Energy and Climate Change

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I have spoken about wind farms in mid-Wales before, in particular in a Westminster Hall debate on 10 May, which I secured. It is the dominant issue in my constituency, and in the neighbouring constituencies of the hon. Members for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), who are not present today.

I am sceptical about onshore wind, and have been for a long time, and an increasing number of MPs have been contacting me since the Westminster Hall debate to tell me that they agree. I do not want merely to repeat the points I made in May, but I must outline why I am sceptical about onshore wind and why I am so implacably opposed to the mid-Wales connection project.

The cost of the huge subsidies involved is a matter of great concern, particularly to the poorest citizens in our society. Between 5 million and 6 million people are already in fuel poverty, and they are facing a choice between heating or eating. This is, in effect, a Robin Hood tax in reverse: the poorest people in society are having to pay additional sums in their energy bills and that money is being transferred to huge, powerful companies.

There is also an impact on business competitiveness. Some 1 million young people are unemployed in our country—that is 1 million lives scarred by the scourge of unemployment. We are doing what we can to find jobs for those people, but we are making matters worse by undermining competitiveness and driving jobs overseas.

There is also the impact on the landscape, which is particularly important to me. History in Wales teaches us the cost of thoughtless development. We had coal spills dumped all over the valleys, which this generation has had to pay to clear up. We have had irresponsible coniferous forestation, which caused massive environmental problems, and which this generation has also had to clear up.

I am particularly concerned about the scale of what is proposed in mid-Wales—the sheer horror of it. The mid-Wales connection is based on the largest ever onshore wind development in England and Wales. Under the proposals, permission will be granted for the erection of about 500 new onshore wind turbines in mid-Wales—the final figure depends on their size—over and above the 250 that currently exist and those that already have planning approval. There will also be a 20-acre electricity substation and about 100 miles of new cable, much of it carried on steel towers 150 feet high down one of the narrow valleys that lead from mid-Wales to Shropshire. It is scarcely believable; the scale is almost impossible to comprehend. Not even the enemies of Britain over the centuries have wrought such wanton destruction on this wonderful part of the United Kingdom.

However, today I want to speak about the impact of wind farms on democracy—that great invention that is the foundation of Britain’s constitution, and which is being disregarded so casually throughout Europe. I wanted to entitle this speech “Wind farms and democracy in mid-Wales”, but I felt that that would be deemed too tendentious.

In his response to my speech on 10 May, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) offered some reassuring comments. In referring to wind farm development, he said that

“it must be in the right location, and it must have…democratic support”.

He warmed to this theme, saying that

“too often, onshore wind is imposed on communities that do not want it. I am keen to ensure that we address that democratic deficit…in our plans.”

He went on, adding with a flourish that

“it needs more democratic legitimacy than it has today, and I intend to ensure that that happens.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 365-67WH.]

I was much encouraged, not surprisingly.

In my speech on 10 May, I also referred to a public meeting in Welshpool, to which 2,000 people came. I asked those people to come with me on a three-hour journey to Cardiff to express their views to the National Assembly. A few weeks later, they did—2,000 of them, on 37 buses. It was the best protest ever seen outside the National Assembly. That is how strongly people feel, and as a result the First Minister changed his position on the maximum cumulative impact that could be allowed in mid-Wales. He said that a new 400 kV line and a substation were not needed. We were generally encouraged, but then the giant energy companies got to work, the way dark forces do in science fiction. These massively powerful wind farm companies—leviathans fattened on public subsidy—got to work with a mixture of threats to people and community payments, which is a way of securing support for their proposals locally. A terrific amount of pressure was applied, and there was a huge lobbying exercise.

Members can imagine my shock and disappointment at reading a BBC report two weeks ago which said that more wind farms and pylons may be built in Wales in the national interest, despite local protests. The very same Minister whom I quoted earlier was quoted as saying that

“this is a national decision…the local views are important…but at the end of the day we are making decisions in the national interest”.

In the national interest—that is autocracy, not democracy.

Even more shocking is the pressure being put on local planning authorities. They are being pressured into deciding on applications by a particular date, and conditions have been ignored. They are told that all the conditions that would apply to any other planning application must not apply to wind farm developments. Transport infrastructure, ecological and environmental information, power usage—none of these factors is known, and yet they are being pressured into making decisions. It is utterly outrageous.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I call Caroline Lucas.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Over the next few minutes, I shall give a critique of aspects of the Government’s energy policy, but first I thank the Government for having an energy policy that it is possible to critique. Although I do not want to make a party political point, it is worth reflecting on the legacy that we inherited. On renewables, we were 25th out of the 27 EU countries, in front of only Malta and Luxembourg. Some 90% of our energy is from gas, coal and oil; 2.5% is from renewables. Furthermore, in 2010—the last year for which figures are available—the percentage of our energy that came from renewables actually fell. That is a staggering achievement, and it is worth noting.

What the previous Government were able to do—they had some success in this—was pass legislation, some of which is important, and that is the basis of what I shall talk about today. The Climate Change Act 2008 requires us to reduce our emissions by 80% from a 1990 baseline. I will not argue about the basis for that; we have heard from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the importance of the 2° C target. I agree with much of what she said on that, but as she is present I just make the point that if she, like George Monbiot, had accepted that nuclear power has a part to play in meeting the target, her speech would have had more resonance.

The Act places onerous requirements on us. Broadly speaking, reducing our use of carbon by 80% from a 1990 base requires a strategy that may embrace 25,000 wind turbines—I say that with some regret to my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who is sitting in front of me—and 25 nuclear power stations. Of course, it would also mean a massive reduction in energy use; I think that Members on both sides of the House would agree with that, and the green deal is a great way forward. My difficulty is with the next Act that the previous Government enacted, relating to the EU 20-20-20 directive of 2009, which requires us to produce 15% of our energy from renewables over the next decade. In my judgment, that directive contradicts our needs under the Climate Change Act 2008. We must decarbonise, and not necessarily go in for a renewables frenzy.

People might wonder why that matters, given that renewables need to be part of the mix. It matters because the emphasis on renewables has, in my judgment, meant that we have de-emphasised other low-carbon solutions that need to go ahead much more quickly, such as nuclear power and more use of gas, which I shall discuss.

One particular aspect of the renewables frenzy brought about by the 2009 directive undermines our ability to decarbonise, and we can see it in the solar power episode that is still playing out. We made a decision to pay 40p per unit for electricity that we can sell for 8p or 9p a unit. That, of course, generates a big industry. We make that subsidy even though we are no more than 2% or 3% of the global industry for solar, and therefore realistically cannot make a big difference to how the price comes down, and even though solar power produced through photovoltaics produces more than three times more carbon than nuclear power, as was shown in a recent peer-reviewed paper from Imperial college.

Why does all that matter? Why does it matter whether we go for renewables so hard, as opposed to going for gas, which is part of this? One of the things that we have to do is get our car and transport infrastructure off oil. We shall do that not just by electrifying, although that might be part of the solution, but by going down the route of gas cars. There are about 10 million gas cars in the world, more than 2 million of which are in Pakistan. There are nothing like that many electric cars. To say that gas is not part of the solution is just wrong.

[Glyn Davies]

Notwithstanding the fact that my hon. Friend is focused on putting too many wind farms in my constituency, I agree with much of what he says. Does he agree that we need to emphasise the potential of tidal power as well? I have not heard that mentioned a great deal. The Severn barrage can supply 5% of British energy needs. The potential of tidal power is massive.

[David Mowat]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am not an expert in hydro power, the potential of which is very large. We have a deadline of 2017 to replace about a third of our generating capacity. To do that, we must use proven technology. That meant nuclear, but we might be late for that now. It is going to end up being gas, because gas is the default solution of a failure to invest in other technologies.

The very real need to decarbonise is being threatened by the costs that we are incurring through a strategy that is too focused on introducing the wrong sort of renewables too quickly. Let me give an example of the likely cost of the carbon floor. A £70 per tonne price of carbon will add about £400 to £500 to the average domestic bill. That is important because fuel poverty is at 10% now. We have energy-intensive industries laying off people or not investing in this country, in the context of trying to grow manufacturing as a percentage of GDP. The risk is that that will prevent some of the things that we need to do in pursuing decarbonisation. I ask the Government to consider this point: optimising renewables is not the same as optimising decarbonisation, and we need to do the latter.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is such a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who is a great mind in all areas of energy and one of the more assiduous Members of the House when it comes to constituency work, I am told.

I welcome the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is standing in on behalf of Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers. So far in this debate, the Government business managers have replied, probably better than most of the Ministers would have been able to do on their own, so I welcome the hon. Gentleman. He should be aware that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has a history of getting people to stand in for him in various matters, but I trust that his Christmas present from the Secretary of State will be slightly nicer than others that he might have given in the past.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), I am suffering from a spate of wind farm applications in my constituency. For years I have been campaigning against them. We should have gone nuclear a lot earlier, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South said. There is a fantastic quote in a very good book, “Let Them Eat Carbon” by Matthew Sinclair of the Taxpayers Alliance: “Renewable energy is plagued by old problems. Whilst the wind and the sun are free, using them to supply energy when and where we need it to power a modern economy is extremely expensive.”

We all know that, and even the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would have to recognise it, so why do we keep trying to foist onshore wind farms on to areas of low wind speed, where they devastate areas of natural beauty? I guess it is because wind was the only game in town for a long time and its lobbyists are among the best.

I thought that in the spirit of localism, it would be a good idea to give power to local authorities, so I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, the Onshore Wind Turbines (Proximity of Habitation) Bill a number of months ago. It languishes, I think, at No. 13 for the next Friday sitting that we might have, so is unlikely to see the light of day in this Session. However, I would like to think that, like the gubernator of California, it will be back in some form in the future. I offer it to Ministers as a way forward in trying to solve some of the problems by letting local councils decide the correct proximity of wind turbines to habitation.

Why am I so interested in this? In Daventry district, 19 sites are being looked at, are in the planning stage or are on appeal for wind turbines, most of which would be about 126.5 m high, roughly the size of the London Eye, and in a beautiful, green part of rolling English countryside. I am against the turbines because they simply do not work. Last December was one of the coldest periods on record, but it was also remarkably still. The turbines barely produced any energy and we needed to use all the other carbon-eating technologies.

[Glyn Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the sheer antipathy to wind farm development right across Britain is turning people against the development of renewable energy? It is transforming antipathy to onshore wind into antipathy to renewable energy.