My Lords, I know that particularly in the case of offshore wind a Royal Academy of Engineering report is forthcoming, which I hope we will see before Report. Rumours are that it is extremely negative about the risks and dangers of the practicalities of installing wind turbines on a large scale, and in particular on their likely lifetime.
If we were to consider giving an offshore wind company a 25-year contract for a technology that is supposed to last 20 years, and many engineers think will not last more than 15 years, we will not have done the consumer and indeed the taxpayer a service. We would have let them down very badly. We have to take into account that a lot of these technologies will turn out not to last as long as we thought and deliver the benefits that we thought they would. In the case of offshore wind, once again, it is becoming clearer by the day that the carbon dioxide savings that offshore wind will deliver will be very disappointing because of the need for backup power, the need for that backup power to be open cycle, as has been mentioned, and because of the cost and carbon cost of some of these technologies.
It would be a mistake on behalf of the consumer to enter into these eye-wateringly high, £155 per megawatt-hour, strike price costs for a quarter of a century when all sorts of things may change over that time.