Energy Costs

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. It is topical and she outlined very clearly the problems that we face. I was struck by her figure of 6 million people being in fuel poverty, because we must remind ourselves that we need energy to survive as a country, as individuals and as a society.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, talked about the pressure towards zero carbon, which I will not go into now because he did so clearly, but the other option for people is, of course, to consume less and change our lifestyle. It may be possible to do something like that with transport, but it is much more difficult to do with the things that affect fuel poverty. I was struck by a recent Eurostat report that set out that across Europe 63% of one’s energy consumption—a good average—is on space heating. If one tries to cut out space heating, one is shivering. One can cut out water heating and have cold showers. One can cut out cooking and lighting, but the biggest demand by far is for space heating. The report also says that in 2019 the residential sector represented 26.3% of final energy consumption. That means that we have an energy supply problem.

Putting it simplistically, we now have a situation whereby demand exceeds supply. We have all read about the way in which the Russians are playing off the European Union—Germany in particular—on the supply of gas. Renewables are not there; the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, mentioned France’s nuclear situation and the fact that the interconnector is not functioning as a result. Therefore the price goes up, and, as several noble Lords have asked, how much has it gone up?

There is no easy short-term solution, because unless something is done in the short and the long term, people will continue to shiver. The Prime Minister has said that the energy shortage is a short-term problem. I see that in the Daily Express today the Chancellor said that there is a limit to how much government can do. There may be a limit to what the Government want to do, but in practice the Government can do what they like. They obviously respond to the electorate.

I hope that the Minister when he responds will tell us not just about the short-term solutions that are needed, as other noble Lords have said, but about a long-term solution to help the large number of people—the noble Baroness said it was about 6 million—who are going to suffer and shiver, not just this winter but for many winters to come, unless we do something to put this issue on to a sound, long-term basis.