Energy Security Bill

The Energy Security Bill was published on 6 July. The aim of this bill is to deliver a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system for the long term.

It builds on the ambitious commitments in the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan and the British Energy Security Strategy to invest in homegrown energy and maintain the diversity and resilience of the UK’s energy supply.

The Bill aims to facilitate £100 billion of private sector investment by 2030 into new British industries and support around 480,000 clean jobs by the end of the decade.

Key aspects of the bill are:

• Introduction of state of the art business models for carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) and hydrogen
• Measures on CO2 transport and storage,
• Enabling the set up and scale up of the first of a kind CO2 transport and storage networks.
• Enabling the delivery of a large village hydrogen heating trial by 2025
• Scaling up heat pump manufacturing and installation, and a new white goods industry in the UK.
• Making the UK the first country to legislate for fusion
• Reforming our energy system to protect consumers from unfair pricing including extending the energy price cap, boosting energy resilience and creating a more equal and fair energy market. This will effectively update the Energy Act 2013 for the current global context
• Ensuring the safety, security and resilience of the UK’s energy system by bringing forward measures relating to core fuel resilience, nuclear and the offshore oil and gas sectors

There are a number of useful factsheets which add a level of detail to the bill itself.

This includes a factsheet on an interesting hydrogen village trial. Areas within Whitby, Ellesmere Port and within Redcar, Teesside have been identified as potential areas for a hydrogen heating village trial which will ill convert a large village of around 1,000-2,000 properties to hydrogen for heating instead of natural gas.