My Lords, I waited to intervene until I heard the Minister’s reply because this was a point raised in Sub-Committee D’s report No Country is an Energy Island: Security Investment for the EU’s Future. In paragraph 188, one of our recommendations was for the UK Government to examine the potential for a regulatory framework to increase gas storage. The Government’s written reply and what the Minister has said indicate that a lot of thought has gone into this, but for the whole of the energy sector it is about improving the flow and interconnectivity of supplies of all sorts of energy across the EU. Can my noble friend give us any further information from the Commission about what the EU is doing on this? I know that I am rather bouncing my noble friend—if she would prefer to write to me, I would be very happy
for her to do so—but interconnectivity was a point that our committee was concerned about. Perhaps I could move from the storage of gas to the storage of electricity. Will my noble friend drop the Committee a line on that? If we could store electricity, there would be a much greater total energy supply and less need for the storage of gas.
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