Energy Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-09-14
Topic: Energy
James Wallace (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this debate and, indeed, to the Minister for his response. He has set out the position that the Government are coming from It is important that we look at this clause in detail. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, when I saw that there would be no new public subsidy, I took it to mean that there would be no "new" subsidy, as opposed to an old one—ROCs are certainly quite old. However, I hear the interpretation that the Minister and his Conservative colleagues place on it. One can only speculate as to whether they ever thought they would have to deliver this policy The noble Lord, Lord Howell, with wonderful understatement, thanked the Minister because he thought that we were hearing an evolution in government thinking. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said that it was like building an aeroplane as it was taking off along the runway. Some might say that it is making it up as you go along. The lack of clarity in some areas of the impact assessment and the fact that we do not yet know what will happen with the grace periods gives some indication that perhaps this was a policy that had not quite been fully thought through, if I can just leave it at that. However, some concerns continue I can understand why the Minister said at the outset of his remarks that, on the one hand, people say it is just a year but, on the other hand, people say it is the end of civilisation as we know it. I take the political point that the Government won an election, but to change an important policy less than a year—just over 10 months—from when it will come into effect is causing considerable concern in the industry and calls into question whether such a change could take place in other spheres of renewable policy I have always supported the idea that there should be a balance; a mix of different renewable sources. If one source is seriously challenged because there is a sudden change of policy, it begs the question as to whether others will follow I cannot quite yet get my head round the cost. I do not quibble with the fact that, for some people, 30p a year, or just over half a penny a week, might make all the difference—although I find it difficult to buy that. However, the other part of the equation that I cannot quite follow is this: if renewable onshore electricity generation is not going to qualify and therefore its future is more under question, and the others, including nuclear, are going to be more expensive, how can that lead to benefits in the longer term for the domestic consumer? The noble Baroness made that point in her final intervention. That has not yet been explained to us, and perhaps a reworking of part of the impact assessment might highlight some of these issues The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, asked whether any use of onshore wind had led to carbon emissions. I just look at the Government’s impact assessment—I may have been slightly critical of it but I will now use it. Paragraph 4.26, on environmental issues, says that option 2, which is the proposal, "will lead to lower levels of onshore wind deployment and hence increased carbon emissions within the UK power sector relative to the Do Nothing option" So the Government themselves believe that it will lead to increased carbon emissions by having lower levels. The impact assessment goes on to say that, "these will be offset by decreases in emissions elsewhere in the EU within the capped EU-ETS traded emissions sector" We must polish up this sentence. Here, the Government say that what they are doing will actually increase carbon emissions but that Europe is going to come to their aid. It is not very often we see a Conservative document saying that the European Union is going to come to our aid. It is probably worth it just for that I will share with the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, figures that come, I think, from a briefing by the RSPB and which make reference to this. I saw this only this afternoon and have not had a chance to check out the reference, but it suggests that a modern wind turbine has a capacity of 2 megawatts and is expected to avoid emissions of over 1,880 tonnes of carbon dioxide in an average year. I will share that reference with him and, as with all these things, we will trade statistics. However, that and the Government’s own impact assessment suggest that there will be a reduction I am not going to press this, but it has been useful to flush out some of the Government’s thinking on this. No doubt we will return to some of these issues when we come to look at periods of grace.