Lord Barker of Battle
Main Page: Lord Barker of Battle (Conservative - Life peer)
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
16. What recent steps he has taken to support community renewable energy projects.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The coalition agreement includes a strong commitment to encourage community ownership of renewable energy projects. We have taken a range of steps to deliver on this commitment. These include removing barriers to the development of community energy projects, setting up a website to provide practical support to communities and working directly with local government to promote best practice.
Chris White
In my constituency, Warwick hospital and Community Energy Warwickshire, a local social enterprise, have teamed up to put solar panels on the hospital’s buildings. Given the amount of property owned by the public sector, does my hon. Friend not agree that we should do everything we can to encourage this kind of partnership? Will he meet members of Community Energy Warwickshire and Warwick hospital to see how we can replicate this kind of project across the country?
Gregory Barker
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and his constituents. This is exactly the kind of project delivered through exactly the kind of partnership that we need to see more of. The coalition is working on a programme including a range of measures to ensure that we drive this forward. I look forward to explaining those in detail to my hon. Friend when I meet him and his constituents.
Paul Flynn
How can community energy projects be advanced if the Minister’s Department is collaborating with the nuclear industry to lie about the true effects of Fukushima, as described in leaked e-mails published by The Guardian? Is it true that an official in his Department wrote to EDF and the other companies saying, “We must get in, and we must make sure that the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not fill the space with the truth”?
Gregory Barker
I simply do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I have absolute trust in my Department, and the suggestion that there has been some Fukushima cover-up is absurd nonsense.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Far from being a champion of community energy projects, the Government seem to be intent on punishing them. In June the Minister cut feed-in tariff funding for schemes generating more than 50 kW. The Secretary of State said a moment ago that he wanted to make feed-in tariffs affordable, but cutting them for medium-scale school, hospital and community projects makes them unviable.
The Minister is aware that we disagree fundamentally with his decision, and our view is shared by the solar industry. Howard Johns, chairman of the Solar Trade Association, has said that the move would cripple the UK’s fledgling solar panel industry, adding:
“Crushing solar makes zero economic sense for UK plc because it will lose us major manufacturing opportunities, jobs and global competitiveness.”
This is yet another example of Government policy damaging our economy and cutting support for industry, rather than generating jobs and growth. Will the Minister admit that he got it wrong, and that he should think again?
Gregory Barker
The people who got it wrong were the people in the Labour party who were in government and created this programme. They know full well that the model was fundamentally not fit for purpose. The hon. Lady and her Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), decline to name a figure, but how much more money would they pump into a scheme that would be paid for from people’s bills?
If we had left the scheme unreformed, more than £3 billion would have been added to the cost in the form of high subsidies. We are committed to rolling out solar energy, which is a dynamic technology of the future, but we must do it responsibly. We cannot do it by providing the open-cheque subsidies that would be encouraged by the irresponsible attitude of Opposition Front-Benchers.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
8. What recent assessment he has made of the potential contribution of demand-side measures to electricity market reform.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
Demand-side measures have huge potential to help us to reduce emissions and cut costs. The coalition’s green deal will be the most ambitious demand-side programme since the second world war, but we must go even further. Our proposals for energy market reform will drive radical new ways of reducing demand on an industrial scale, and will allow demand reduction measures to compete on an equal footing with new generation for the first time.
Zac Goldsmith
I am hugely encouraged by the Minister’s answer. Will he bring forward detailed proposals on how energy efficiency will be supported by the EMR? Knowing, as he does, the importance of EMR and of public finance, emissions reductions and energy security, will he commit himself to pressing for the maximum possible ambition?
Gregory Barker
I can assure my hon. Friend, who is an expert on these matters, that there will be the maximum possible ambition in the EMR documents that we will publish next week, but there is much more work to be done. We will need to consult the industry. Demand reduction is not like alternative forms of energy generation. We are creating a new model, and different types of indices and accounting will be necessary. We will need a robust system of measurement as well as the market mechanism. I have absolutely no doubt that we can crack it, and I can assure my hon. Friend of our ambition and determination to do so.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
Last week I received my gas bill, which showed that my consumption had been 25% lower than it had been during the same period last year. At the same time, however, the direct debit payments requested by the company were rising substantially. How confident is the Minister that demand-led measures will help hard-pressed consumers?
Gregory Barker
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his heroic efforts to reduce consumption. He is right: the best way of ensuring less exposure to rising gas prices, oil prices and fossil fuel prices generally is to reduce consumption. The green deal—the most ambitious roll-out of home energy efficiency since the second world war—will be a massive bonus for all our homes, and we hope to have applied it to 26 million homes by 2030.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
9. What assessment he has made of the performance of the Energy Saving Trust; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The Energy Saving Trust has helped to deliver substantial carbon savings and has assisted in Government energy efficiency objectives. However, the step change in ambition that will come with the roll-out of the green deal will include the Government ending dependence on just one monopoly provider and opening up the market for advice and best practice to dynamic competition.
Meg Munn
I agree that the Energy Saving Trust has done great work. It has been publicly funded and it has provided a lot of advice and resources for people, so why will the Minister not ensure that all that publicly funded advice and resource information published to date continues to be available to the public through an organisation that will become a social enterprise?
Gregory Barker
There will continue to be publicly funded information, particularly on the green deal. We believe that the public should get the very best information and that the way to achieve that is by opening up the provision of advice to competition, rather than by just continuing with one monopoly provider. The Energy Saving Trust has done good work in the past, and we certainly anticipate that it will be part of the tender for the new provision of advice under the green deal.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
10. What recent discussions he has had on domestic energy bills with representatives of the six largest energy companies.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
11. What steps he plans to take to increase energy efficiency in housing.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The green deal is our ambitious new programme to transform energy efficiency in housing and in small and medium-sized enterprises. From late 2012, home owners, landlords and tenants will be able to install energy efficiency at no up-front cost, with repayments coming from their energy bill savings. Alongside the green deal, the energy company obligation will offer targeted support to the fuel poor and hard-to-treat homes.
Hugh Bayley
On 30 June, the Committee on Climate Change published its third report to Parliament, saying the following about emissions from residential buildings:
“Implementation of measures slipped in 2010. There will be a need for a significant acceleration in the pace of emissions reduction if indicators and carbon budgets are to be achieved”.
Will the Secretary of State therefore table an amendment to the Energy Bill before the summer recess to produce a statutory strategy to ensure that these targets are met?
Gregory Barker
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: not only did we slip slightly last year in the final throes of the regime that we inherited from the previous Government, but if we had carried on at the rate of progress of the previous Labour Government it would have taken 80 years to retrofit homes to the standard that we hope to achieve in two decades. We will certainly be linking the green deal to our commitments in the climate change legislation, and that is an amendment that we introduced and is included in the Energy Bill.
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Despite my best endeavours when I was in the Minister’s job, Londoners received only 5% of the insulation jobs and of the carbon emissions reduction target, even though they make up 15% of the population of England. Will the Minister now introduce a regional obligation on energy companies so that Londoners get a green deal and not a raw deal?
Gregory Barker
The right hon. Lady is right. Unfortunately, the programmes we had under the previous Government were ineffective, particularly in London. We are transforming that with the green deal and the energy company obligation and we shall certainly ensure that the roll-out of energy efficiency measures under the coalition is much fairer and much more ambitious than we saw under the previous Government.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Yesterday, a report by uSwitch showed that fuel poverty levels in the UK are spiralling, with 6.3 million households—almost a quarter of all UK homes—now classed as being fuel poor. That highlights the urgent need for energy-efficiency improvements coupled with support from Government. However, in the past year the Government have systematically scrapped support for fuel poor households. We have seen Labour’s Warm Front scheme cut, winter fuel payments reduced by up to £100 and the rejection of many Energy Bill amendments that would have provided extra support to—
Luciana Berger
Will the Minister tell us how he will get a grip on this out-of-control fuel poverty situation?
Gregory Barker
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. She will know that under the final five years of the Labour Government, the number of those in fuel poverty rose from 1.5 million to more than 4 million—an absolutely catastrophic record bequeathed to the coalition. We will turn that around with the most ambitious energy-efficiency programme since the second world war and a far more effective way of delivering help to the fuel poor.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
12. What steps he plans to take in response to the recommendation to his Department from Hayes McKenzie on the adequacy of guidance to developers and local authorities on best practice in the assessment and rating of noise from wind turbines.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
17. If his Department will undertake an impact assessment of the effect of the carbon floor price mechanism on the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
An assessment of the impacts of the carbon price floor on energy intensive industries is given in HMRC’s tax information and impact note, published alongside the Budget. Electricity bills for an average energy-intensive business are estimated to increase by 2% and 6% in 2013 and 2016 respectively as a result of the carbon price floor. However, in the late 2020s electricity bills will be between 2% and 5% lower than would otherwise have been the case.
Jessica Morden
Will the Minister outline what specific issues the Government are considering to prevent energy-intensive industries, such as the steel industry in my constituency, from being disadvantaged in comparison with their global competitors by policies such as the carbon price floor?
Gregory Barker
As the hon. Lady knows, we are meeting not just the steel manufacturers, such as those in her constituency, but a range of energy-intensive industries. I will be meeting the chief executives of several before the House rises for the recess. We are considering a range of measures in conjunction with the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and in the autumn we will announce the result of that collaboration.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
18. If he will take steps to simplify energy tariffs for consumers.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
19. What assessment he has made of the potential long-term benefits to the economy of expenditure on biogas technology.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The coalition Government are committed to increasing substantially the generation of renewable electricity and heat from waste through anaerobic digestion as well as through advanced conversion technologies such as gasification. Energy from a range of waste products contributes to reducing emissions, enhancing energy security and creating green jobs.
Dr Poulter
Anaerobic digestion has a number of advantages over other renewable energy technologies. It is generated constantly and can be stored in the grid in the form of gas, but people are having specific problems getting through the planning process to support the development of anaerobic digestion plants. What can the Minister do to help with this?
Gregory Barker
Obviously, planning per se is a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government, but we are keen that where any renewable energy installation occurs in a local community, the local community should share in the wider benefits and the financial benefits, helping them to retain some of the business rates in their community and potentially to take ownership of those assets through community share ownership. There is a whole range of community benefits, but we need to do a better job of explaining them to local residents.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
22. What steps he is taking to provide support for underground coal gasification.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
T9. I thank the Minister for giving his time earlier this week to meet the GreenWin organisation from my constituency. He will have noticed that it stands well prepared for green deal roll-out in my part of the world. Will he keep at the forefront of his mind at all times the fact that it is not only these big society organisations that will make the green deal a success, but the small value-added services that can be offered to make energy efficiency possible for many of our constituents—services such as basic loft clearance, which he knows could be a deal breaker?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
I was delighted to meet my hon. Friend and GreenWin, which is an excellent organisation whose expertise is now radiating beyond his constituency. He is absolutely right. Many of the barriers to the green deal and take-up of energy efficiency are not just financial but involve practical measures such as clearing the loft. A community response to overcoming those barriers is often the very best way. My officials will be working to see how we can spread the expertise of GreenWin right across the country.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
An observant constituent of mine noticed on a very sunny day that he was getting nothing back for the electricity he was generating from his solar panels. Luckily the problem—it was a grid problem—has now been resolved by Western Power. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that the infrastructure across the country is adequate to take on all the electricity, especially in areas where solar panels have become very popular, and to make absolutely sure that those people are able to get the feed-in tariff that they are generating?