LABOUR MP SAYS ANSWER TO CHEAPER ENERGY IS ‘RENEWABLES AND NUCEAR’, NOT GAS
A Labour MP has rejected the idea of drilling in the North Sea and said the UK will achieve cheaper energy through renewables and nuclear.
Speaking on GB News Tom Hayes said:
“What is the route that’s going to achieve cheaper energy? It’s going to achieve energy that’s faster to come online, that’s also going to secure our energy independence?
“And the answer has to be clean, home grown, renewables and nuclear. Why? Well, for the last 18 months, the government have been investing significantly in this type of energy, be it solar, be it wind, be it nuclear. And to continue with that agenda will mean that we get those online even faster.
“We’ve already, through renewable auction rounds, seeing the commissioning of energy infrastructure that would power 23 million homes. It’s cheaper, so we know too that, if I may, wind is going to be 40% cheaper than to build and to maintain a new gas power station.
“And it’s also by virtue of being a home grown, more secure. Anything that is drilled in the North Sea is not going to be drilled by the British state. It’s not going to be stored by the British state. It’s not going to be sold by the British state.
“It’s going to be on the international markets and therefore we will continue to be a price taker and not a price maker.
“The ECIU report, which came out very recently, showed the relative cost and benefits of gas powered stations and wind. I think it’s also just worth saying here that nuclear is such a powerful ingredient and by investing £13 billion in Sizewell C, by investing significant billions in nuclear overall, including small module reactors, we are going to be in a position where we’re building nuclear power stations the first times that I was 12 years old, which was in 1995.
“But we have to invest in nuclear because we could, as at Sizewell C, jobs for 17,000 people as a consequence of the government and other private investment.
“This is an open shut case. Nobody wants fracking in our country. It is not a popular – you may an honourable exception – but there are people who just don’t want earthquakes on their doorstep. They don’t want to have fracking. They want to have an investment in proper clean energy.
“I think we’ve got to answer a fundamental question here; how does Britain become more secure in an insecure age? We need to have energy independence, and that will come from having homegrown renewables and nuclear.”
