon or lowish-carbon. Some 8 GW are under construction and almost all that construction relates to gas. That leaves a balance of 18 GW. Some 9 GW is not under construction but has planning permission. The Government dismiss that as uncertain, but 5 GW of that relates to gas; plans for a further 7 GW are under consideration, most of which also relates to gas. So it appears that most of the current gap is set to be made up by gas. As the Select Committee has been told by the Committee on Climate Change, more gas is in the pipeline in terms of planning, permissions or build than we need for that future decarbonisation strategy to work. The NPS says that"““it would be for industry to determine the exact mix of the remaining 26 GW of required new electricity capacity, acting within the strategic framework set by the Government””." If industry decides as it appears to be deciding, it will choose gas. If it is to be gas and that gas is unabated or only partially abated, the decarbonisation of our electricity supply will not happen.