Community Energy Schemes

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of empowering community energy schemes.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I start by thanking Steve Shaw and Power for People, who have worked tirelessly on the campaign to unblock community energy. I also thank the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston), who is promoting the Local Electricity Bill in this Session. I am pleased to see the hon. Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), with whom I have worked closely on the campaign, in the Chamber. They are enthusiastic champions for community energy in the House, and I look forward to their contributions.

Imagine a future where people can purchase clean electricity directly from a local supply company or co-operative and where every pound spent on powering our homes or cars is recycled back into the local community, supporting jobs, funding new facilities and services and contributing to renewable energy infrastructure. That is what community energy is about: ensuring that people everywhere support and benefit from the clean energy transition.

Solving the climate crisis and meeting our net zero ambitions will require huge changes that will be seen and felt directly by people everywhere. We need a radical shift in industrial systems, technology and business models, which must be underpinned by strong and decisive Government action and the right policies. However, one of the most crucial requirements is bringing people on board for the transition to net zero, because they have to pay for the transition through their energy bills and taxes, they have to host new infrastructure in their neighbourhoods and on their landscapes, and they need to alter their routines and behaviours.

Unless we bring people on board for the transition to net zero, there is a huge risk that the public will not welcome or even accept the necessary changes. The consequences of that will be that our progress to net zero will be much more lengthy, costly and contested, and it will be less inclusive, equitable and environmentally sustainable. The real strength of community energy is its connection to people and places. It is people who make community energy what it is, and it is people who will see the benefits. That is what we are trying to achieve with the Local Electricity Bill.

Community energy is one of the few tried and tested means of engaging people in energy systems. The Bill would lead to energy market reforms that would empower community-owned and run schemes to sell local renewable energy directly to households and businesses. It would make new community energy businesses viable and, by bypassing large utilities, those businesses would keep significant additional value within local economies.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend—she is my hon. Friend on this subject—on securing the debate. As I understand it, the Government argue that the means to enable new suppliers to come into the system are available. However, when I recently inquired about how many Licence Lite applications, which are meant to help new energy suppliers enter the market, had been granted by Ofgem, the answer was that three licences have been granted since 2015 and none has been applied for since 2019. Might that not suggest some changes are needed to make it easier for new suppliers to enter the market?

[Wera Hobhouse]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Something does not work, and I will come on to why it does not work. The whole system is outdated and does not allow for the changes that we need to make to get to net zero. We have to test what works on the ground. The number of licences that have been granted speaks for itself. We have made no progress, yet the Government accept that community energy is a good thing and we should all support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

In view of the fact that there is a bit of time left, I thought I would say one or two things. I have come to learn about the Local Electricity Bill. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) once again on securing the debate, and thank all the Members who have supported it. To be honest, I find it a bit frustrating that people who want to do things that will contribute to helping to address the great challenge that we face, which is to change the way in which we produce and consume energy, find difficulties in their way.

I, too, look forward to listening with great interest to what the Minister has to say, because I thought the example that the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) gave of the £1 million and the microbrewery really made the case that it is disproportionate. I would have thought that any Government in such circumstances would be reaching out their arms to embrace those who wish to contribute to generating energy rather than allowing there to be obstacles in the way. We know that connecting to the grid is a problem even for quite large producers. There are a number of new offshore renewable projects, and when we ask how they are getting on, the answer is, “Well, there’s a problem about plugging the wire in when it comes ashore.” Of course, there are a lot of very important technical issues to do with the capacity of the grid and so on, but if we look at this historically, we will see that our energy generation system has relied for a very long time on big places making the energy—it used to be via coal, gas and nuclear—and sending that electricity down wires to all the homes in the country.

The community energy Bill is saying that there is a different model that could help us to reach our goals. I am struck when I hear colleagues talk about the success of community energy in countries such as Germany. I know nothing about the generating and distribution system in Germany, but it gives rise to the question: if they can do it there, can someone please explain to me one more time why we find it so difficult to do it here? The reason I quoted earlier the Licence Lite application figures I had sought was that they suggest to me that this is complex and difficult when we ought to be making it a lot easier.

We can envisage a future in which there are two other benefits. First, we know that getting infrastructure constructed in this country can lead to a lot of objections and difficulties. If the idea of localised nuclear generating facilities, which Rolls-Royce has been talking about, comes to pass at some time in the future, I have no doubt that there will be a lively debate, because it is a much more devolved system of manufacture and distribution of electricity. However, experience surely teaches us that if we give people a stake, they are more likely to agree to the infrastructure being constructed.

I remember from my time as the Environment Secretary hearing from a community that had put up a wind turbine. We know that onshore wind turbines are very unpopular indeed in some parts of the country. That is part of the reason why we have so much offshore wind. However, that community had no trouble getting approval from the village, because people understood the benefits that would flow from electricity generation, and they knew that the money from the feed-in tariff would go towards supporting the local community hall.

When he replies, I hope that the Minister will not only give encouragement but set out the practical steps that the Government are willing to take to make it easier for that to happen. The hon. Member for Bath says that she has requested a meeting, and I join her in that request. It would help all of us who are campaigning—I freely acknowledge that I have come late to this—to understand what the problems are. In the fight against dangerous climate change, the fight to change the way we produce, distribute and use our energy, nobody is afraid of trying to get to grips with the practical changes that are required. We want to support the Government to make the necessary changes.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

The problem in Northern Ireland is that if everybody were to convert to electric vehicles, as we are trying to do in relation to net zero, our grid would collapse. With everyone coming home at 6 o’clock at night and plugging in, the grid would collapse. The only way to deal with that is local generation for charging networks, as has happened in some communities in Israel and America. That approach has worked and is working.

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really interesting example, because the future will require a huge increase in renewable electricity generation, whether for heat pumps for homes, for cars or for other things. Electric vehicles are an interesting example of thinking about energy in a different way. For example, if the car arrives home and is parked up at 7 o’clock in the evening, and that is when people go indoors to put on the kettle and the TV, we could say, given that there will be loads of car batteries being used, “Between 7 and 11, part of our generating capacity will be the batteries in all those cars. We will draw them into the system, and then when we have gone to bed, hopefully at a reasonable hour, the battery can be charged up to take us to wherever we want to go the following morning.” That is such a good example of how we can think differently about energy generation and distribution, and it is a powerful argument for the Bill, which so many hon. Members are here to support.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We move on to the Front Benchers, who have at least 10 minutes. They can have a bit longer if they want, as long as they leave a couple of minutes at the end for the mover of the motion to respond.