Chris Seeks Reason For Massive Rise In Balancing The Grid Cost
Christopher Chope Conservative, Christchurch
Balancing the grid is really important, but why is the cost of so doing rising from about £1.5 billion a year to £10 billion by 2030?
Michael Shanks Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero), Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
First of all, investment is necessary to bring down the costs in the long term. We are currently paying to constrain the renewables that are generating often much more electricity day after day than we are able to get to homes and businesses. Instead of doing that—paying to both turn off wind and turn up gas somewhere else in England to fill the gap—we should be building a transmission system that brings that clean power to houses and businesses across the country. That requires an initial investment, but that investment is repaid, long into the future, from the virtually free fuel that comes from solar and wind. Many, many projects were built under the previous Government and I am very happy to champion those projects, but the problem is that they did not connect them.
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