Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, this amendment deals with an issue that we discussed in Committee. Most noble Lords in the Chamber now were in Committee, so to the relief of the House I will not repeat all the comments made. We are very supportive of the issue of local carbon budgets and keen to see progress. We have deliberately worded the amendment in a way that gives the Minister some flexibility to report back to the House and to Parliament on this issue.

However, if we are really to make a difference in reducing our carbon emissions, we need to engage locally and work with local government. If we look across the board at where the support lies, Greg Barker has given his support as has the Federation of Small Businesses, which e-mailed many noble Lords today to say that it supports local carbon budgets and wants to work with local authorities and the community to reduce emissions. The trade unions, the workforce and the Audit Commission all see enormous value in having local carbon budgets so that local authorities and communities can play their role not just in their own estates and properties, but in their wider communities, whether we are talking about transport or domestic properties. Actions can be taken and advice and support can be given by local authorities working with the Government and working with their local communities to ensure that we reach the kind of targets and reduce our emissions in line with targets that the Government have set. The Climate Change Act 2008 set targets for the Government. Those targets can best be met if we work with local authorities and local communities.

I hope that the Minister can update us on the action that can be taken and I hope at some stage that he can assure us that there will be a report back to this House and the other place to show how the Government can work with local authorities to ensure that we have local carbon budgets really making a difference and settling this issue.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. This is a crucial amendment and I hope that the Minister can respond. We are all agreed that the Bill is about meeting a challenge that is overwhelming and on which literally our future survival depends. We therefore cannot have the luxury of simply talking about principles and objectives without having the means to deliver them.

Some 80 per cent of the emissions in this country originate in local communities—in our homes, workplaces, travel and the rest. Therefore, it is crucial, as my noble friend said, that if we are to deliver the results and not just spell out hopes, we must work effectively with local authorities. The only point that I would make in addition to her real commitment is to say that it is my view—I speak for myself but I hope my noble friend will agree—that if this is going to be meaningful there will have to be very specific objectives spelt out to the local authorities about what is expected of them.

We have a national aggregate target, which we then disaggregate into what is required locally. Each local authority should be in no doubt whatever about what is expected of that local authority to meet the national target and local authorities should be expected to give convincing evidence that progress is being made. I am fairly confident—in fact I am very confident—that the Minister agrees with the spirit of what I am saying. I hope that he can not only respond to my noble friend’s amendment but give reassurance that this will not just be another chapter in the world of aspirations and good intentions but will actually spell out a sea change in terms of having the levers there to get results.

[Lord Reay]

I strongly oppose these amendments. At Second Reading, I declared that I was against introducing local carbon budgets into the Bill, although unfortunately I was not able to be present in Committee when the issue was debated on amendments brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and my noble friend Lord Deben. The ultimate purpose of these amendments is, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has explained, to oblige local authorities to do more to see that carbon emissions are reduced in their areas and, in effect, to coerce them into making a greater contribution towards achieving the Government’s renewable energy targets. However, in Committee, it was represented as being an opportunity rather than an obligation for local authorities, and one that they were longing to be given—“unanimously” at one point, said the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. I refer to col. GC 231 of Hansard of 26 January 2011.

No doubt there are keen protagonists of the Government’s renewable energy policy in positions of authority in local government who would welcome such an imposition. However, it surely stretches incredulity to refer to a general—let alone a unanimous—call from local authorities to be given such an obligation. Indeed, if local authorities reflect, as they might be expected to, the wishes of their electorates, I would anticipate a very minor interest in the subject; and, from some who are aware of some of the likely effects of introducing carbon budgets, a most violent opposition.

Legally established local carbon budgets would be likely to have the same sort of effect as regional renewable energy targets have had, and still have today, although they are due to be abolished under the Localism Bill. These have had one most malign effect: they are used by developers, some local authorities and also some planning inspectors to justify the most abominable decisions to permit gigantic wind farms in entirely inappropriate rural locations. It is developers, anxious to drink deep at the well of subsidies before the well dries up—as it has started to do throughout Europe—who would latch on to local carbon budgets and use them as another weapon in their hands in their tireless and far too successful efforts to use the financial advantage that subsidies give them to buy their way to victory in our planning system, as they appeal against every decision that goes against them and so triumph over the wishes of anguished but financially outbid local communities.

I appreciate that behind this amendment, and indeed behind this Bill as a whole, lies a belief that we must strive to meet carbon emission reduction targets for which we have assumed legal obligations. This is not the occasion to argue in detail for alternatives to that policy. However, I believe the cost that we have assumed for the purpose of meeting those targets is far too high and that we should be looking for ways to reduce the cost rather than meet the targets.

One of the greatest of those costs is of course that to the poor electricity consumer, whose bills are programmed to ratchet up each year into the indefinite future to pay for the ever-rising renewable energy subsidies. The current cost, according to Ofgem, is around £1.5 billion a year but is due to rise to some £5 billion or £6 billion by 2020—a miserable prospect for all those in fuel poverty, whose plight has been vividly described by others in this debate such as my noble friend Lady Maddock and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. Another of those costs is the destruction of our beautiful landscapes, which are famous and loved throughout the world, which our planning system has, to date, largely preserved and which the present Government seem so nonchalantly to ignore. Because the acceptance of these amendments would confirm how little we care about that threat, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reject both of these amendments.

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[Lord Judd]

I would appreciate it if the noble Lord would clarify something for me. If he is in favour of achieving national carbon reduction objectives, how will that be achieved unless everybody who has a role to play knows what role is expected of them and what they must do to play their part in reaching the total? Unless you disaggregate the overall total, how on earth are you going to get that result?

[Lord Teverson]

We do not do that at national carbon level, do we? If we were to do that, we would disaggregate by industry, but the previous Government and the present Government have not gone down that route. If we took that a step further, we would come to individual personal carbon budgets. There are arguments for and against that. I do not think that you need to disaggregate everything completely as all the relevant levers are not in place and splitting it all down does not mean to say that everything would necessarily add up because all sorts of areas, including motorways and EU ETS major emitters—even proponents of carbon budgets agree on this—could not be effectively and practically included in those carbon budgets. That system of making the detail add up to the total would not work under this scheme anyway. I am not saying that the question was invalid but if we really wanted to go down that route we would have to go down the industrial sectorial route as well or separate out consumers, the manufacturing sector and the services sector. Such an approach gets too involved in the mass of detail as opposed to inventing the policy instruments that we need. We need to involve local government in the Green Deal. I would much prefer it to have a statutory obligation but I think that carbon budgets are the wrong way to do it.

As regards wind farms, in Cornwall they are fantastic. Tourists like them and the majority of people are not against them. They are beautiful objects to behold on the horizon and may there be more of them.

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[Lord Dixon-Smith]

I hesitate to speak at this hour, but since we are considering geothermal power, perhaps I may introduce a thought about indirect geothermal power. Such power is waste heat from power stations, which consume enormous amounts of raw energy and turn out enormous amounts of waste heat. Generally speaking, it is completely unused. It is an enormous financial handicap and an enormous energy inefficiency which our whole electricity generating industry has to bear and which, as customers, we all pay for.

While I am all in favour of looking for all geothermal sources of energy, we have these indirect geothermal sources of energy already available to us on the surface but we do nothing about them. It is legitimate to raise the subject in this rather indirect way even at this hour of the night. The same applies to nuclear power stations. One can argue that nuclear power is an indirect form of solar power. That is exactly what it is—solar power is nuclear power but happens to be 95 million miles away, and we enjoy it enormously as a result. If it was much closer, we would not. But we have these other sources of energy, which are indirectly the same source of energy as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was talking about. If we are looking at one of them as something that we should use, we really should look at the other.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I want very warmly to support the noble Lord on this issue. It has always intrigued me that we have never given the priority that we should have done to developments in this sphere. It is good to see it happening. He referred to the north-east. Perhaps I may say as a Member of Court of Newcastle University that one of the things that is very important about these developments is that universities such as Newcastle—I do not see Newcastle in any provision—are dying to make a contribution in the development of this new potential and, in the context of Newcastle, have already played a significant part in what is happening in the north-east. Therefore, there is a background of scientific and applied scientific interest, which sets it off on a very good course.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I rise briefly to say that I appreciate the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is presenting a very important argument, which we discussed intensively and fully in Committee. I have no doubt that we would have had a much more intensive debate this evening were it not for the lateness of the hour. That does not mean to say that those of us who have kept our speeches short, as I intend to do, do not have enormous respect for the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has put forward, but we did have a full debate in Committee and I am very grateful that he drew our attention to the matter again this evening.