Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, on listening to this interesting debate, one of the things that I am sad about is that we do not give a higher priority to conservation. We seem to take it as given that we will continue to be a society that expects the easy availability of energy. It is in education, to which my noble friend Lord Hunt referred, that it is crucial to give priority also to conservation and preparing the professionals, not least those in engineering, to make a success of conservation.

Urgency has been underlined by the Chief Medical Officer. He has put on record his view that people living in poorly heated housing are in greater danger. All badly insulated properties, he has stated, offer significantly less protection against the risks of cold than more modern and warmer dwellings. People living in privately rented homes are more than four times more likely to be living in a cold home than people living in socially rented homes. As we have been reminded, the private-rented sector has a greater proportion of the most energy-inefficient homes—those in energy performance certificate band G. There are twice as many in that sector than in other sectors. It is absolutely essential to drive up, without delay, standards of energy efficiency in the private-rented sector. If the Bill convincingly meets this priority, it is obviously to be welcomed, but its proposals will need to be carefully scrutinised to be certain of their speedy effectiveness.

The Government are right to recognise that the days of our highly liberal energy market—one of the most liberal in the world—are numbered. However, my anxiety is that the Bill’s proposals do not go far enough and will at best ensure a slow incremental improvement. The issue is far more immediate than that. How will it be in the interest of a handful of dominant energy companies and their shareholders radically to change the existing order? Surely an increase in the energy efficiency of buildings will undermine a company’s sales and profits. The real challenge is to cut energy demand.

I draw the attention of noble Lords to an interesting article by Professor Catherine Mitchell of Exeter University in a recent edition of the Guardian. She asked:

“So what’s the answer? We need regulated obligations on the scale of the transition from town gas to natural gas. Tendering for street-by-street or area-by-area contracts to make homes energy efficient is cost effective, but crucially creates a mechanism for new companies to enter the market, thereby potentially diluting the dominance of the current energy companies”.

She then sensibly asks whether this can really work or whether it is just idealistic nonsense. She recalls that she,

“lived in Brixton during the riots of the 1980s”,

and reminds us that the,

“subsequent Scarman Report identified poor housing as an important factor. It recommended creating Aim areas (Areas for Improvement and Modernisation), which were subsequently put in place by the Greater London Council”.

The result was that areas were,

“systematically brought up to a decent standard”.

The evidence is there that it can be done. Why do we always avoid the strategic need to do it?

At this point, I declare an interest as president of Friends of the Lake District and as a vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks. The Government are, in my view, to be commended for having resolved the issue of local authorities not being able to sell electricity that they generate from renewable sources by making a change, through secondary legislation, to Section 11(3) of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. Local authorities can now generate electricity from renewable energy and sell it. However, national park authorities and the Broads Authority, although part of the local government framework, are not covered by Section 11 of the 1976 Act and therefore did not benefit from the legislative change. Their understanding is that they still cannot generate or sell such electricity. Will the noble Lord reassure us that this will be put right? Could this not be covered by a new clause in Part 3 of the Bill, after Clause 99? The objective of putting the national parks and the Broads Authority alongside the rest of local government could be achieved by amending Section 11 of the 1976 Act.

The national park authorities are working hard with partners and local communities to address climate change. One aspect of this is providing leadership on low-carbon innovation in national park communities while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from their own activities. An important part of this can be the installation of renewable energy measures, for example through photovoltaic roof panels on NPA buildings or small-scale hydroelectric schemes in NPA grounds. However, as is the case for other local authorities, being able to receive financial assistance for projects will often be critical to getting renewable energy measures installed.

National parks are strategic environmental assets. They are indispensable to the health, and to the spiritual and psychological well-being, of the nation. They provide many public goods and generate vital revenue for regional economies. The Government's ambition to deliver a more sustainable and secure energy supply presents a number of challenges for them. It is clear that the future national energy portfolio will comprise a mix of sources of generation, and that some of these could have a significant impact on national parks. The Government's decision to remove Kirksanton and Braystones from their list of preferred sites for proposed nuclear plants is very welcome. However, plans for two other sites, Wylfa and Sellafield, will have major implications for Snowdonia and for the Lake District because of the extra transmission capacity that will be needed to transport the electricity that these plants will generate to centres of population, not to mention the huge adverse impact of the transport necessary for the construction itself.

The planned expansion of the national grid is causing disquiet in many parts of England. Last week, National Grid commendably launched a consultation on the undergrounding of power lines. I suspect that half of the Energy Minister's postbag is about power lines. It is good that he has welcomed the current study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and KEMA Ltd into the cost of undergrounding. Surely it would be a commercial disaster for generators if their investment was at risk of becoming a stranded asset because of widespread public opposition to pylons. Some leadership from the Government is needed to prevent this from happening and to promote a joined-up approach. They have an opportunity to address this next year when they publish EN5, a national policy statement on electricity networks. This must surely include the strongest possible encouragement to National Grid to avoid areas designated for their national landscape importance. DECC and Ofgem must work together to establish the appropriate financial mechanisms to enable any new overhead lines in these special landscapes to be undergrounded.

National parks are rich in the natural resources that lie behind many renewable energy technologies. I think of wind, sun, water and tides. The development of these technologies is important not only from the point of view of generation, which is vital, but also because such projects can raise public awareness of the importance of green energy. However, the scale and location of such developments will be a key factor, given the sensitivity of national park landscapes, to which the Government repeatedly and reassuringly tell us that they are completely committed.