David Mowat
Main Page: David Mowat (Conservative - Warrington South)
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution and I agree with her. I have been to Cotton Farm to see the wind farm for myself and to meet some of the residents. I met the illustrious Bev Gray—I do not know if he is a constituent of my hon. Friend—who has provided me with more information than any man could ever possibly want about amplitude modulation readings and the noise his community suffers on a regular basis. As my hon. Friend suggests, this is not rocket science. Where there is amplitude modulation, people suffer and genuine health concerns have for too long been swept under the carpet.
The Den Brook planning condition, as it has become known, was a chance to introduce a sensible planning condition that evoked amplitude modulation and tried to deal with it. The wind industry could have welcomed it as a method to defeat wind farm opponents across the country who say “You don’t deal with the problem of wind” by saying, “We understand there is a problem with wind noise, and we will deal with it and mitigate it when it happens.” Instead, the industry went into complete denial and actual upfront aggressiveness. It fought the planning condition through the courts over an eight-year period to ensure that it was not applied, and to get it removed and then sufficiently weakened so as to make it pretty pointless if it were ever to return. In fulfilling our manifesto commitment and making this change to the renewables obligation as of the end of the month, I suggest that we also bring forward the appropriate planning conditions to address the problem of amplitude modulation and make wind developers and farms a bit more acceptable in the parts of the country where they already exist.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an interesting speech about amplitude modulation. Is it predictable—is it possible to say, given a certain design, “There will be this much modulation”—or is it something that just happens, depending on other factors, and therefore quite hard to plan for?
Chris Heaton-Harris
It is as predictable as the wind. We know which direction the wind will come from and how fast it will be, which means we can predict a zone that will be affected by amplitude modulation on any given day. So yes, we can predict it.
I ask the Minister not to give up on the changes to the renewables obligation, which were part of a manifesto commitment, and to hear our plea about amplitude modulation. I have some concerns about the report she has commissioned from her Department and would like it judged against the evidence I have given her. Had the wind industry behaved more pragmatically and sensibly a few years ago, we probably would not be in this position. I am known for my views on this subject, but I know that there are sensible developers of wind technology who try to do their best for the local communities in the areas in which they install turbines. Unfortunately, I do not have an example of that in my constituency. It might be that the wind industry has woken up to this issue after the horse has bolted.
David Mowat
A few moments ago, the shadow Secretary of State appeared unhappy that the capacity auction announced by the Government two weeks ago had been brought forward. Is the Labour Front-Bench position that the auction should not be brought forward?
Dr Whitehead
The question of whether the capacity auction should have been brought forward is secondary to the extent to which the Government believe that the auction will actually produce new capacity, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is fully aware. Like the levy control framework, capacity auctions warrant a much deeper reorganisation than the rather tepid arrangement undertaken by the Government. Simply bringing an auction forward by a year, using roughly the same parameters about the likely clearance price and the distance between the clearance price and the likely price necessary to secure any new investment over a 15-year period for new gas-fired power stations, does not strike me as the smartest way to procure longer-term capacity in the capacity market. A deeper reorganisation of capacity auctions is required to secure that aim over the next period.
Before that intervention, I was briefly thinking about the subject of my amendments 23 and 52, to which I wish to draw the House’s attention. If the Government were serious about the proposals in their manifesto—that schemes that have local support should proceed—they should immediately adopt these amendments. They are about schemes where all the right moves in getting local agreement to the plans have been undertaken, all inquiries, concerns and planning arrangements have been dealt with, the schemes are on the cusp of getting agreement at planning and local authority level, and they have the support of local communities, but the Government have just pulled the plug on them and they now cannot proceed. The Government ought to adopt these amendments if they were, in principle, serious about their own principle that local areas should decide on local schemes and that those local schemes could be supported where local communities support them. Conversely, I fear that if clause 80 remains in the Bill, as amended, we will have in store a programme of onshore wind execution and not the execution of an onshore wind programme.
Labour’s vision is for a locally supported, appropriate programme of onshore wind deployment, complementing other renewables such as solar, biomass, offshore wind and tidal in reaching renewable targets, not because we have to, but because it is the right thing to do in ensuring that we have a balanced, low-carbon energy mix for the future. This clause points us squarely in the opposite direction and I urge hon. Members to support amendments that put us back on track again.
John Redwood
I rise to support the Government and to urge the rejection of amendments that would delay getting rid of the subsidies for wind power. Our country desperately needs more electrical power to be available, and I am pleased that the Government are now taking action, with capacity auctions, to try to get some more power available. We need more affordable power. We need to tackle fuel poverty and have power at prices that households can afford. We also need to have affordable power for extra industry, which is one of the Chancellor’s aims. We need reliable power; we want to know that the power is there whether the wind is blowing or not, and whether the sun is shining or not. People expect continuous power, in order to light and power their homes, and industry needs continuous power for its processes. On all those grounds, wind does not cut the mustard, and I am glad that we now have a Government who recognise that.
When the history of the past 15 or 20 years comes to be written, what the European Union is doing and what the previous Labour Government did on energy policy will go down as one of the catastrophic failures. It will be at least as big as the exchange rate mechanism, which destroyed so much activity, jobs and prosperity in our country. It may not be as big as the disaster of the euro, but it will be one of the big, classic disasters of the European Union that Europe as a whole is becoming an area of too little energy and very high-cost energy, driving industry out of the European Union area and into Asia and America, where more plentiful and affordable energy is available. Far from sparing the planet extra carbon dioxide, all this mad policy is doing is making sure that the carbon dioxide is produced somewhere else, rather than within the European Union itself.
Germany has much more wind power than we do and many Opposition Members admire it in this respect, but what happens when the wind does not blow? I will tell them what happens: Germany relies on a large number of extremely dirty coal power stations to churn out the electricity, producing more carbon dioxide than it would if it had opted for a fleet of modern gas stations in the first place. On average, that would have been better than this strange mixture of intermittent wind, which is very good on carbon dioxide when the wind blows, and back-up power, which in Germany and elsewhere in Europe is often generated from coal, and is extremely bad on carbon dioxide when the wind does not blow.
David Mowat
Germany uses coal all the time and the wind power is the intermittent stuff. Germany’s carbon emissions are 30% higher than the UK’s per unit of GDP and per capita just because it uses so much coal and fossil fuels, even though its renewables level is quite high as well.
John Redwood
Yes, but, as my hon. Friend will agree, when the wind does not blow, Germany has to use more coal. When there is no wind energy, the replacement must come from fossil fuel. A wind system with fossil fuel back-up does not even work on its own terms, and he is right that the German merit order is somewhat different.
I was going on to point out that from an economic point of view, we in this country have managed to damage every kind of power generation. If we insist on giving priority to dear, interruptible, intermittent sources such as wind, the more reliable, cheaper sources such as gas become intermittent, as they are switched off every time the wind blows and switched back on every time the wind is not blowing, which in itself is difficult and expensive. That undermines the economics of what would otherwise be good-value power. It means that we cannot run the plants flat out. We have higher operating costs because of the complications of switching on and off and managing the furnaces accordingly, with much less revenue coming in because less power is generated and power cannot continuously be sold to the market.
The ham-fisted interventions—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) does not seem to understand the policy that his party put in place and that the European Union supports. The ham-fisted interventions in our energy market mean that we have less reliable energy, because we deliberately subsidise a lot of intermittent and unreliable energy; that we have dearer energy, because, as is commonly accounted, renewables are considerably dearer; and that we have much dearer energy overall, because of the extra cost, which is not included in the way that the cost of renewables is accounted for, which means that non-renewable power becomes a lot dearer per unit as well.
David Mowat
I rise perhaps early in this debate but, in the absence of alternatives on this side of the Chamber, I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig). I agree with much of what he said about carbon capture and storage, but my comments will be about new clause 10.
I do not agree with the thrust of new clause 10 and want to set out to the House why not, but first let me be clear: I, like possibly everybody in this House, also regard man-made climate change as a clear and present danger. The concern I have, though, is that we in this country are acting increasingly unilaterally in what we are doing to fix it. Indeed, the emissions trading system was an attempt to find a pan-European solution to a pan-European problem and I do not want us to turn our back on it.
I speak also for the 900,000 people who work in energy-intensive industries in this country and the many other millions of people who work in manufacturing industries. The central premise of my remarks is that I do not believe it is possible to rebalance our economy, to have a march of the makers and to do more in the north of the country predicated on electricity prices that are approximately double what they are in continental Europe. Of course, nobody in this House wants higher electricity prices, but the fact is that some of our actions are resulting in higher electricity prices, in so far as similar actions are not taken by our trading partners. This morning, our energy-intensive industries were paying something like 9p a unit of electricity; in Germany and France, they are paying 4p a unit. Broadly speaking, the gap between UK and EU electricity prices is 80% to 90%. I am an MP for the north of this country. I want to see manufacturing re-established much more strongly in the north, but it cannot be re-established on the basis of differentially higher electricity prices.
Tom Blenkinsop
In reference to new clause 10, it is quite obvious that the market in the European ETS is set, yet we decided as a country—or rather, the Government decided—to introduce the carbon price floor, which exceeded the EU ETS, so this is an issue for those on the Government Benches. Our European competitors also weight the cost of energy far more to the consumer than to industry, which is ultimately a Government decision, and by and large the costs are generally the same, varying from country to country.
David Mowat
The hon. Gentleman makes two points, the first of which is about the carbon price floor. As it happens, I do not support policy in that area. The consequence of that policy is that we are now importing electricity produced on the continent by power stations that do not pay the carbon tax at the level we do. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said earlier, that is no sort of economic and industrial policy. I have forgotten the hon. Gentleman’s second point. Perhaps he could just remind me.
Tom Blenkinsop
It was about the differential. The distribution of costs is much more on the consumer in EU member states.
David Mowat
That is true of Germany in particular. Apparently—I am not an expert in this area, but I hear Ministers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills talking about this—there is an issue with state aid, which does not apply to Germany because it started doing that in advance of state aid rules being set up, which is why it can charge such a differential and apparently we cannot. I agree that that is unsatisfactory.
I was talking about the 900,000 jobs in energy-intensive industries that we in this place need to be cognisant of as we legislate and move forward. These are jobs in steel and what is left of our primary aluminium industry—there were three smelters in this country until a few years ago; there is now one left, in Scotland, and a consultation is under way on its closure. This stuff matters. Of course, so does climate change. My only point is that we must get it right. There is a balance to be struck, and the people who pay for that balance cannot be the people who work in some of those industries.
I have four points to make about what I believe is an increasing difference between the approaches of the United Kingdom—with our climate budgets and our Climate Change Act 2008—and the European Union. The first relates to the Paris agreement which was reached in December, and which we have discussed in the House before. Some people describe it as a triumph, and in many respects it was. I personally do not think that it will be enough to limit the temperature rise to 2.7°; I think that that is an optimistic analysis. However, the key fact that we, as legislators, need to understand is that the United Kingdom did not have a submission to the “intended nationally determined contribution” process. Europe did, and Europe’s submission was a reduction in carbon emissions by 40% over 40 years. The UK is part of Europe, and it is therefore implicit that we must do the same, but the commitment for which we have legislated is to reduce emissions by—
Tom Blenkinsop
I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is talking about individual states’ emissions and Europe-wide emissions, but I have a responsibility for people who work in energy-intensive industries, and I know that a far more acute problem for the Government is the problem of Chinese dumping. Of course we cannot talk about that now, but it is far more serious than anything that it coming out of the European Union.
David Mowat
I agree that Chinese dumping is an issue. I also agree that business rates are an issue. However, I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong if he is suggesting that energy prices are not an issue as well. The steel industry, and indeed the aluminium industry, is not under such pressure in parts of Europe as it is here.
Tom Blenkinsop
What the hon. Gentleman is saying contradicts comments from Eurofer and UK Steel. The two primary issues for energy-intensive industries, especially the steel industry, are market economy status for China and Chinese dumping. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will return to the point about the EU emissions trading system, but those are the main concerns of the industries themselves.
David Mowat
The hon. Gentleman’s position strikes me as rather odd. I agree with him that the ETS status is important, that dumping is important, and that business rates are important, but, as is made clear in report after report—there is one from the aluminium industry in my office now—so are energy prices.
I do not think that I am making a massively controversial point. I am merely saying that in an industry that uses significant amounts of electricity, it is not a competitive advantage if our electricity costs more than other people’s. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Chinese dumping is probably more significant, but we are talking about economics, and in economics everything happens at the margin. The stuff that I am talking about matters to our manufacturing industry. My central point is that if we are intending to have a march of the makers that involves a rebalancing of industry predicated on high electricity prices, it is going to be tough.
As I was saying before the hon. Gentleman’s interventions, the cross-European Paris INDC submission is about 50% less onerous than the requirements of our own Climate Change Act. When I first saw that statistic, I thought it odd. Why had we allowed this to happen? Given that we have a stringent, rigorous and, in many respects, very good process involving carbon budgets driving down emissions, and all that goes with that, why did we become involved, at a big world summit, in a European submission that was so feeble? Although the requirements of the European submission are so much lower than those of the UK, in terms of the Climate Change Act, it is not allocated by country, even now. I believe that that process will start this year, or perhaps next year.
My second point relates to the European emissions trading system itself. New clause 10 was deemed necessary because it was felt that the system was not acting as enough of a brake on carbon emissions. The European price of carbon—which is implicit within the system—is too low: it is about €5 a tonne, as opposed to the €23 a tonne or so that we are paying. In 2013, precisely that point was debated in the European Parliament. It was proposed, in an amendment, that the emissions trading system should be “re-baselined” in a way that would have made it meaningful. The amendment might have prevented the need for a carbon price floor in the UK, and created a carbon price that properly reflected where the market needs to be in order to drive actions. However, the European Parliament did not pass it, probably in response to the vested interests of big manufacturers in a number of big countries in Europe. I think that that was a pity.
As a consequence, here we are now, saying that the ETS is not fit for purpose, that the accounting that it implies—which was intended, in the Climate Change Act, to serve as a way of controlling generated power—does not work, and that therefore we are doing something different. However, the right answer is not to turn our back on the European system. I am a Conservative. I may be an “inner”, but only just. It is odd that those in the Opposition parties who are deeply committed to the European ideal should turn their backs on this European solution.
My third point is that there is no country-based reporting or control of emissions in Europe. Since 1990, Austria has increased its emissions by 13%, Ireland has increased its emissions by 7%, and Holland has kept its emissions static. During the same period, the United Kingdom has reduced its emissions by some 28%. If the European Union were serious about getting to grips with emissions, and getting to grips with individual countries that are tackling the problem, it would have addressed that fact.
My final point is that we are seeing dysfunctional member state behaviour. Germany and Holland are building brand-new coal-powered stations—lignite-burning stations. I believe that those countries not only do not engage in carbon capture and storage, but have made it illegal, which does not suggest that they understand the challenge that must be faced.
I have just been given a note saying that I should wrap up. Let me end by saying that, while there is no doubt that we all agree that climate change is a clear and present danger, we must bring the rest of the world with us, and by turning our back on arrangements such as the European emissions trading system and allowing the EU to put a submission to the Paris COP talks that is frankly feeble, we are doing the opposite. We will not solve the problem of global warming by fixing our 1.5% of total global emissions.
Dr Whitehead
I want to speak about new clauses that relate to a number of aspects of the Bill, and to the position in which we find ourselves in relation to a low-carbon economy for the future.
New clause 7 is very similar to new clause 3, and concerns an issue about which I think both Opposition parties feel very strongly: the need to develop a systematic strategy for carbon capture and storage. We have heard several references to what the Conservative manifesto at the last general election did or did not say, but the Government mentioned CCS in that manifesto. They also mentioned the least-cost routes to decarbonisation. Clearly—this is certainly the advice of the Committee on Climate Change—they will have to think carefully about CCS when they respond on the fifth carbon budget this summer, because CCS, among other things, represents a substantial implementation of least-cost routes to decarbonisation in the long term. The shameful pulling of the two CCS pilot projects mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig), in essence on the grounds of cost, represents a missed investment opportunity that could have reduced the cost of decarbonisation at a later date. That cost is an important element of our approach to a future CCS strategy. It is important to be clear that the cancellation of the projects does not and should not mean the end of CCS in this country.