Energy Efficiency

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Thomas Docherty

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

May I take this opportunity to welcome you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to your new elected role? I look forward to serving in this House under your guidance. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), who gave a very thoughtful and considered speech on the various aspects of her constituency. I am delighted to have been here for that.

In March the Conservatives proposed a

“radical overhaul of Britain’s energy policy”.

The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) was not above taking a sideswipe at what he called

“a succession of eleven energy Ministers and eight Secretaries of State”

in the 13 years under Labour, so I welcome the fact that, less than 13 weeks since that document was published, the Prime Minister has already appointed a new Minister with responsibility for energy efficiency, and a new Secretary of State.

However, it was not only the Energy Ministers who got a radical overhaul; Conservative energy policy did as well. The House will recall that in the Prime Minister’s “husky days”, when he went to Greenland to hug glaciers, we were told that nuclear power would be the Conservatives’ “energy of last resort”. Even so, in March they talked about fast-tracking the process of building new nuclear plant. Fast-tracking their energy of last resort?

That, of course, was Conservative policy BC—before Chris. The new Secretary of State was obviously keen to recycle the old policy—some might say that he would rather have composted it—as his views on nuclear energy are well known. As long ago as 5 November 2007 he set out his position on his website, as follows:

“Ministers must stop the side-show of new nuclear power stations now. Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology and the Government must stop putting time, effort and subsidies into reviving this outdated industry.”

No wonder it is called a coalition Government: some of them like coal, the rest of them prefer nuclear fission. It is a coal-ission—or perhaps it is more of a coll-ision.

The fact is that by 2020 the following nuclear stations will have closed: Wylfa, Oldbury, Hinkley Point B, Hunterston B, Heysham 1, Hartlepool and Dungeness B. The stations at Torness and Heysham 2 will follow soon thereafter. That is approximately 18% of the UK’s power generation that we will have to source elsewhere, just to maintain our current level of consumption. However, that description fails to account for any increase in population or consumption patterns, and it also means that a huge effort will be needed just to maintain an unsustainable status quo—a perfect description of Conservatism in general.

[Thomas Docherty]

Is my hon. Friend aware that a large number of coal power stations are also going to close? The Scottish Power station at East Lothian is one of many examples, so the Government will have an even bigger gap to close.

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is entirely right, and the example that he gives illustrates the extent of the gap opening up between our generation capacity and our predicted levels of consumption. I hope that he will pursue that point, perhaps in his own remarks later this afternoon.

Of course, the best way to manage this shortfall in supply is to engineer a corresponding shortfall in demand. That is where energy efficiency is critical, and I was delighted that the Minister of State with responsibility for energy efficiency visited the Mark Group’s home energy efficiency academy earlier this month to welcome their 1,000th graduate—Shaun, I believe his name was. The academy is exactly the sort of resource that we need if we are to make sure that our small and medium-sized construction enterprises have the skills that they need to retrofit insulation to all the UK’s housing stock.

I trust that the Minister will acknowledge the fact that the Mark Group academy was set up in November 2007 as part of the Labour Government’s green homes initiative. In fact, Bill Rumble, the Mark Group director, said at the time:

“We welcome the Prime Minister’s”—

that is our Prime Minister, not the Conservative party’s Prime Minister—

“environment plans as a real step in the right direction in the task of arresting climate change and reducing the UK’s carbon emissions.

The Mark Group agrees with Gordon Brown’s assertion that the UK can take a global lead in tackling climate change and in doing so generating thousands of jobs.”

I do not wish to detract from the Government’s green deal; indeed, I applaud it. We need to accelerate the work of insulating the millions of homes without adequate loft insulation, and the millions of homes without cavity wall insulation. However, I would simply make two points. It is all very well to celebrate the 1,000th graduate trainee, but it sits uneasily with the abolition of the Train to Gain programme, which helped small construction and other companies to acquire precisely such skills, and to equip themselves and their workers for the green jobs of the future.

The second point is that it makes no sense to ask householders to improve the energy efficiency of their homes at the same time as increasing the cost of doing so by 2.5%. I challenge the Secretary of State to show that deep inside his new Teflon Tory exterior there is still a limp Liberal longing to get out—to show us that the Liberal pledge before the election not to raise VAT was more than just the point scoring that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has claimed it was. I ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to speak to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The latter is another Liberal, and is, I think, the Member with the longest constituency name—Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. After yesterday’s oration to the House, he is also the Member with the shortest political credibility. They should agree to reduce VAT on the materials and labour used for increasing the energy efficiency of domestic properties. That would make a real difference. If the VAT on such work was 5% instead of 20%, that would go a tremendous way towards incentivising householders and other property owners to make sure that they do the necessary work.

If the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change will not do that, rolling out smart meters in every home; piloting pay-as-you-save and ways to make homes greener; introducing clean energy cashback schemes; and making the UK a centre of green industry—all that—is just so much recycling of the stated policy of the last Government, as set out in the “The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan”, published in July last year. The truth is that approximately 90% of what Ministers have announced in their green deal comes from that document. No wonder earlier this month the Department issued a YouTube video entitled “Chris Huhne launches Wind Week”.

Today, the Committee on Climate Change released its second annual report on progress towards a low-carbon economy. The committee makes it clear that we can deliver on our commitment to reduce emissions by at least 34% by 2020, but only if we accelerate our roll-out of renewables and effect a step change in domestic energy efficiency. So let me welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks today, in which he said:

“we mustn’t rely on economic recession to cut emissions.”

I agree. He continued:

“There has to be an enduring shift to low carbon…locked into the fabric of our economy in good times and bad.”

I commend to him “A Woodfuel Strategy for England”. After a very modest investment of about £16 million—million, not billion—a year for only seven years, it would show net benefits of approximately £30 million a year in energy cost savings, and would save 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. More than that, it would improve the biodiversity of our woodland heritage by cropping, lopping and clearing deadwood from under-managed woodland. The equivalent of 250,000 homes could be heated for a net £30 million benefit per annum, and the reinvigoration of our broadleaf woodlands—a truly efficient ecosystem-based solution. I hope the Minister will speak to his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and implement this strategy as part of his green deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating all Members who have made their maiden speeches today. They have been fantastic, and after hearing some of them, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon), I suspect that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury could soon simply scrap all the tourist boards in this country, such is the eloquence of the case that hon. Members have made for their constituencies.

This has been a fantastic debate. There has been some good knockabout, but hon. Members have also made some serious points. I am slightly curious when I hear coalition Members talk about fuel poverty and the fact that they will square the circle by voting to freeze child benefit and cut housing benefit. We have not really teased out exactly how that will tackle fuel poverty.

I should like to put the subject of energy efficiency into the context of the wider energy debate. As part of my leisure reading I often have a glance at DUKES—the digest of UK energy statistics—a thoroughly interesting document that I get from the Department’s website. I had a glance at it this morning and it contains some interesting statistics about our consumption as a nation over the past 40 years—since 1970. We have seen a 60% increase in the amount of electricity we consume as a nation. However, manufacturing and industrial consumption has remained steady at some 14,000 GWh, and it has largely been domestic consumption that has driven up the figures, plus some transportation. One thing that brings a wry smile to my face is hon. Members talking of the need for more railways and electric cars. Those are admirable suggestions, and I support them, but it is never explained where we will get the energy to power those new electric trains and cars.

If we compare our consumption statistics with our supply statistics, the result is worrying. At its peak in 1998, the nuclear industry provided approximately 90,000 GWh. In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, that had fallen to 48,000 GWh, although it has risen again slightly since then. At the same time, many of our coal-powered stations are coming to the end of their lives. By the end of the coming decade, all our Magnox nuclear power stations will have closed, as will almost all of the advanced gas-cooled reactor nuclear power stations and many of our coal-powered stations—either because of new European regulations on carbon emissions, which both sides of the House would support, or because they have simply come to the end of their lives. I suggest that we need to understand that, although the aim of being more efficient in our energy consumption is laudable, we face a massive energy gap that needs to be addressed. We have seen some consensus break out this afternoon on how we can achieve that.

I have a constituency interest in power generation, in Longannet power station—one of the two sites bidding for the Minister’s money under the carbon capture and storage scheme. I notice that his colleague, when asked about carbon capture, gave us some warm words about the coalition’s general support for it, but—I assume that it was an oversight on his part—did not give a guarantee that DECC will meet the previous Government’s target of a decision by October. I would be delighted if the Minister could give the House that guarantee when he winds up.

The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) is unfortunately no longer in her place, but she made an excellent maiden speech. I suggest to her that, if we are to have a surge in the volume of renewables, especially those that come from offshore and elsewhere, we cannot simply say that we do not want improvements to the national grid. I suggest that the Liberal Democrats are in their usual situation of saying one thing in the House and doing something else outside. I look forward to seeing how the hon. Lady squares that circle with her constituents.

The wider issue is how we close the gap between our desire for a low carbon British economy and our need for energy. I suggest that we will do that through three forms of generation. I accept the role of renewables, although I am on the record as being slightly more sceptical than some of my colleagues about the size and scale of that. For example, biomass, which was seen until recently as the great white hope of renewable energy, has now, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) knows, run into serious difficulties with how quickly it is gobbling up forestry in the UK. It is now suggested that several schemes in Scotland proposed by Forth Ports will have to import wood from around the world.

[Barry Gardiner]

I would be delighted to expand on the question of imported biomass. It can play no sensible role in a model of energy efficiency; the transportation costs make it ludicrous to think we are being energy efficient in doing so. However, there are 4 million tonnes of biomass within not the forests but simply the under-managed broadleaf woodlands in England alone. That could be used to generate twice the amount of energy—

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I did sell Westinghouse. I was the Minister responsible at the time, and I remember being told by officials that we would be lucky if we got £1.5 billion for it. I said that I did not believe them for a moment, and we got £5.4 billion for it in the end. The reason we did so was that we had to take the liability off the balance books and we had an opportunity at that moment to sell it because it had the first place on an order in China, which made it extremely valuable. The Government benefited, and the British public benefited much more than the officials ever believed we would.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful for that intervention, as it sums up entirely the correct decision taken on the basis of getting good value for the taxpayer because of the amount of revenue raised.

That leads me to my next point—that there is a myth about how long it would take to build new nuclear power stations. It does not actually take 10 or 15 years to build nuclear power stations. Westinghouse has an excellent model on the shelf, which they can take off it. It would take only three to four years; the problem comes in the planning process. I gently suggest to the Minister that I hope he will ensure, as part of the energy drive, that carbon capture and nuclear plants are not slowed down by the planning system, so that we can get them up and running as quickly as we possibly can.