Transition Towns and Fossil Fuels

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that one of the most disappointing aspects in this area is the stalling of the renewable industries?

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

Nonsense!

[Dr Drew]

We had a very good record until quite recently, but that seems to have gone somewhat into reverse. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is disappointing?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I was hoping that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) might provide some sugar-rich vegetarian snacks, as we are going on so late this evening, but we have been thwarted once again on a Monday night. However, I congratulate her on securing a really important debate.

I was hoping that we would hear a little more about transition towns, Bristol, of course, being my home city. I commend the very long-standing and active groups that have led to so many changes in that beautiful city. It seems very appropriate on Global Recycling Day to be discussing what some of these extraordinary communities have done. Of course, Bristol was one of the very early cities that set out on this path, and it has had some highly ambitious and really successful initiatives. In my constituency, the Sustainable Devizes group was set up in 2008. Most recently, it focused on a waste-free February. Similar groups are being set up in 303 other locations across the United Kingdom.

What is so wonderful about the network is that it is bringing people together to discuss problems, solutions and changes, many of which are easier to make on a local than on a national scale. It is coming up with creative ways of using local assets, innovating and making links with local universities. I see that happening throughout the United Kingdom. I recently attended a UK100 event in Leeds, a national green finance conference, which showcased the actions that various local authorities and groups were taking. The hon. Lady and I both love our railways. A group called 10:10, working with Community Energy South and Network Rail, is looking into how the railways can be decarbonised. Solar power and battery storage could be used to provide some of the current that the electric railway system uses at present.

We have talked about Bristol. It was amazing to see its City Leap prospectus, which moves away from some of the more “micro” initiatives and involves thinking, in a broad and holistic way, about how to build heat networks, smart energy systems, energy efficiency initiatives and renewable energy generation in a joined-up way. That joining up is very important. The Government are committed to building millions of homes, and we have an opportunity to include many system-integrated solutions in their design before that actually begins.

The hon. Lady made some slightly critical comments, with which I shall deal shortly. However, as she knows, I am passionate about bottom-up support. I have set up five new regional local energy hubs, because—as, again, she will know—some areas, including towns and cities, are very much in the lead in this regard, while others would love to try but are not sure where to start. Our aim has been to invest in the hiring of experts and to enable best practice to be shared. The hubs are intended to increase local capacity and to hire dedicated energy or sustainability officers to support local authorities and local enterprise partnerships.

We have talked about towns, but, as someone who represents a very rural area, I was keen to ensure that the rural community energy fund would continue to support rural communities. Through what is elegantly known as a MoG—machinery of government—transfer of Government assets, I managed to move it from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so that we could integrate it with much of the local work that we are doing. The fund will open for business again within a few short weeks.

The hon. Lady referred to the benefits of local action. That, of course, does not just mean reducing carbon dioxide emissions; it means warmer homes, people who are healthier as a result of cycling or walking, air quality improvements, and the creation of what I think we have increasingly realised is an incredibly exciting part of these changes through the green business opportunities that exist. About 400,000 people in the United Kingdom work in the low-carbon economy, which means that it is bigger than the aerospace sector in that regard. It is growing at between 5% and 6% a year. That is part of the global transition to low-carbon economic growth.

The hon. Lady tweaked me slightly about the shutting down of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. In fact, subsuming it in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has allowed us to understand far more about the opportunities and to broaden the conversation about low carbon. What was perhaps rather a niche conversation has become a fundamental conversation about how the economy should be working, and how businesses should be working. I hope that the hon. Lady was as pleased as I was by the Chancellor’s green spring statement last week. He made clear not only the desirability of, for instance, removing fossil fuel heating from new buildings, but the huge economic opportunities that it provided. I think that putting the two Departments together has allowed us to become much better at understanding those opportunities and attracting investment in them.

We are, of course, very focused on the leadership of the public sector, which can also be a major drive for many local transitions. The hon. Lady will know of the Salix scheme, a zero interest rate scheme enabling local authorities and devolved parts of the public sector to invest in their own low-carbon activities.

The hon. Lady made a powerful point about the need to come off fossil fuels completely and the role of transition towns in doing so. I hope that the hon. Lady is as pleased as I am that we will be phasing out coal, the dirtiest form of fossil fuel, completely from our generation system. For a country that built its economic success on the hard-won mining of coal to be one of the first major countries to be phasing it out completely as part of its generation system is hugely valuable. That has allowed us to take our commitment to phasing out coal and turn it into a global movement, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, where we have now persuaded over 80 countries, cities and states to also commit to phasing out coal. If only the world would phase out coal, we would be in a substantially better place.

The hon. Lady mentioned the feed-in tariffs and the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) raised the challenge about renewables investments. We should not define success in delivering renewables energy just based on how much we subsidise it. The feed-in tariff we have provided has cost us about £6 billion to date and will continue to cost us several billion pounds over its lifetime at a point when subsidy-free solar is becoming a reality, particularly at the commercial level. While we might have seen a tail-off in some solar installations on domestic fittings, there is an enormous increase in subsidy-free solar in the planning system at a more commercial level.

We are up to 32% of our energy system from renewables. I was lucky enough to launch the offshore wind sector deal last week—on a very windy day where wind was picking up over 30% of the total on that day alone. We have set out a 10-year market horizon for offshore wind, with the confident expectation that we will be at over 70% zero-carbon energy in our energy system before baby Olive even gets to her 16th birthday. This is a major transition that we are undertaking, and we have the largest and deepest offshore wind market in the world and we continue to invest.

The hon. Lady asked me about tidal. I grew up a few miles from the Bristol channel; I have seen the power of those tides washing in and out every day. The challenge is that I have to invest other people’s money in the most cost-effective carbon reduction energy systems and also the ones that have the most global potential. I look at everything through the grid of asking what is the lowest cost, what is the carbon dioxide reduction potential and what is the competitive advantage. Sad as it is, there are some brilliant ideas for tidal and marine and we have lots of new ideas coming forward, but tidal lagoons at the price being quoted would have been the most expensive power station we had ever built in the UK, with quite limited global reach for that technology.

We are always looking for new ideas, however. My Department has about £2.6 billion of taxpayers’ money to invest in research and development in this clean energy area over the course of this Parliament, the largest R&D budget we have ever had in this area, and we see huge opportunities in many areas, including marine and tidal at the right price.

I want to briefly touch on where I think some of the community groups and local authorities can be helpful. I often think that it is difficult to sit in Westminster and try to pull levers, because situations are different on the ground; we have very different levels of knowledge, commitment and circumstances, and as in so many areas learning from innovation and vision at the local level and looking upwards is important. I am thinking in particular of Leeds. The work that Leeds City Council has done in introducing hydrogen into the heating system, a major opportunity to decarbonise heating going forward, should not be underestimated.

I know the hon. Lady does not think this, but somebody listening might think she had rather a dismal view of what we have achieved as a Government. She is right that we were the first country in the world to pass a Climate Change Act. It was brought forward with very strong cross-party support as quite a radical piece of legislation at the time. Since then, as indeed before then, we have led the world in decarbonisation. We have dropped our carbon emissions consistently, more than any other developed country, compared with our economic growth, because of course, as the hon. Lady knows, what we want to do is grow our economy and reduce our carbon emissions. That has only accelerated. In 2016-17, our emissions were down 4.7%. This is happening in many areas.

We do have challenges, particularly in the housing space and in decarbonising heavy industry and transportation, but we are absolutely leading the pack with our decarbonisation story through continued investment, continued ambition and a legislative framework. I hope that the hon. Lady and her party will support our bid to help the climate change talks next year—the all-critical conference of the parties talks in 2020, at which countries will come together for the first time since the Paris agreement to show what the numbers will be, so that we can assess how on-track or off-track we are. The UK could also showcase much of the incredible innovation we have in this area. I hope there will be strong support from all Members for our bid, although we are cognisant that other countries also want to host the talks.

The hon. Lady will also know that we were the first industrialised country to ask for advice on a net zero economy, following the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We look forward to that advice.

What I would say to baby Olive and all the other young people—although she is a little young to come and protest, many others did—is that we should be proud of what we have done in the UK through a combination of ambition, cross-party working and some good policies. We have delivered a good track record and we know we have more to do. There is a strong commitment across the House to deliver more, and I heartily commend the transition movement on its impact, its vision and its ongoing commitment to stopping climate change.

Question put and agreed to.