10-point Plan: Six Months On

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement. Last November, the Prime Minister announced a radical and ambitious response to the economic impact of covid-19. This was, of course, the UK’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution. Its aim is to build back better, to use our recovery to level up the country, to scale up new industries and to support jobs throughout the United Kingdom as we accelerate on our path to net zero by 2050.

Six months on, I am pleased to inform the House that we are already seeing this ambition being delivered on. The 10-point plan is projected to create and support up to 250,000 jobs, and mobilise £12 billion of Government investment and up to three times as much from the private sector by 2030. We are investing in the UK’s most important asset—our workforce—to ensure that our people have the right skills to deliver the low-carbon transition and thrive in the high-value jobs this will create. This is the case for the engineers and construction workers who will build the new offshore wind farms and nuclear plants to provide clean power to our homes, to the retrofitters who will make homes more comfortable and efficient. This work of course builds on the strong progress we have already made as a country in decarbonising our economy. Last year, we hit over two months of coal- free electricity generation, which is the longest streak since the industrial revolution. Two weeks ago, we broke a new wind power record, with both onshore and offshore wind turbines generating 48.5% of the electricity in Great Britain. The plan is projected to reduce UK emissions by 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent between 2023 and 2032. I am sure Members are aware that that is equal to taking all of today’s cars off the road for about two years.

Since the 10-point plan’s publication, we have enshrined the UK’s sixth carbon budget in law, proposing in that a target that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. That is an enormous commitment, but one that we are working extremely hard—flat out, indeed—to achieve. Our Energy White Paper has set out a comprehensive, strategic vision for the transformation of the energy system consistent with delivering net zero emissions by 2050. We have also launched our new, ambitious UK emissions trading scheme, for consultation later this year.

On offshore wind, we have confirmed up to £95 million of Government investment for two new offshore wind ports: Able Marine Energy Park—AMEP—on the south bank of the River Humber, which will receive up to £75 million of government investment; and Teesworks offshore manufacturing centre, on the River Tees, which will receive up to £20 million. Those investments have already been endorsed by business. Since the launch of the 10-point plan, we have seen a 501% increase in British businesses signing up for the UN’s Race to Zero initiative. Rolls-Royce is working on the world’s largest jet engine, which will cut aviation emissions, as part of its £500 million UltraFan engine project. Jaguar Land Rover has announced plans to be all-electric from 2025, with Ford, Bentley, Volvo and Nissan stating that they will do this from 2030. Just today, GE Renewable Energy has announced that it expects to create up to 470 green jobs to support the delivery and operation of all three phases of the Dogger Bank wind farm, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, located off the north-east coast. The impressive growth of the offshore wind sector presents a great example of how delivering net zero will help us level up across the UK. It also demonstrates the confidence that international investors have in our contracts for difference approach and the immense confidence employers have in our people, particularly those in the north-east, where so much of this infrastructure is being deployed.

However, this is not just about energy; each of us has a contribution to make. We are helping businesses and people to go greener every day, by delivering on our commitment to greener business, buildings and transport. In March, we published the UK’s industrial decarbonisation strategy, the first strategy of its kind from any major economy in the world. It sets out clearly how industry can meaningfully decarbonise, remaining competitive and reducing emissions, instead of simply offshoring our industries and pushing emissions abroad.

To that end, the industrial energy transformation fund has already allocated nearly £300 million to 39 projects to help industry transition to a low-carbon future. This month we began the process for deciding the first carbon capture cluster locations in our industrial heartlands, which will be operational by the mid-2020s, with another two set to be created by 2030. All of this increased investment totals £1 billion, helping to support 50,000 jobs, potentially, in areas such as the Humber, the north-east and the north-west, and in Scotland and Wales. We are providing £1 billion of funding to phase 1 of the public sector decarbonisation scheme, which will support up to 30,000 jobs. These jobs will be in building services, engineering and design, low-carbon heating, installation of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures.

The 10-point plan is our commitment on meeting the fourth and fifth carbon budgets. Further strategies for sectors of the economy will be set out over the next year. This will include publication of our heat and building strategy, ahead of COP26, to set out our long-term approach to reducing emissions from all buildings in this country. It also includes our hydrogen strategy, which is backed by a £240 million net zero hydrogen fund investment, to support—I stress this point—both green hydrogen produced by electrolysers, and blue hydrogen enabled by carbon capture and storage.

We have also committed a further £20 million to increase the number of on-street charge points for electric vehicles. We will provide £50 million to help people and businesses install these charge points. We will also publish our transport decarbonisation plan as soon as possible, setting out an ambitious pathway to end UK transport’s carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport is fully engaged and committed to publishing that.

The impact of those commitments can already be seen. As of March 2021, battery electric vehicle sales stand at 7.7% of the market, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle sales are 6.1%, which is a huge increase of 88% and 152% respectively from only a year ago. Our acceleration towards low-emission vehicles will not only contribute to cutting our carbon emissions, but strengthen British industry through supporting up to 40,000 jobs by 2020.

All these policies and initiatives are coming together and will be set out in our net zero strategy in the autumn. The strategy will build on the 10-point plan, and it will make the most of new growth and employment opportunities across the UK as we build back better and greener from covid-19.

It will not have escaped hon. Members’ notice that we will be hosting COP26 towards the end of the year, and what we are doing now is setting the scene for that historic event. In that context, our ambition and our leadership are absolutely crucial. The 10-point plan demonstrates our commitment not only to the green recovery, but to the kind of leadership that we want to show in this vitally important year. All these actions bring us a step closer to net zero by 2050, meeting this planet’s greatest threat with ambition and innovation, which is absolutely necessary if we are to hit our goals. I believe passionately and sincerely that a new era of green jobs through Britain’s green industrial revolution has been inaugurated. I commend this statement to the House.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. The climate crisis is the single greatest long-term challenge we face. As Secretary of State, I was proud to pass the world-leading Climate Change Act 2008 with cross-party support. In that spirit, although we believe that the UK should be going further and faster, we also recognise that our targets for 2030 and 2035 are ambitious by international standards. But the Secretary of State’s central challenge is whether targets are matched by the scale of action required in this decisive decade, and once again, his statement showed that the Government are very good at self-congratulation but perhaps less good at self-awareness. The evidence is that there is a wide gap between rhetoric and reality. Crucial areas are not being dealt with, and the scale of finance is not being delivered, leading us to be off track on our targets.

Let us take a few key issues. The first is buildings, a crucial part of decarbonisation. Last year, the green homes grant—remember that?—was the flagship measure, which the Secretary of State said would

“pave the way for the UK’s green homes revolution.”

Now it is the policy that dared not speak its name in the Business Secretary’s statement, and no wonder—it has been a complete fiasco, with contractors not paid, installers forced to make lay-offs and homeowners unable to get grants. As importantly, when the scheme failed, more than £1 billion was not reallocated but simply cut from the budget. We desperately need a comprehensive plan for the massive task of retrofitting and changing the way we heat millions of homes, with the finance to back it up. It is a big task. The heat and building strategy was supposed to be published last year but has been delayed and delayed. Can the Secretary of State promise that when it is published, it will finally contain the plan and the finance we need?

Next, let us turn to electric vehicles. Again, we were supposed to see the transport decarbonisation strategy last year. Today, the Secretary of State did not even give a date for publication, so perhaps he can tell us in his reply when we will see it. We support the 2030 phase-out date, but the Climate Change Committee says—this is really important—that we will need 48% of the cars sold in the UK to be EVs by 2025, in just four years’ time. Despite the recent progress that he talked about, we are way off that, at less than 15%. We are not financing gigafactories, on which there is a global race. Our charging infrastructure remains inadequate, and the Government have actually cut the plug-in grant. Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that the Government are not investing enough to make the EV revolution happen in the way that is necessary for our car industry’s future and consumers?

The right hon. Gentleman raised a number of points. The heat and buildings strategy was always due in 2021; I know that because I commissioned it when I was the Energy Minister. I hope it will be published shortly. We also have a hydrogen strategy. He mentioned that our £240 million hydrogen fund was little compared to other countries, but private sector investment has been very successful in the deployment of offshore wind. The reason we have a commanding position—the No. 1 position—in offshore wind deployment is not because of the Government writing cheques; it is because the Government created incentives for the private sector to invest. That will be exactly the way in which we will scale up the hydrogen economy.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned offshore wind and the UK content of the supply chain. We are absolutely focused on that; we potentially have an auction round 4 at the end of this year, and I am committed to increasing—in fact, we have policies to increase—the level of UK content in offshore wind. The GE Renewable Energy announcement in Teesside only a couple of months ago, in which it committed £142 million, is exactly the kind of investment and commitment to the UK supply chain that we want to see.

Point 4 of the 10-point plan refers to the need for large-scale battery factories for electric vehicles—sometimes called gigafactories. They need to be up and running within five years, so will the Secretary of State update the House as to where we are in securing them? Will he also comment on the state of discussions about the future of Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port, with its ambitions to build electric vehicles there?

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend mentions gigafactories and the opportunities that they represent. There are conversations as we speak between people who are making batteries and the car makers; clearly, the dynamic between the auto manufacturers and the people who will be making the batteries is an important one. I hope to make a positive announcement about that soon. In relation to Ellesmere Port, there are very positive discussions with Stellantis. I am very much engaged with this matter, and we are particularly hopeful that we can make some movement in the summer on this too.

I welcome the statement in so far as it goes, but there is need for further clarity. Hydrogen has been mentioned on a couple of occasions. When exactly does the Secretary of State expect the hydrogen strategy to come forward, and how does he expect the business models to operate in practice?

We have concerns not just about hydrogen and the delays in that regard, but in relation to carbon capture and underground storage. The House will be cognisant of the fact that in 2017 the Government pulled the plug on £1 billion-worth of investment in Peterhead. We know that there are plans to have two clusters in place by the mid-2020s. One of those clusters has to be in the north-east of Scotland, linking the north-east of Scotland with Grangemouth, because of course Scotland has contributed more than £350 billion in oil and gas revenues to the UK Treasury. There can be no just or fair transition if the communities that I represent and others in Grangemouth are left behind.

My final point is in relation to an issue that appears to have escaped the notice of the Secretary of State in his statement, and that is transmission charges. He will be aware that our renewables project in Scotland must pay to access the grid, whereas the renewables project in the south-east of England gets paid to access the very same grid. I see that the Energy Minister is in her place. That is important because she wrote to me on 12 April and said:

“On the specific question of grid charging arrangements, it is important to note that this is a matter for Ofgem as the independent regulator.”

However, as the Minister knows only too well, Ofgem’s strategy and policy is determined by the UK Government. Indeed, the Government’s own energy White Paper states, on page 86:

“We will set out our vision for energy as a guide to Ofgem, by consulting in 2021 on a Strategy and Policy Statement for the regulator.”

The hon. Gentleman raised three issues. The hydrogen strategy should be coming out in the summer. It is a twin-track strategy, as I described it as Energy Minister. We are committed to the production of both green, electrolyser-produced hydrogen and blue hydrogen, which comes from carbon capture.

That leads me to the hon. Gentleman’s second point. He will know that there are a number of attractive sites for carbon capture here in the UK. We have set out our road map for two clusters by 2025 and two more by 2030, and we are in the process of deciding how to proceed on that. He can rest assured that Acorn is a very attractive project; it is something that I have looked at, and I am sure we will have some more information on that.

On offshore transmission charges, the hon. Gentleman knows that this has been an issue for a long time. I committed to looking at it as Energy Minister, and we will have a consultation on that. He must also appreciate that the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), is absolutely right: this is ultimately a matter for Ofgem, which, as he knows, is an independent regulator.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and I too particularly look forward to the publication of the transport decarbonisation plan. In west Cornwall, we are working up a plan to bring the towns of St Ives, Penzance and Hayle together in a low-carbon transport plan, bringing together the railway, the roads and multi-use off-road tracks. Will the Secretary of State look at how he can help us to achieve that? Also, if it so happens that he is down in my neck of the woods in a month’s time for the summit, maybe he could meet us to hear about our ambitious plans to provide low-carbon transport for all people living in west Cornwall.

I am pleased to say to my hon. Friend that I would be happy to meet him in Cornwall at any time of his choosing, provided, of course, that it fits in with my diary commitments. I am fully aware of the transport decarbonisation plan being absolutely crucial to his constituents—

When?

The right hon. Gentleman asks when. Unfortunately, wide though BEIS’s purview and authority are, my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary will have a more accurate perspective on when that strategy will be published.

The Secretary of State knows that how we heat our homes and insulate our buildings is an urgent issue that will affect every house across the entire country. He told the Select Committee a few weeks ago that the heat and building strategy would arrive at the end of Q2. Unless I have misunderstood, that is not before COP26; it is around now. Can he update the House as to why it has been delayed once again?

When I was Energy Minister, I wanted it to appear in the first quarter and I think I made public commitments to that. The hon. Gentleman will understand that many of the issues have been discussed across Government, and I am very confident that the heat and building strategy will be published soon. I cannot, however, give him a firm cast-iron date on this.

I welcome the focus on electric vehicles in the 10-point plan and the £1.3 billion investment in accelerating the roll-out of the grid infrastructure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need a comprehensive network of ultra-rapid charging points in order to accelerate the uptake of electric vehicles and to get rid of a lot of the range anxiety?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When MPs talk to their constituents, we hear them talk about range anxiety, and it is critical that we have the right charging infrastructure to drive forward the EV roll-out. We have committed public funds to this, but I am very happy to discuss it with her, as it is obviously critically important. I feel that we are in a good place, but I would be very interested to hear her ideas.

The 10-point plan announced 50,000 new jobs in energy efficiency, which may or may not have been in addition to the 80,000 new jobs that were due to be created by the green homes grant announced last summer in the Government’s plan for jobs. My repeated written questions to the Department to clarify whether those 50,000 jobs are in addition to the 80,000 have not yet elicited a clear answer, so could the Secretary of State tell me how many jobs in energy efficiency have been created so far, and what plans are in place to create more, now that the green homes grant has been scrapped with no plan to replace it?