Claire Coutinho
MP for East Surrey · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Control room operators at the National Energy System Operator have the life-or-death job of balancing our electricity supply and demand. If they do not get it right, we will have blackouts, and in blackouts, people die; it is that serious. That makes what I am about to say all the more extraordinary.”
“It will not look into whether the grid is being run securely, or whether there was a breach of security standards on 23 June. It does not grant anonymity to any control room operator who wants to come forward. Those who are not selected by NESO management will have to ask those managers if they can participate, if they have concerns.”
“I first raised questions on 2 June. Since then, we have had three public electricity margin notices—warnings to the market that we may be short on supply. I cannot stress enough that this is completely unprecedented. Multiple whistleblowers have now come forward. This, too, is unprecedented. I have raised this matter twice in the House.”
“Last month, I asked the Secretary of State about the risk of blackouts from the increasing instability of our electricity grid, and he accused me of scaremongering. Since then, I can inform the House that I have been contacted by a whistleblower at the heart of our grid operator, the National Energy System Operator.”
“Let us look at the facts: bills went down £500 under me, but they have gone up £300 under him. The Secretary of State said that he has raked in investment, but that is because he has promised that consumers will pay sky-high prices to wind developers for decades to come. He is decimating British industry.”
“According to the press, the Secretary of State is applying for a new job, which means that he must be in need of references. Who will he ask first: the trade unions, who are calling for him to be sacked; the public, who have faced a £300 rise in their energy bills on his watch; or the oil and gas workers, who roundly rejected him at the r…”
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“I will give way in a second. The Secretary of State is setting up a new body when our energy sector is not short of state-run bodies. We have Ofgem, the National Energy System Operator, the Climate Change Committee, Great British Nuclear and, of course, the UK Infrastructure Bank, with £22 billion to provide debt, equity and guarantees for infrastructure finance to tackle climate change, set up by the former Prime Minister. At this point, the taxpayer might well ask why they are coughing up twice for programmes that do the same thing. Here is why. When I read the Bill, tiny as it is, it rang a bell and, lo and behold, it is a carbon copy of the Infrastructure Bank legislation, so why do the same thing again? Well, there are a few important omissions and tweaks.”
“He had the courtesy of telling the public his plans, but, professional politician that he is, I suggest that he would have clocked that it was not included this time round. He has been in politics for 30 years and would have known what that meant, so I hope that he can confirm today whether he had any conversations with the Prime Minister, the Chancellor or Morgan McSweeney before the manifesto came out. If so, he sent out those Labour candidates—all the people on the Benches behind him—with this false promise of the £300 energy savings when someone clearly knew that they were going to take that amount away from millions of pensioners this winter.”
“In fact, one of Labour’s first acts in government has been to take away up to £300 from 10 million pensioners this winter, including two thirds of pensioners in poverty. It takes some nerve for the Labour party to say that it never wanted to do this, because the winter fuel payment was in the manifesto of the Secretary of State’s party when he wrote it in 2010. It was in there when he was leader in 2015, it was in there in 2017 and in 2019, but in 2024 it was omitted. There was no mention at all for the first time in 14 years. I will give credit to the right hon. Gentleman—something that I do not always do. When he was leader in 2015, he put it in his manifesto that he would take the payment away from the top 5% of pensioners. He will remember that.”
“The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Secretary of State and at least 50 Labour MPs promised their constituents in the July election that GB Energy would save them £300 a year on their energy bills. They said it on their election literature, on social media and in hustings. They said it because they were told to do so by the Secretary of State, but I listened very closely to his speech today and I did not hear him make a promise that GB Energy will save them £300 on their energy bills. In a debate just before the summer recess, the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), would not repeat the promise either. That is because they all know that it is not true.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. It is always a pleasure to see him in the Chamber making excellent points. The question that I have is this: why has the Secretary of State set up a duplicate programme with no instructions for governance, independent review, investment plans or consumer savings that he can be judged by? Why should taxpayers’ money fund a similar entity when the only difference that I can discern is that it gives the Secretary of State unchecked power? What is it about the £8 billion of taxpayer money that he can direct without checks or balances that first attracted him to the idea of GB Energy? These are fair and reasonable questions for us as the Opposition to ask, and he must look to improve the governance in this Bill. Let me turn to the promises that he made.”
“The risk is that GB Energy, far from generating any profit for taxpayers, will become a skip for all and everyone to put their problems and their failures inside. This is crucial, because we cannot let the Government repeat at a national scale what Labour councils have done at a local level. [Interruption.] Labour Members groan, but they should think about what local taxpayers have had to face. Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham, which collapsed, left residents with debts of £38 million. Bristol Energy, which failed, cost residents £43 million. Warrington’s stake in Together Energy left residents with a potential liability of £37 million. These were small-time projects with budgets in the tens of millions.”
“Those are the minimum things that anyone seeking investment should set out, and I say that as someone who is financially trained. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is not, but this is basic stuff. Here is the problem. If the Secretary of State’s goal is to give taxpayers a good deal, he should be investing on commercial rates, which would just displace private sector capital and would not speed up his decarbonisation targets, produce more energy or lower bills. But if his goal is to de-risk more speculative projects—that is the line that he is giving industry and the thing that he said today—then by definition he will be throwing taxpayers’ money into the least attractive parts of investments, by which I mean the parts that multimillion-pound companies do not want.”
“Member for Rutherglen said on 26 July—it is in Hansard if Members want to check. It says “in every single project”. What Labour is telling industry is very different. It says that it will use that money—£8 billion of taxpayers’ money—to de-risk its projects. I believe that the Secretary of State said that in his speech today. What does that mean? That means that it will be investing in the parts of those projects that the energy companies do not expect to be profitable. May I ask this: what is it about the Secretary of State’s vast private sector experience, which he gained as a researcher at Channel 4, that makes him think he can turn a profit, when experienced, multimillion-pound energy companies cannot? He has not set out an expected financial rate of return, any risk profile or a timeframe for these returns.”
“We will come on to whether that is a good idea a bit later. To do that, he said that he needed £28 billion a year. His Chief Secretary to the Treasury talked about hundreds of billions of pounds, and he has in fact secured from his Chancellor £1.6 billion a year. He talked about national ownership. This is not enough money to do that, and he knows it. He himself thought that his plans would cost vastly more, yet he is promising to do it all now with 6% of the funds. That is just not credible. Then we come to promise No. 3. The Government say that “in every single project” that GB Energy invests in “there will be a return for the British taxpayer”. —[ Official Report , 26 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 937.] That is what the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon.”
“It is a fraction of the amount of investment that he is deterring from the private sector into clean energy with his plans to shut down the North sea. He talked about offshore wind, nuclear and hydrogen in his founding statement, but none of those things get built in five years. Let us be honest, the likelihood of his plans bringing any power online by 2030 is tiny. The idea that it will be enough to lower bills across households is, frankly, for the birds. When we asked his Department how much energy he wanted to enable through the Bill, his Department said that it would be looked at in due course. That is just not good enough. The second promise is clean power by 2030. GB Energy was supposed to be the silver bullet to reach the Secretary of State’s target of a decarbonised grid by 2030.”
“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that point. There will be a vote next week on the winter fuel payment—I think the Government have confirmed that. Everybody heard the Secretary of State speak today, so I say to those on the Opposition Benches that, if they want to break the Whip, if they want to stand out from the crowd, I am sure that they will have his encouragement. Let us come back to those savings. The Secretary of State has promised bill savings by 2030 through GB Energy —I believe that is correct. The question is how. Does he have any serious energy expert who thinks that that is possible with an investment of £8 billion over five years? That is a drop in the ocean when it comes to energy investment.”
“This is really important, because we are talking about taxpayers’ money. Those were small-time projects with budgets in the tens of millions, but the Secretary of State is asking for a budget of billions of pounds with no plans. He mentioned a couple of companies in his speech, including EDF, which made a loss of €17 billion in 2022, and Ørsted, which made a loss of €2.7 billion in 2023, so I think it is right that we ask some of these questions.”
“If the hon. Lady would bravely like to say that the company will generate energy, I am sure that she would like to tell us how much, because no one else seems able to.”
“Can the Secretary of State say whether the creation of GB Energy is slowing down those projects and causing the timetable of these programmes, which will provide clean, cheap energy, to slip?”
“I am sorry, but I will make some progress. Finally—this is really important—the Secretary of State pays lip service to nuclear, but we know that when Labour was last in power it did not start a single nuclear power plant in all its 14 years. All summer, there has been an eerie silence. On the capital raise for Sizewell C, which should be out by now—nothing. On the small modular reactor competition, which should be deciding its final projects now—nothing. We committed to a third large-scale nuclear power plant at Wylfa—again, nothing. We wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen, but once again he has refused to confirm any detail or, with regard to Wylfa, whether those plans are even in place.”
“He went into a general election with a pledge and no idea how to achieve it, what it will cost or whether it is achievable at all.”
“When it comes to the Bill and its 2030 target, it is clear that the Secretary of State does not have the numbers, because two weeks ago he wrote a letter to the director of the Electricity System Operator. I have it here. Do you know what he said, Madam Deputy Speaker? He asked the director to please “provide practical advice on achieving clean power by 2030”, including a “High-level assessment of costs”. Given that we are talking about people’s energy bills, I think the public would like a detailed look at what this is going to cost them. To top it off, he asked the director to advise what actions his Government should take “to enable delivery…clearly setting out where further work is required.” The evidence could not be clearer.”
“I will not; I will continue. Once again, we simply have no answers. I find all this very strange, because at our last encounter in this House, the Secretary of State was keen to confess that he was a “super-nerd”. As someone who has been a lifelong mathlete, I am the first person to want to champion a fellow super-nerd, but when I meet super-nerds they normally like evidence, facts and numbers. Whenever we look at what the Secretary of State has set out, there are no numbers attached. He talks about decarbonising the grid by 2030, but he has not set out the full system costs of that. He promises profits and bill savings from GB Energy, but he cannot tell us by when or how much.”
“We launched the £1 billion green industries growth accelerator specifically to reduce any supply chain constraints, for example on cables. We provided almost £200 million to help the UK become the first commercial producer of advanced nuclear fuel outside Russia. We were making Britain one of the most exciting places in the world for fusion energy development, with £600 million of funding.”
“That is a very fair question. I hope that the energy Minister, who I assume will wrap up the debate, will be able to provide some detail. Far from being a super-nerd, the truth is that the Secretary of State is the ultimate career politician. He comes up with big titles and makes big promises to the public, but he has no idea how to deliver. My big fear— [ Interruption. ] He should listen, because it is an important point. My big fear is that he is losing focus on all the amazing technologies that will come online after 2030, whether it is fusion energy, the next generation of nuclear reactors or carbon capture. These are the innovative new technologies that will not just deal with the 1% of emissions in the UK but the 99% produced overseas. In Government, I focused a lot of my time on speeding up the development of those technologies.”
“The Secretary of State has promised many things with the Bill, but he simply cannot set out any detail about the things that he wants to deliver. It would be a blank cheque for £8 billion of taxpayers’ money, with no plan, no evidence, and no numbers for the bill savings or profits that he has been promising the British public. That is why we cannot support the Bill as it stands.”
“I will. This is a critical point, which I have made in recent weeks. The point about having longer to decarbonise is that it gives time to develop British supply chains. That is exactly what I was doing. The green industries growth accelerator and some of the other things that I have talked about gave us time to set up British companies. Those things cannot be done in five years. There is a need to get project finance, to hire workers and train them, and to get planning permission. There is a huge amount that needs to be done. The fact that the Secretary of State wants to rush the transition and make it happen at breakneck speed is risking British jobs and livelihoods, and making us dependent on Chinese supply chains.”
“Members sitting behind the Minister to take this issue seriously and examine his plans in detail, because it is their promise, which they all made just a few weeks ago, that is being ditched. Come the next election, the first question their voters will ask is not, “Have you met the 2030 target?”, but, “What did you do to my energy bills?” If the trade unions, the business leaders and the Conservative party are right that their approach would place huge costs on British households, I can tell them that their constituents will check the parliamentary records and see whether they asked any questions, and they will have to explain why they let these measures pass without challenge.”
“The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State know that those savings cannot be delivered; in fact, their approach to energy will add huge costs to people’s bills. That is not us being evil Tories. It is also the view of the European lead for Mitsubishi Power, who said that the Labour party’s plans would require a “huge sacrifice” from Brits; it is the view of the GMB trade union, which has said that the Secretary of State’s plans will lead to power cuts and blackouts across the country and come at an enormous cost; and it is the view of the Tony Blair Institute, which says that Labour’s plans would raise bills and harm our energy security. People the Labour party normally listens to, from the right to the left of the party, agree with us on this issue. I urge the hon.”
“Throughout the general election campaign, the people now sitting on the Benches behind the Minister told their new constituents that their plans would save them £300 on their energy bills—they said it in hustings, they said it in local media, they said it on their leaflets— but they will have noticed by now that their Ministers are no longer saying that at all. This is the problem, Madam Deputy Speaker: when you get into government and you speak in the House, you cannot use numbers for which you have no basis. [ Interruption. ] Labour Members will learn that. But their voters— [ Interruption. ] They laugh, but their voters will not forget that they made that promise. Their online clips and social media accounts will not go away. They all know that their leadership have sold them down the river on this one.”
“If it is not managed carefully, if it is driven by ideology rather than the national interest, then it will cost us jobs, hit struggling families and leave us reliant on fuel imports from foreign regimes. This country will succeed in the decades ahead only if we have enough cheap energy to power our nation. It is no use being world-leading at cutting emissions if the cost of our energy goes through the roof and all our businesses leave to set up in countries that still burn coal for 60% of their energy. That would be worse for global emissions and a disaster for the British public. We will do our bit from the Opposition Benches to hold the Government to account on their plans, but my message to those MPs now sitting on the Government Benches is that it is in their interest to ask these crucial questions too.”
“The Labour party likes to say that the difference between us is that they are the climate believers and we are the climate deniers, but that is obviously nonsense. It was under the Conservative Government that we became the first country in the G20 to have halved carbon emissions, and we did that while growing the economy. The real difference between us is this: we know that the transition needs to happen, but we recognise that it is now at a stage where we are asking the British public to incur great costs—to change their cars, their homes and many other things. We are way ahead of other countries, and what happens next is not cost free.”
“I was surprised to see the title of this debate. Under the Conservative Government, we built more offshore wind than any other country bar China, much of it driven by our contracts for difference scheme, which weaves together the Conservative principles of competition and enterprise. It was under the Conservative Government that we went from having 7% of our electricity coming from renewable energy to almost half today, and it was under the Conservative Government that we kick-started the largest nuclear revival in 70 years, committing to three large-scale nuclear reactors and a whole new fleet of small and advanced modular reactors. That is the record that has led to more than £300 billion being invested in green technology since 2010, creating jobs up and down the country.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I say how wonderful it is to see you in the Chair? I warmly welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks) to his place on the Government Front Bench. I know that he used to be a schoolteacher, a wonderful profession, and I am sure that his ability to wrangle with unruly children will help him with his work in this place. I also welcome the continuation of the fine tradition started by my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) of having a Minister from Scotland in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Scotland has played, and will continue to play, a vital role in our energy security, and I know that the hon. Member will bring his local expertise to the role.”
“He should not forget those last two priorities, or he will find that those on the Benches behind him will turn very quickly.”
“That is what de-risking means. Members should ask on what basis the Secretary of State thinks that he can turn a profit for the British taxpayer when highly experienced energy companies believe that they cannot. If I were to give one piece of advice to the Minister it would be to do what I did when I first started the job. He should not listen to just one side of the climate lobby who pretend that there are no costs involved in this transition, but go to speak to industry, and to oil and gas workers, and listen to how much those families value secure, well-paid jobs on their doorstep. He should not follow the Secretary of State’s path of quoting only from the Climate Change Committee, and never from business or industry. The Minister’s job, first and foremost, is to keep bills down and the lights on.”
“It is not a coincidence that many integrated energy companies in this country pursue both oil and gas and renewable projects at the same time; it is because they use the same skills, supply chain and workers. Industry says that more than £400 billion is at risk from these plans. GB Energy, at £8 billion, will not touch the sides of replacing that. How much will be lost, and where will the extra money come from? Will it be from central Government through people’s taxes, or will it be through the bills and standing charges of all our constituents? The Government keep claiming—I think the Minister did so today—that GB Energy will turn a profit. I believe he said that “every single project” will make a return, but the slice of the pie that they want to invest in is the slice that even businesses do not think they can make money from.”
“New technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors, carbon capture, and batteries of long duration storage are all welcome, but they will not be ready by 2030. What will be used, and how much will it cost? Will the largest nuclear expansion in 70 years, which I set out, be sacrificed to pay for GB Energy? I know that Ministers barely refer to it any more, but nuclear will be critical to our energy supply in the years ahead. Have they made an assessment of how much their plans will increase our reliance on the current dominant provider of pylons, cables, batteries and solar panels, which is China? If not, when will they do so? How much private investment into the energy transition will they lose through their plans to tax the North sea into oblivion and ban new oil and gas licences?”
“I have enormous respect for the hon. Lady, but I disagree, particularly on nuclear, because every single operational nuclear power plant in this country was started by Conservatives. I will offer some suggestions for questions that Labour Members might like to ask. They like to say that renewables are cheap, and they are cheap to operate. After all, wind and sunshine are free. However, if we want to know what a type of power will do to our bills, we have to look at the full system costs. If we race ahead with renewables at the same time as making our gas power stations uninvestable, what will be our back-up when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, and how much does that cost the system?”
“These issues are far too important for Government not to take seriously, and they are far too important for Labour Members to follow the Government blindly without asking questions. They did that during the election with promises to save households £300, and they can no longer stack up those promises just three weeks into Government. I humbly suggest that this is their first lesson of the Parliament: they should not give the Secretary of State a blank cheque again.”
“The Secretary of State and his Ministers will have to justify that, and many more decisions, to his new colleagues, many of whom now represent rural communities and whose constituents will be rightly concerned that they are next. I wish the new Minister well for his time in the Department. The energy sector is one of the most interesting and important policy briefs affecting this country, and it is in all our interests that he does his job well. However, what the Government have done so far —make claims during the election that they cannot stack up now they are in government—will just not do. They have set out a hard target to decarbonise the grid by 2030, and the Secretary of State stakes his entire political reputation on it, without being honest about the costs.”
“I had made a decision to reject Sunnica on the basis of a scathing examining authority report, and I changed policy to protect our best agricultural land. These are not projects that were likely to be approved; these are bad decisions. Work was being drawn up to be announced, but the decision had been taken in the case of Sunnica. The Secretary of State will know that from civil servants, who are duty bound to brief him honestly in the Department. In the case of Mallard Pass, the site has been signed off, 40% of which will be built on our best and most versatile agricultural land, taking no notice of legal planning guidance that says that best agricultural land must be avoided.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman, but as I said, we have to look at the full system cost. He is very experienced in the energy sector, and he knows as well as I do that the flexible capacity that is used to back up an intermittent system is where the true costs lie. It is fair for Opposition Members to ask for an assessment of what those costs will be, and what they will mean for British bill payers. The other area where the Government must be honest with the public is about what they are going to build. The Secretary of State’s first week in the job saw him approve 4,000 football pitches’ worth of solar farms on farmland in Rutland, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Those projects were not sat on my desk, as the Secretary of State has claimed.”
“For all that the Labour Government talk about growth, they will not be able to deliver on that with the Secretary of State’s plans for energy. I hope that in the months ahead he will set out some of that detail to be examined.”
“Will he continue our efforts to build more solar on rooftops? I think he mentioned that he would reconvene the solar taskforce. I hate to tell him, but it had never been disbanded and we were due to publish that work. So, I would like to know what date he will be able to publish that work. In conclusion, the Secretary of State’s party won the election and promised change, but he was not on show during that campaign to answer these critical questions of how he was going to provide that change and what it will mean for the country. What will his plans mean for the price of electricity? What will they mean for our ability to keep the lights on? What will they mean for struggling families’ bills, for our economy, and for the livelihoods of oil and gas workers? What will they mean for our reliance on China?”
“The energy infrastructure he will need, and the fact that he wants to go further and faster, will have a huge impact on rural communities. Their concerns must be addressed. As I set out, the plans for our energy cannot come at the expense of our food or national security. In his statement, the right hon. Gentleman accused me of dither, but as he will know from his officials, in at least one of the cases he has signed off I had already instructed some time ago that I was minded to reject it, and that paperwork was being prepared. He must set out urgently what his criteria will be. In one case, he overturned an expert examining authority. In another case, he signed off a solar farm which will be 40% on our best and most versatile agricultural land. Did he know that was the case? If so, what was his basis for finding that acceptable?”
“Gentleman must answer why he would like to import gas with much higher emissions. How many jobs will be lost from his plans? How much investment into the new technologies of the future, such as hydrogen, carbon capture and offshore wind, will be lost? Will he meet those workers and explain to them what will happen to their livelihoods? During the election, the right hon. Gentleman claimed that he would lower bills and save families £300. However, those numbers are already in the savings, and no one on his side can set out the cost of his plans to decarbonise the grid by 2030. Who will pay for those network costs? What will they do to people’s standing charges, which were already too high? The right hon. Gentleman also, I think, commented on having a say in terms of communities.”
“He must answer: where would he like that to come from? When it comes to quotes, he should consider some from the business world who have commented on his policy, such as the chief executive of Mitsubishi Power, who said that his plans would require a “huge sacrifice” by the country, citing the costs of the Secretary of State’s approach. The chief executive of Ineos said that his approach to energy was “absurd”, leaving us dependent on imports of foreign fuels with higher emissions and doing nothing for the climate. Even the GMB said that his plans were “unviable” and would lead to power cuts, blackouts and enormous cost. Unite has said that the Government’s plans for the North sea would turn oil and gas workers into the coalminers of their generation. The right hon.”
“In government, we built more offshore wind than any other country bar China. We set out the largest expansion of nuclear power in 70 years. We said that, yes, we will need oil and gas in the decades ahead, as the Climate Change Committee has said, and we should use British oil and gas where needed. We are in a global race for energy, and demand will be higher in the years ahead because of data and artificial intelligence. If the right hon. Gentleman’s plans to decarbonise the grid by 2030 are in place, we need to know what they will do to people’s energy bills, our energy security and our reliance on the current dominant player for cables, batteries and critical minerals—China. He is happy to quote the Climate Change Committee, but it also acknowledged that we will need oil and gas well into 2050.”
“I would like to put on the record my disappointment not to get the statement in good time. I know that the right hon. Gentleman will want to provide us with the same courtesy that we tried to provide him when we were in government. That being said, I congratulate him on his return to government. I was sad not to see more of him during the election campaign, particularly because our ability to secure enough cheap energy will be crucial to this nation’s success in the decades ahead. I would also like to put on record my thanks to the officials he will now work with. I wish the right hon. Gentleman well in his endeavour, but energy will be this Government’s big test. They talk a good game on growth, but the Secretary of State’s energy policy is their greatest liability.”
“My Department attended the Grangemouth industrial just transition leadership forum alongside Scotland Office Ministers and representatives of Unite the union on 28 March. We remain in close contact with the Scottish Government and the owner Petroineos. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero met Scottish Government counterparts and Petroineos management on 15 May and raised the importance of working with the unions.”
“We are working with the Scottish Government and Petroineos to understand all possible options for the future of the refinery. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Conservatives are the only major party who are backing the North sea, the biddings it brings in each year and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that it supports, while a new report last week showed that Labour’s plan could lose as many as 100,000 jobs in the next five years.”
“We are on track to reach net zero by 2050, and we will do so in a way that brings the public with us. We overachieved on our third carbon budget by 15%, and we announce today that we will not be rolling that over as we think that we will be able to overperform on carbon budget 4 as well.”
“I know from experience that my hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his local area and for the aviation sector. My Department is in regular contact with the Department for Transport and the Treasury on aviation decarbonisation and the important role for sustainable aviation fuel in that transition. On 25 April, DFT published a consultation on options for a revenue certainty mechanism alongside details of the SAF mandate, which together will support both decarbonation and the growth of the sector.”
“I remind the hon. Gentleman that we have one of the most remarkable records when it comes to renewable energies. The only country that has built more offshore wind than us is China, we have set out the largest expansion for nuclear, and we are at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies such as fusion, hydrogen and carbon capture.”