Renewables Obligation (Amendment) Order 2013

Duke of Montrose Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I must admit that when I saw this order on the Order Paper, got a copy of it from the Printed Paper Office and opened it, I thought it was my maths O-level paper all over again. It took me back I will not say how many years to that dreaded moment. I passed in the end but it was quite a struggle. The formulae in the order as I went through it got more and more complicated: E=MC² was rather simple by comparison. I hope the people that have to interpret this have a lot more time and mathematical and computerised power than my brain normally does.

I thank my noble friend for going through the order and particularly for highlighting something very important to the south-west and my part of the world: the wave side. Yes, DECC and the Government have put that back up to five ROCs but what is important about this, which my noble friend did not mention, is that that has put it back on a par with what they pay in Scotland. We in the south-west can now compete with our northern brothers and sisters in terms of marine energy. I very much welcome that.

One of the particularly good things about this is that we are moving into a much more professionally and better managed transition in terms of ROC values. I know that ROCs are about to disappear anyway but we are able to make measured and predicted changes in the regime to keep investor confidence, yet knowing that we will have the mechanism to, we hope, keep these numbers within what I thought was a very good settlement in terms of the levy control framework between DECC and the Treasury. That was a good outcome. I hope this approach now means that we will not have that backwards and forwards in trying to second-guess in the short term, and that we have an environment where the investor community is able to put its money where its mouth is—and where our mouth is—in getting renewable capacity, and that that actually happens.

My main question is very much the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. We have a marvellous list here of all the technologies that there are in renewables, some of them which even I forget about. Some, like co-firing bioliquids sounds definitely like something I would not want to get involved in but there are some really interesting technologies there. A number of them are biomass-related and I would also be interested to know where the Government have got to in terms of these quite complicated supply-chain issues around sustainability. It is sometimes all too easy to condemn everything and to give excuses for things not to happen, rather than to bring them forward. However, sustainability is important, and I am very interested to hear my noble friend’s comments in response to my question and to that of Lord Grantchester.

[The Duke of Montrose]

I would like to raise a couple of small questions. One is out of curiosity. We all understand that Scotland administers its own renewable energy regime and the quantities of ROCs that are administered. However, when it comes to providing the certificates, can the Minister tell us whether this is done centrally? Is a Scottish ROC equivalent to an English ROC, and able to be traded across the border? When we get to this horrible question of a referendum in Scotland and Mr Salmond asks whether the Scots want to be devolved, will they suddenly find themselves having to set up ROC administrations that they do not presently have? I am sure that if that is the case, it will be one of many aspects that have not been costed.

The other point comes from what the Minister said about the extent to which the Government expect to have a conversion of coal power stations to biomass. If conversion does take place to the full extent that the Government anticipate, how much of the biomass required is available from the UK and how much might have to be imported?

[Lord Teverson]

Before my noble colleague sits down, I would like to say something important about co-ordination between Scotland and the south: we definitely need a ROC concert.