Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Conor McGinn and Julie Elliott

Monday 18th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

The Bill cuts subsidies for onshore wind, but companies such as Solar King in my constituency will be hit by a double whammy, with cuts to the feed-in tariff and the proposal to increase VAT for residential solar. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very difficult for any renewable energy business or investor to trust this Government, given their betrayal of the sector?

[Julie Elliott]

I totally agree with that. The impact on the solar energy businesses in this country has been dramatic.

Let me give a specific example, which is relevant to my constituents in Sunderland and also speaks to the way in which this Government’s policies have suffocated the growth in clean energy generation and the jobs that go with it. Nissan in Sunderland recently wrote to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change regarding a £3 million investment it wished to make in extending a wind farm on its site—a letter to which, I understand, Nissan has not yet received a reply. The aim of the project is to generate more, and cleaner, energy on site, so that less needs to be procured from outside. But the Government’s 18 June announcement on the renewables obligation and onshore wind has placed this development in serious jeopardy.

Under current proposals, Nissan’s investment will not go ahead because it had not secured planning permission or a grid connection agreement by the time of the announcement. Nissan has been working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and had an application for exceptional regional growth fund money accepted. However, a condition of this funding is that work cannot commence on a project, such as planning applications or grid connection negotiations, until the support application has been determined. In Nissan’s own words, it finds itself in a “Catch-22 position”—under the terms of the regional growth fund it is unable to seek the necessary approvals before the cut-off date, and the continuation of the exceptional regional growth fund programme was not confirmed until after the 2015 general election. The business case and regional growth fund application were based on eligibility under the renewables obligation. Without this, the development cannot go ahead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), in whose constituency the Nissan plant is based, raised this matter at Prime Minister’s questions last week. The Prime Minister answered in general terms and did not address the specific point, yet this is the sort of project the Government should be encouraging, not suffocating. The fact that that project, which is on a brownfield site, for a major company that wants to reduce its carbon footprint, enhance the UK’s energy security and support an onshore wind industry that now employs 19,000 people may now not go ahead should be evidence of a policy that is not serving the best interests of this country. I ask the Secretary of State to engage with Nissan at the earliest possible opportunity, if she has not already done so, so that a sensible outcome can be achieved.

It is such confused and counterproductive policy making that many find so frustrating. The independent Committee on Climate Change has stated that the Government policy has created a “stop-start investment profile” which has hindered cost reduction and industry development. This has been compounded by retrospective changes, like the one to the renewables obligation in this Bill. It therefore comes as no surprise that the UK has fallen down the global league tables for energy investment. EY’s respected global rankings show that under this Government, the UK has fallen from fourth in the world in November 2013 to 11th. EY singled out the UK Government for a lack of clarity and

“death by a thousand cuts”,

with

“misguided short-term politics obstructing long-term policy . . . in a vacuum, with no rationale or clear intent.”

What does that vacuum look like in real terms? It looks like cheap, clean onshore wind and solar subsidies being cut, while developers are being incentivised to install diesel generators, second only to coal in carbon intensity, on their sites. One thousand such generators have been installed in the past 18 months because current Government policy has led to such narrow margins this winter. This was not what energy policy should lead to in the second decade of the 21st century.

That vacuum looks like UK solar capacity falling 30% year on year in 2015 despite a global upward trend. It looks like clean energy developers losing their exemption from the climate change levy. It looks like the abolition of the zero carbon homes standard, and the green deal being axed due to uncompetitive high interest rates. It looks like mothballing carbon capture and storage in the UK, despite the knowledge of the fact that CCS is not an option but a necessity for decarbonisation, particularly for energy-intensive industries. It looks like pernicious planning interventions, with claims that power is being devolved to local communities, followed, as we saw in the previous Parliament, by unprecedented intervention from Whitehall by the right hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles).

I hope the Secretary of State will look again at the proposal from Nissan, and at what it is doing more generally in relation to clean energy. No one has a monopoly on wisdom, but in the face of opposition from clean energy developers, with the Government’s own independent Committee on Climate Change detailing its fears, when global consultancies show the UK falling down the global league tables, and when the Government’s own impact assessment discredits their argument about money saving, perhaps it is time for them to reconsider some of their policies.