asked Her Majesty's Government:

What assessment they have made of the level of investment required in energy infrastructure for the United Kingdom to maintain its current level of competitiveness. [HL4268]

The energy White Paper published in May 2007 set out estimates of the investment requirements in the electricity and gas sectors over the period to 2020. It concludes that, if we are to maintain levels of electricity generation capacity equivalent to those available today, around 20GW to 25GW of new power stations will be needed by 2020. Current forecasts of gas demand also imply that we will need to increase our import capacity by 2020 by an extra 12 bcm to 24 bcm—equivalent to 15 per cent to 30 per cent of 2006-07 import capacity. The White Paper can be found at: www.dti.gov.uk/energy/whitepaper/page39534.html.