Energy Efficiency

Chris Williamson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

rose—

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm that the coalition parties will agree to implement the previous Government’s commitment to ensure that all new homes are carbon-neutral by 2015?

[Gregory Barker]

That is an important target. We are committed to carbon neutrality, and I know that my colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government are looking to see if there is any room for making the target more effective. Perhaps I may write to the hon. Gentleman with the very latest on that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour party is now in denial on this front. I will probably provoke another reaction, but to return to the coal point—yes, the coal mines were inefficient, but there are now more efficient ways of extracting coal, so some coal mines are being reopened because it is now economically viable to produce the coal.

[Chris Williamson]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment on the fact that while his predecessors were smashing the mining industry, the National Union of Mineworkers pointed out that we had more than 300 years of coal reserves under the ground, and were arguing for the very clean-coal technology that the hon. Gentleman now seems to be espousing?

[Mr Ellwood]

Those mining strikes, which almost brought Britain to a halt, took place when I was in shorts at school, so I cannot be blamed for that. I agree that we want clean efficient methods, and that is why we did not vote against the Bill on clean coal technology. It fell short, because the provisions on carbon capture and storage should have included gas, but that was ignored.

[Chris Williamson]

rose—

[Mr Ellwood]

Let us have somebody else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

May I start by congratulating all hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today? Unfortunately, I was not in the Chamber to hear all of them, but I want, nevertheless, to congratulate them all because I know what a daunting prospect it is to make one’s maiden speech in this Chamber.

In opening the debate, the Minister quoted the Prime Minister saying that he wants to make this Government “the greenest Government ever”; well, it needs to be—and so does every subsequent Government, because the scale of the challenge facing not just the UK but the whole world requires radical steps to be taken. Climate change is probably the single biggest challenge that we as a civilisation have ever faced. We should therefore try to achieve cross-party consensus on the radical measures that need to be taken. The Stern review, which the previous Government commissioned, talked about the possibility of 40% of domestic energy requirements being generated by micro-technologies, and this Government need to do everything they can to encourage and support making that a reality. If we can secure a huge increase in micro-energy technology, that will reduce the problems caused by carbon emissions and will diminish the need for nuclear power stations.

I do not agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the nuclear debate, although I used to. Like George Monbiot, I have changed my view on the basis that is probably the lesser of two evils. However, that does not take away from the need for significant uplift in the amount of energy efficiency work that must be undertaken to existing residential accommodation and residential accommodation now being built, as well as to the commercial built environment, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) has pointed out. In cities the commercial built environment is responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions, so it is important to address that issue in the new green deal that the Minister is talking about.

I said that it was important for this Government to be greener than the previous Government, but that is not to diminish the huge strides made by the Labour Administration. Let me make it clear, for the record, that they were the first Government in the world to pass a climate change Act and that their Warm Front initiative introduced energy efficiency measures to about 2 million homes. Their feed-in tariff was a very important initiative, and the massive expansion of offshore wind energy announced by the previous Prime Minister is also welcome.

My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) referred to the boiler scrappage scheme. We were ahead of the game on the Kyoto commitments. Indeed, we led the world in securing them in the first place. We also led the world in trying to secure a deal at Copenhagen: that is another thing that we should be proud of, and we should applaud the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), for the role that he played in that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test also spoke about the need for district heating schemes and how they can be used. Compared with the rest of Europe, this country does not have a great track record in that regard, but I believe that district heating schemes have tremendous potential, especially when linked to initiatives on waste. The treatment plants being developed around the country offer a way of dealing with waste that is better than burying it in the ground, and they also give us an opportunity to generate energy at the same time.

[Ms Bagshawe]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is an overlooked aspect of renewable energy, and would he welcome investment in innovative technology? For instance, the BioWayste plant in my Corby constituency takes 146,000 tonnes of food waste and, using anaerobic digestion, turns it into enough energy to supply half the needs of an entire food processing plant for a whole year.

[Chris Williamson]

I do not know the details of the specific scheme to which the hon. Lady refers, but her description makes it sound particularly laudable. Based on the information that she has just given to the House, it is certainly something that I would like to associate myself with. So yes, I agree with her on that.

When Bill Clinton launched the Clinton climate initiative, he said that tackling climate change provided an opportunity to save money, make money and create jobs. I wholeheartedly agree. The point has been made already in this afternoon’s debate that there is an opportunity to create green jobs through investing in energy efficiency measures. We need to examine that angle, and the Government should consider how burgeoning new companies looking to enter the field can be encouraged and helped.

In my constituency, Rolls-Royce has been working on a fuel cell for some time. If the company can bring the project to fruition, it will play a significant role in providing environmentally friendly of energy generation in this country. Again, the Government should look at ways to support that initiative.

Other hon. Members have mentioned the link between fuel poverty and energy efficiency. That is something that I, as a former welfare rights officer, am particularly concerned about: we have seen how the increase in fuel prices has impacted on fuel poverty in this country, so it is important to make more strenuous efforts to ensure that low-income households benefit from the green deal.

I am especially worried about low-income households in the private rented sector. Other hon. Members have mentioned them in the debate, and I think that the Minister said that the green deal would apply to that sector as well. We will be watching very closely to see how that develops, but it is clearly going to be an extremely important area.

When I was leader of Derby city council, I set a very challenging target—that Derby should become self-sufficient in clean green energy by 2025. I worked with local companies in the city to get them on board for that agenda, and I have to say that there was a good deal of support for it—both for generating environmentally friendly energy and for ensuring that commercial premises were more energy-efficient. To come back to the point that the hon. Member for Richmond Park made, it will be interesting to hear what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), has to say about the commercial sector when he winds up, because if that sector is ignored it will be a significant omission.

The Government’s stated aims on public spending, and the Budget that we debated last week and at the beginning this week, seem to militate against much of what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), said this afternoon. Without Government investment in this important policy area, it will be difficult to deliver on the ambitions that he outlined. It is important for the Government to unlock the potential in local government, but the Chancellor, with massive swingeing cuts to local government finance—we had a debate on local government finance yesterday—will make it very difficult for the innovation locked away in local government to come out and flourish. That is another area that the Minister needs to look at carefully.

Not only are there to be cuts in local authority expenditure, but restrictions are being put on local authorities’ ability to use, for example, prudential borrowing as a way of moving the agenda forward. Again, that is something that the Minister needs to look at. Perhaps he might talk to his colleagues in the Con-Dem coalition to see how that can be addressed.

If we can get it right, and address energy efficiency and tackle climate change, there will be significant implications for the size of the deficit. In the prospectus that the Chancellor outlined last week, he took a direction diametrically opposed to the one that he should have taken to tackle the deficit. His cuts package will create large-scale unemployment, with tens of thousands of public sector workers losing their jobs, and tens of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—of workers in the private sector losing their employment as well. Investment in green technology and energy efficiency can generate huge numbers of new jobs; that would take people off the dole, generate income tax revenue for the Exchequer and help reduce the size of the deficit. That deficit will get bigger as a result of the Chancellor’s Budget last week, and that in turn will result in further pressure to make even more swingeing cuts. We would then end up in a vicious circle.

I wish the Minister luck in his ambition for the new green deal. It is a good step in the right direction, but he needs to go a lot further. It is important for him to recognise the measures that were taken by the previous Administration and build on them, and to do what he can—although I accept that he has what is probably a fairly junior position in Government at the moment—to persuade the Chancellor of the error of his ways. I am sorry, but last week’s Budget will make it very difficult for us to deliver on the ambitions that the Minister outlined earlier.