Utility Week

18 | JUNE 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Energy Bill Analysis Queen's Speech is mostly talk The long-awaited announcement of an Energy Security Bill was big on promises of what it would contain but it was shy on the detail of how these goals might be accomplished. E nergy acts don't tend to come around very o en. The last time Parliament passed such a piece of legislation was in 2013, since when the energy landscape has seen seismic shi s. A lot is seen to be riding therefore on the Energy Security Bill, which was announced in May 10th's Queen's Speech. Alan Whitehead, Labour's long-standing shadow energy minister, says: "This is the one opportunity we've got over the next period to get these things right because Energy Bills don't come around very fre- quently. It's the one slot we've got." Measures not taken forward in the bill that require legislation face the risk of being "substantially delayed", he says: "If things are not included in this Energy Bill, it could be another Š ve to seven years before they can be addressed." An Energy Bill was widely expected in last month's Queen's Speech in order to begin delivering proposed reforms outlined in last autumn's Energy White Paper. However, last autumn's gas price spike together with growing worries about disrup- tions to supply resulting from the Ukraine war have increased the urgency surrounding legislation, which has now been badged up as the Energy Security Bill. This security framing is reinforced in the background brieŠ ng notes, which state that reducing dependence on gas over the long term will make the UK less vulnerable to for- eign countries for keeping "our homes warm and lit". "This is not only a matter of tackling cli- mate change, it is a matter of national secu- rity," it says. So how does the bill measure up as a response to the crisis that the UK, like other European nations, faces? The bill itself contains a disparate set of energy-related measures (see box), with a focus on building up momentum around cer- tain low-carbon technologies, like hydrogen and nuclear. Whitehead suspects that the government will treat the legislation as what in West- minster parlance is termed a "Christmas tree bill" with new items to be added during the legislation's parliamentary passage. "I assume it will be fairly wide-ranging and the government may introduce bits of the bill as they go along," he says. Like a Christmas tree, Whitehead says the bill is festooned with "a number of shiny things". The outline in the Queen's Speech brief- ing may not give a complete picture of the bill's contents. However, Whitehead is not convinced that the bill contains measures explaining how those "shiny things" will be implemented. The security strategy is "peppered" with a "long list of commitments", many of which it says must be delivered by 2023. Whitehead says: "A lot of those things need primary leg- islation to bring them through and they're largely absent from what we can see in the headlines of the bill." Proposals in April's Energy Security Strat- egy to site ground-mounted solar panels on non-protected land and repower onshore wind farms will both "probably" require amendments to planning legislation. Similarly, the government's ambition to slash consent times for o• shore wind planning, including shorter examination Key measures in the bill Background brie ng notes for the Queen's Speech say the legislation will contain measures to: • extend the retail price cap beyond the current cut-o• date of 2023; • introduce business models for Carbon Capture Usage and Storage transport and storage, low-carbon hydrogen and industrial carbon capture; • stimulate investment in heat pumps by providing for a new market standard and trading scheme for the devices; • appoint Ofgem as the new regulator for heat networks; • enable the rst ever large-scale hydrogen heating trial, which will inform future decisions on the role of hydrogen in heat decarbonisation that are due to be made byƒ2026; • introduce competition in Britain's onshore electricity networks; • establish the new Future System Operator, which is designed to provide strategic oversight of the both the electricity and gas system, taking on the functions now; • create a new regulatory environment for fusion energy, while facilitating the safe, and cost-e• ective clean-up of the UK's legacy nuclear sites.

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