I apologise; it is probably my fault. Just to be clear, the price of solar is something upwards of 45 times the price of electricity produced from gas at the moment.
As for the climate change issues around shale gas, or unconventional gas, I would take hon. Members’ concerns about the impact of climate change more seriously—I am inclined to think that we should address it—if they took a different attitude to nuclear power, the technology that is far and away the most likely, worldwide, to make a difference at scale to carbon emissions.
I want to consider whether shale gas will affect the UK economy. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) made an interesting speech about
the necessary volume of wells. I was not aware of what he said and found his numbers hard to believe, but if they are true, the point is interesting and important. Let us be clear: shale gas is already having a massive influence on the UK economy, because right now one of our major industrial competitors, the US, has energy prices and therefore electricity prices that are a quarter of ours. It has feedstock prices as an input to the global gas industry and the petrochemicals industry that are a quarter of ours. That is already making a difference at the margins. Some industries are already deciding not to invest in the UK and to bring petrochemicals and chemicals back to the US—indeed, out of China, let alone Europe. Shale gas is already having a massive impact on the UK economy, and it is nonsense to pretend that anything we say in this debate, or that the Government do, will make any difference to that.