Chris Heaton-Harris
Main Page: Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)
Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman take the opportunity to make it clear that he still supports local communities having a full say in such proposals?
Dr Whitehead
Yes indeed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, who takes a close interest in these matters, will have taken from my words this morning that I am seeking clarity on how pure the Government’s intention is in that regard. Not only is it the Opposition’s position that local communities should have the final say on onshore wind applications, but I am seeking to ensure that that principle, on which I think he and I agree, is not in any way diluted, diverted or subverted by other legislation that may come along to get round that principle.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I am sure we will come later to the commitment in the Conservative party’s manifesto. To save much debate, there is a second part to that commitment:
“As a result we will end any new public subsidy for them and change the law so that local people have the final say on wind farm applications.”
Although I understand that we are going to have a debate about the subsidy bit, I assume that the hon. Gentleman will be in complete agreement with that last bit, about local people having the final say on wind farm applications.
Dr Whitehead
Yes, indeed, and on that second part, one could say that the clause, taken by itself and at face value, actually discharges that manifesto commitment. My question is: does it really? Does it really, taking into account the arrangements that might arise across Government to ensure that that manifesto commitment is carried out and not subverted? Does it really, taking into account how the DCLG would handle an application? Does it really, taking into account the announced intention that there will be further amendments to the Planning Act 2008 which may impinge on the Town and Country Planning Act where those applications are concerned? Among other things, in pursuit of this manifesto commitment, what assurances has DECC received from the DCLG that the process will be straightforward, simple and final for those local planning authorities?
My understanding is that under the proposed arrangements, an onshore wind farm applicant would simply apply for planning permission for an onshore wind farm, with all the caveats that apply to planning permission, all the arrangements and considerations that apply at a local level; then local planning officers may recommend to the local planning committee that planning permission be given and councillors on that planning authority may then agree with the planning officers that there are no technical objections and they want the scheme to go ahead. We have to recognise that local councillors may not necessarily always agree with what their officers say and may well reflect other issues marginally outside the exact terms of planning; nevertheless, by that particular arrangement, they may insert into that planning decision the central idea that the community really wants that particular development.
That applies not only to wind farms but to a number of developments where planning applications to some extent represent a two-stage process of looking at the technical issues and the not exactly political but local issues related to those technical issues. If that process is carried out properly and stops there, that discharges the Conservatives’ obligation in terms of their manifesto commitment on future onshore wind applications. If, however, changes are to be made to the obligation itself, either through new powers for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to call in, on an enhanced basis, schemes that otherwise would be subject to only that process, or through constraints placed in secondary legislation on how the process is undertaken, that should cause the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—the key proponent of this particular manifesto commitment being placed into law—to worry a little bit.
The Minister does not look worried, so I am confident that she will be able to put my mind to rest on what other Departments have in store for this Bill. Perhaps she will assure us today that her understanding of what the process will consist of once the clause has been put into law is identical to mine. We can then continue to agree happily across the Committee about the status of this piece of legislation.
The Opposition would like amendment 16 to be made because we believe that for every action, there is the potential for an equal and opposite action that needs to be understood and taken into account in future activity. Later, we will discuss at greater length actions recently undertaken by the Government on various matters relating to the progress of renewable energy. The foreshortening of the period in which the renewables obligation is available for wind farms is just one such action. A number of other actions call into question the Government’s trajectory as far as renewable deployment is concerned.
The question that the amendment attempts to address is: how do those actions relate to the position in 2020? That will be a reckoning point for the European Union renewables target, and a very real reckoning point for the UK because the UK has signed up willingly and enthusiastically to the EU renewables target. The overall target is set within the EU; each country is provided with its own target to reach within that overall goal; and each country sets sub-targets for various sectors of renewable activity—for example, electricity or heat provided from renewables and renewable transport fuels and activity. Together, those three areas make up a country’s target and in theory would discharge the obligation that a country had entered into on the overall EU target.
Chris Heaton-Harris
The hon. Gentleman mentions the institution just across the way from us and its report last week. Did that report not say that the intermittent nature of so much of our renewable energy supply meant that the Government could not guarantee that they could meet our future energy needs? I think that the hon. Gentleman may inadvertently have slightly misquoted the report.
Clive Lewis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. A number of points are made in the report, but on the issue of baseload, I think that National Grid itself and an increasing number of analysts say that baseload is increasingly diminishing in necessity because of increases in technology, increases in the ability to store energy, and interconnectivity. That all means that the concept of baseload is diminishing, so although I understand that it is important, many other countries across Europe have far more renewable input into their energy system and manage as well. National Grid itself says that it manages quite ably with the renewables already in place in our system.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about baseload, but obviously I completely disagree with it, and I would like to point out to him what happened to our own electricity system last November. The wind stopped blowing on a cold November evening when solar was not producing anything for us. Our interconnectors were piling in as much electricity as they could, yet we had a shortage, and that shortage meant that instead of paying the normal amount of money that we pay for electricity, National Grid put out a call for electricity and we paid 25 or 30 times the amount that we normally pay for electricity to be produced in order for it to come into the grid. That is the first time in a long time that that has happened to our grid, and it goes to show that we do need a strong baseload, hence I have to disagree with the hon. Gentleman.
Clive Lewis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I think that he will know that the National Infrastructure Commission—I spoke to Lord Adonis himself—is going to put a lot of emphasis on spending on interconnectivity, which will increase; and ultimately somewhere in Europe the wind will be blowing and somewhere the tide will be coming in and going out. I think that the demand-side technology will make an increasingly big impact.
Clive Lewis
I thank the Minister for her input. We are not saying that we will rely entirely on renewables. They are part of a balanced mix. However, as the Government have already made clear, they are not committed to that. Carbon capture and storage is one of the key ways, one of the most cost-effective ways, in which we can begin to use, yes, gas and coal to produce energy and also meet our carbon targets, and the Government have backtracked on that. We are not saying—[Interruption.] I will press ahead, because we have been on this point long enough.
By supporting the amendment, the Government would send the industry a clear signal about the direction of travel of our power sector, giving businesses clarity, transparency and long-term assurances as to what decarbonisation investment will be needed and by when. In other words, they would be providing certainty—something that is now in short supply. Part of that certainty will come from clear, unambiguous accounting of carbon budgets. This goes to the heart of the clause. It means that by 2028 the power sector in particular should be using cleaner technologies, not simply buying in credits from other parts of Europe. Opposition Members are not opposed to the EU ETS scheme in itself. If reformed, it still has the potential to be a key part of Europe’s strategy for reducing pollution levels, but permission to use ETS credits in the carbon budget accounting process indefinitely is wrong, because it distorts the clear market signals that business needs to invest in new cleaner power stations here in the UK.
As the former coalition peer, Lord Teverson, explained in the other place, when talking about getting rid of the ETS allowances in the budget for the post-2027 period, the allowances would then
“mean what everybody would understand them to mean—that is, what the emissions of UK plc are. It would get rid of all those strange accounting distortions and bring us back to common-sense accounting and what people would understand carbon budgets and our own carbon emissions to be.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2015; Vol. 765, c. 719.]
Meanwhile, ClientEarth, a non-governmental organisation that lists DEFRA as an official supporter, said:
“If the UK is to continue to be at the forefront of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions following the historic agreement in Paris, we need carbon budgets which are clear, certain, and which drive emissions reductions in all sectors of our economy…This new clause, if implemented, would remedy these weaknesses and mean the Climate Change Act for the first time doing what it must do: set genuinely clear and certain emissions targets that are binding across the board.”
Chris Heaton-Harris
I am sorry if I have to keep disagreeing with the hon. Gentleman, but he talked about decarbonisation across every sector of the economy, and about transparency, having integrity in what we are trying to say and having a coherent policy. He has a very strong background in the green agenda. I know from a tiny bit of research I did that he is backing the divestment fund from the University of East Anglia to get out of investing in the North sea, which makes things interesting for some parts of the Bill, because we are talking about trying to save our oil and gas industries to a certain extent. However, surely he understands that to get to the point that he might want to get to in future, there has to be a long-term economic energy plan that heads in this direction. Perhaps gambling all on just one or two technologies is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Clive Lewis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. On divestment, I think he will find that even the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has advised businesses to look at where their investments are made on that particular issue. On the point that the hon. Gentleman made, the fifth carbon budget is not until 2028—we are not talking about immediate carbon budgets coming up, but about the fifth carbon budget. That gives organisations and businesses plenty of time to prepare and get their houses in order, especially in the sectors that will be affected. This is not an immediate change; it is for the fifth carbon budget, so there is ample time for that to take place.
Without the amendment, there is a risk that pollution levels in the UK could grow, investment in clean energy could shrink, and yet, on paper, it would look as though we had achieved carbon targets. We need to stop any Government from cooking the books. As such, we seek an assurance from the Minister that the Government still believe in building a low-carbon economy here and will not use such accounting tricks to hide their failures on clean energy.
However, let us put all that aside for just a second and deal simply with the cost of meeting our international commitments and getting value for taxpayers’ money—something that I am sure all Members here would agree is worthy of our attention. The Government’s advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, said that we should be a net seller of ETS credits if we are to pursue the lowest-cost option to go green and meet our climate targets. Therefore, there is a real risk that by putting off emission reductions to future years, as current accounting practices inevitably encourage, taxpayers and consumers would be at risk of higher costs.
Baroness Worthington summed it perfectly when she spoke on this amendment in the other place, saying that
“the way the budgets work is that, essentially, we pay other people to decarbonise and then we import the certificates. That can be done for a while, and it makes economic sense to do so. In fact, for the first three carbon budgets, while the system has been bedding down, it probably made sense to use a traded system—the rules and the allocations from Europe were clearer”—
or less clear—
“and we were all finding our way to see whether the EU ETS would deliver. The closer that we get to our 2050 target, the more that that approach starts to be a false economy. We find then that, potentially, we are repeatedly paying other countries to decarbonise and not investing in our own country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 October 2015; Vol. 765, c. 722.]
The cheapest route to climate safety is to get investment flowing now into clean energy industries such as solar, CCS, nuclear and wind. Yet, as I have explained, the Government are pulling the rug from underneath the lowest-cost options, such as onshore wind and solar. Only last week, the Government were warned that the cost of achieving climate targets could double without CCS, yet they have pulled support away from that in the UK as well. Let me be clear: the amendment would not prevent the Government from taking measures to protect our important strategic manufacturing industries from higher costs, whether through exemptions or other devices. Instead, it would ensure that the UK stayed on the cheapest pathway to a clean energy future.
Ultimately, though, the amendment is necessary to ensure that we live up to our European and international commitments. The proposed fifth carbon budget for the period in question is aligned with EU ambition—no more, no less. Nothing in the amendment would mean that we were going further than the rest of Europe, nor is it a decarbonisation target for the power sector of the type that the Conservatives ruled out in their manifesto. What we propose is new, but it is not a target. It is about clarity of carbon budget accounting. The amendment would complement European efforts in the same way as the Chancellor’s own carbon floor price and the UK’s contracts for difference. Those initiatives were taken with the stated intention of driving investment into cleaner energy sources here in the UK. The amendment would bolster those efforts without undermining the European ETS.
In Paris, the UK signed up to achieving a carbon-neutral global economy. The amendment would ensure that we played our part in achieving that, rather than offloading our responsibilities through tricks on a spreadsheet. I therefore conclude by asking the Minister to see that in the absence of a clear strategy to build a low-carbon British economy, and given the roll-back of key policies on solar, wind and CCS, there is a need to send an unqualified signal to the investment community and the world at large—a clarion call that Britain remains committed to achieving the goals to which we signed up in the historic Paris agreement. The amendment would do that job, and I urge Committee members to support it.
Andrea Leadsom
That is an extraordinary thing to say. The hon. Gentleman’s party is doing everything possible to try to ensure that the Government are not able to improve our own access to home-grown gas. I am glad that his party has come out in favour of supporting the oil and gas sector in the North sea—that is something to be welcomed—but 40% of the UK’s gas supply still comes from the North sea. The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that that is a reducing amount—by 2035 it is expected to be only about 25%. The issue of energy security and where we get our gas supplies is a very important one.
I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that, since it is a global market, supplies as things stand are very good. Our biggest partners are Norway and, for liquid natural gas, the middle east. It is not true to say that we have a big dependency on Russia by any means. Nevertheless, energy policy is vital for this country’s future energy security. Of course, 80% of us in the UK use gas for heating and cooking. Members who are rightly enthusiastic about renewables, as am I, must bear it in mind that this country will continue to need gas for a long time.
Chris Heaton-Harris
My hon. Friend correctly makes that point. In an earlier intervention, the hon. Member for Norwich South talked about the importance of interconnection to our future energy supply. There would be no supply from our interconnectors to the continent should Gazprom choose not to supply eastern Europe with gas, because all the energy would be sucked back into the continent. Our energy security would diminish because of that, so there are pros and cons to everything, especially if we are trying to take a European view of the whole picture.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend makes an important point about gas energy security. The UK has made great efforts to diversify its sources of imported gas. The UK Energy Research Centre recently recognised that we have significantly diversified the sources and the means of bringing gas into the country. We have liquid natural gas terminals, and we have pipelines, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Each of those sources is important, but support for home-grown gas in the North sea and through other sources is vital.