Energy Bill

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway]

My Lords, as the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate, I must admit to a certain amount of trepidation, especially when faced by a barrier of such expertise on the other Cross Benches.

I intend to take a slightly different tack from other noble Lords, but first I should like to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. We are now reaping the rewards of government inaction in not renewing our nuclear capacity when it should have done so. That is a tragic mistake. When I came into this House some 38 years ago, we had the greatest experts in the world on nuclear energy among our membership. Alas, where are they now? All gone—we have lost that expertise and that is to be greatly regretted.

I entirely agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and others who said that more effort should be made to reduce demand. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, who has just sat down, mentioned that as well. There are many ways in which we can educate people that electricity simply does not grow on trees, and that when they turn on a switch everything will happen. Great strides should be made in educating people in how to reduce their demand for and reliance on electricity.

Solar power has been mentioned only briefly. Living in the south-west, where the sun is supposed to shine rather more than in other parts of the country, I find it very strange that new towns being developed outside Exeter are not mandatorily fitted with solar panels by the property developers. That is something that should be done automatically, certainly in the case of commercial developments.

I said that I would take a slightly different tack and I will direct the major thrust of my remarks to the nautical side of power generation—that is, offshore wind, tide and wave. The first is the most prominent today, as it was the only alternative green energy source available following the Kyoto treaty. It is, as we have heard, an expensive and unpredictable way of generating power and the installation of offshore wind farms is considerably more expensive than that of onshore ones. That expense will increase as the future planned farms move further offshore into deeper waters. The industry is aware of this and is now looking to develop floating turbines to reduce the installation costs. Speaking as a mariner who has witnessed the odd storm in his time—I am sure one or two other noble Lords may have done so as well—I have grave doubts about floating wind turbines surviving a major storm at sea, particularly in deeper water. My doubts also extend to the development of wave power, where the same situation applies. To be really effective, wave power has to be some way offshore, where the waves are largest. A major Atlantic storm off the south-west would simply blow the whole thing away.

One of the unintended side-effects of the proliferation of offshore wind farms relates to navigation. This has certainly been exercising Trinity House, which is responsible for the provision and maintenance of aids to navigation. I declare a non-pecuniary interest as an Elder Brother of that organisation, which will be celebrating its 500th anniversary next year. Initially, the Crown Estate and the developers of offshore wind farms had little knowledge of where ships went and proposed sites that cut right across well used shipping lanes. I am happy to say that things have moved on since then, and that Trinity House and the other two general lighthouse authorities are now properly consulted beforehand. However, the positioning of some offshore wind farms has meant that shipping has often had to make considerable deviations around them, which of course leads to greater use of fuel and therefore greater emissions from ships.

In other cases, shipping is squeezed into comparatively narrow channels between wind farms. It is estimated that at these choke points, the risk of collision is increased by more than 400%. I have said on a number of occasions in this House that if you place an object in the sea, either a fixed structure or a floating one, sooner or later a ship is bound to hit it. Thankfully, many of the wind farms in the Thames Estuary are built on sandbanks, so a ship would run aground long before it ran into one of the turbines. However, as these wind farms move further offshore that will not be the case, so there is a danger that two large ships could collide and drift out of control through a wind farm, which would be rather akin to two large balls rolling through a skittle alley.

Great play has been made of the production of jobs but I see no real evidence of it, certainly not in offshore wind. Once the farm is built, it requires only 100 or so people to maintain it. As one noble Lord mentioned, maintenance is a problem. It is not often mentioned but in offshore wind, between 20% and 30% of the time people are unable to get out and do the maintenance because it is too rough. They are either sick or unable to climb the ladders if the swell is too big. I can only hesitate at what it would be like if you had a floating wind turbine, which would be moving. Anybody who has tried to get from one ship to another at sea will know the problem of getting on to that turbine from a moving ship.

I turn now to tidal power, which has received only a brief mention; I think it was from the noble Lord, Lord Judd. We are blessed with a fairly good tidal range in this country. In two areas, the Bristol Channel and the Channel Islands, we enjoy tidal ranges of around 40 feet at spring tides, which are second in the world only to the Bay of Fundy. There is enormous potential for tidal power generation. Unlike wind, tides are predictable for many years ahead and there are effectively four movements a day—two flood tides and two ebb tides.

I am surprised that no noble Lord has mentioned the proposed Severn barrage, about which we had a debate a few weeks back, which may be because the Select Committee in another place rubbished the idea rather effectively a week or so ago. I have never been in favour of a fixed barrier but there are alternatives. I understand that other developers are now looking at alternatives such as tidal lagoons or tidal fences, as I believe they are called. Tidal generation is proven. We know that the technology works; the Strangford Lough installation has been working for around four years. That, however, is a column-based installation. These suffer from the same problems as offshore wind turbines, in that they are very expensive to install.

To my mind, floating structures, which are being developed at the moment, are better propositions. These vary but one example is that being developed by Scotrenewables of Orkney. This is essentially a floating tube with two extending arms, each of which has a propeller in it. Systems such as this have great potential for fast-flowing estuaries such as the Severn, Thames, Humber and Mersey—areas where, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, power demand is already large and where existing power stations would enable relatively easy connection to the national grid. They would have the additional benefits of operating near the surface, where the tidal flow is strongest, and would be comparatively easy to install and maintain.

I know that the Government are aware of the work being done in this field, but I should like the Minister to confirm that they will not ignore the potential of tidal power. I am sure that the Government are only too well aware of the paltry sums that are being put into research and development in this field, compared with the money being lavished on offshore wind.

The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said that it is a question of which technology will succeed in the UK. The jury is out on that and I suspect it will be out for some further time. More importantly, will it be British-made? It certainly is not at the moment.