Subsidy Control Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Hope of Craighead
Main Page: Lord Hope of Craighead (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hope of Craighead's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I will say a word in support of Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. Her list of small projects reminds me of the position of the many small islands around the coast of Scotland, in the Northern Isles, the Western Isles and the Inner Hebrides.
About 15 years ago I spent a week on the island of Fair Isle, which lies midway between Shetland and Orkney. It is too far away from the mainland and from those islands to have any electricity supply provided from outside; when I went there it was largely reliant on diesel generators, which were expensive and wasteful and could not run all the time. People had been relying on the diesel generator coming on at, say, six in the evening to fire up their cooking utensils and so on, but just before we got there someone with funding had been able to put up a wind turbine. It was there, and I remember the thrill of the islanders when it was put into operation and provided a reliable source of electricity which was available all day because it did not involve wasteful use of diesel oil.
That would fall well within the small projects in proposed new sub-paragraph (2)(d)(v); it is just one example of the value of these small projects to small islands such as that. I do not know how many like Fair Isle there are still relying on diesel generators, but anything that can be done by introducing and supporting projects of this kind to stop them using carbon fuels and relying instead on the renewables listed here would be of great value. Of course there is a climate change aspect to it, but it also has a real practical value for the communities themselves—otherwise, they are driven to spending money on carbon fuels, which we would all like to stop having to use.
Subsidy schemes for small projects have a real value in these remoter communities that cannot be linked into the grid around the mainland or some of the larger islands which can have their own generating facilities. The list is very interesting and valuable, and I hope the Minister will pay attention to it.
I rise to support briefly Amendments 3, 51 and 61. On the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and our Green friend, I was not aware that this scheme excluded small projects. What it will exclude is us finding out about them as they will all come in under the threshold and will not be reported. I hope that the Minister can perhaps come back and report on them; we will not find them in the database.
We have heard fantastic speeches on Amendments 3, 51 and 61. I will not repeat them but want to pre-empt a little what the Minister’s response might be. I have a hint of that; I suspect that he is guided by his feelings about Ukraine. Since its invasion, the mood will have changed, and that will be his line. The Russians are indeed committing atrocities in Europe as we speak, and it is terrible, but the climate crisis is not standing back while this happens. With this amendment, we are asking the Government to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, we have to deal with the consequences of the war and we understand how hard that is, but we have to do that within the context of attacking the net-zero challenge. Unless the Minister can officially announce that global warming is performing a ceasefire, this amendment has to be there for us to meet both the important things that this country has to face right now.