Energy Bill [HL]

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, I am happy to support the amendment, to which I put my name, and I support everything that the Lord, Lord Teverson, just said. The Government have very challenging targets for renewable energy by 2020. They will achieve those targets only if there is sufficient private investment. Investment decisions depend on assessment of risk.

In the case of geothermal in this country, there is a really no doubt about the existence of the resource. Indeed, a couple of decades ago, I was co-leader of the group that produced the first geothermal map of the UK. The resource is certainly there. I declare an interest as a technical consultant to one of the companies to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, just referred.

We know that we have the hot rocks at depth. The real question is whether we have adequate technology to extract the heat from those rocks. Therein lies the uncertainty and the exploration risk. There is a good chance that we can do that, but if an investor is going to invest in this he really wants to see the risks minimised. As the noble Lord pointed out, after the demonstration of a successful well in one place, there is a real danger of someone else coming in and drilling nearby.

At an earlier stage in informal discussions, the Government’s position was that that could probably be managed through local planning consents, but I do not think that that is the case. Modern drilling technology allows you to drill in one place, maybe 10 miles away, and then turn your well horizontal and go into anywhere within a pretty wide radius. In other words, if we are really to give investors the kind of security which I suspect they will demand in order to support this kind of investment, we really have to have a licensing regime which effectively pre-empts others who come in later and have not made the primary investment from tapping in on the risky exploration work that the initial company has done. I am not sure whether this amendment is in the exact terms that we need, but there will not be significant investment in geothermal in this country, I believe, unless something along these lines is done fairly rapidly.

What we have to bear in mind is that capital moves between countries and that any company interested in investing in geothermal will compare the opportunities in this country with those elsewhere. For example, I believe that Ireland has legislation in place to give the kind of protection that we are asking for here. Ireland has comparable geothermal possibilities; the same is true in other parts of Europe. If we do not do this, the capital will simply move elsewhere and this contribution to the 2020 target will not be realised.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Perhaps the noble Lord can help me. I understand exactly where he is going on the protection of the investment but he is being incredibly coy about telling us what the scope of the possibility would be. He said that he conducted an inquiry some years ago. How many gigawatts or megawatts of electricity could there be in the UK? I am not wanting to pour cold water on this—I stumbled into that one. However, are we going to do something here that could, at the end of the day, be worth while or are we just kidding ourselves? Perhaps this is another technology that might be appropriate in countries or areas of the world where tectonic plates are crashing. In Iceland, that is self-evident but one does not get the feeling that there are too many serious earthquake areas in the UK where you are likely to access those kind of geothermal possibilities. Can the noble Lord be a little more specific about what he would regard as the likely output from a geothermal electricity industry?

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, that is a difficult question to answer at the moment; we would be in a better position to answer it after the Cornish exploration has gone ahead. The fact is that this work was killed around about 25 years ago, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, by the crash of the oil price and by the DTI, as it was then, simply being no longer interested in supporting this work. Until that time, we had very good support from the DTI. In fact, the one geothermal source in this country that is functioning at the moment, which is the one around Southampton, was the outcome of the PhD work of one of my students at the time.

Since that time, drilling and fracturing technology has improved enormously. The oil companies have developed that to a very fine art. One can now drill, with control of the drill tip, to about the same precision as a brain surgeon uses when operating on a brain. It can be a very fine control indeed. We really have to see how successful this is at exploiting these resources, which have been known about for quite a long time. It is very simple to tell the noble Lord how many gigawatts of energy could in principle be removed, but that is a meaningless figure until we have some feeling about how effective the new technology is going to be. I would not want to say at this stage that this will save our renewables targets. At the moment, I would say there is a good chance that it will amount to good housekeeping but it may be considerably more than that.

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[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I imagine that this will be part of the electricity market review. We cannot keep adding more subsidies provided by often impecunious consumers to the research fantasies of the British generating industry. There has to be some degree of control. One would imagine that the electricity market review, to which the Government are committed, will give proper consideration to this so that we do not have the creeping incrementalism that results in the submerged and disadvantaged groups in the country subsidising such research programmes.

[Lord Marland]

The noble Lord makes a good point. We have been looking at this matter very carefully for the past month or so. There is a framework in place; we have a deep geothermal challenge fund and have been allocating funds towards research. There is a ROC that is currently cast in stone and we are in a very adequate space to take this issue forward. I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said on the previous amendment, it is clearly the general target of the Government—as shown by providing the ROCs incentive—to increase the amount of renewable energy in this country by 2020, and to make offshore wind the major component of the provision of that quota. We have already done reasonably well, in that there are already 1.3 gigawatts of offshore wind operating around our coasts, and other projects are in the pipeline. However, the process takes considerable time. For it to happen—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said—we need not only the incentive of the ROCs in place, but the means of mobilising substantial sums of private capital. That private capital needs to minimise risk. At the moment, the problem for an offshore wind facility, either in operation or provisional—with a lease granted by the Crown Estate or with an agreement to lease—is that the prospect of an oil or gas facility being put in the same area will kill that investment stone dead. It would certainly put off prospective investors in that scheme or potential scheme.

The amendment therefore seeks to ensure that investors in the industry and the supply industry—an important economic by-product of offshore wind—have sufficient confidence to invest sums of money in offshore facilities that are not threatened by effectively being displaced by a future oil or gas facility. That is needed because of the present disparity of provision in the rules governing offshore oil and gas consents. The amendment would prevent a forced intervention by the Secretary of State to consent to an oil and gas works on top of an existing lease, or agreement to lease, for an offshore renewable project. It would allow the offshore oil or gas project to occur were consent to be given by the operator or potential operator of the offshore activity—in other words, provided that negotiations could operate and an agreement could be reached, there could be coexistence. Although theoretically both sides of the equation recognise the need for coexistence, there is no balanced system for dealing with them.

It is not that we are creating a special, privileged position for offshore wind, because the consenting system for offshore renewables in general—tidal and wave power would also be covered by the amendment— includes a requirement to negotiate with other sea users. The offshore operator is required to negotiate with the potential gas operators and other users of the seabed. On the other hand, the current guidance from the Infrastructure Planning Commission—which, until the Government get their way, is the planning authority—requires that the views of other sea users must be sought out, that action taken in response to those views must be reported and that justification must be given where no action is taken. However, the Petroleum Act requires oil and gas activity to take due regard of other projects, such as renewables, but there is no requirement to negotiate in those circumstances. We are not talking about a level playing field at the moment, and I therefore hope that the Minister and the Government will recognise that there is an issue here.

There is particularly an issue about discouraging the substantial amounts of private investment that will be needed in these offshore technologies in order to meet the Government’s targets for renewables. It is already public policy to reach those targets, but the present system threatens confidence in investments in those targets. It is certainly the case that for those seeking finance from the City and elsewhere for these projects—particularly as we go further offshore, as we will need to do—questions of confidence and the possibility of the leases being overridden by a subsequent decision on oil and gas facilities are major considerations and some of the reasons why such investment is inhibited. I hope that the Minister will at least recognise that this is a problem. If he is not prepared to accept the exact wording of this amendment, I hope that he will recognise that this is something that the Government have to address and that some degree of equal treatment will be needed down the line.

I think all sides of this Committee recognise the importance of meeting these renewable targets and want to remove any inhibition in doing so. Therefore, this amendment, or something like it, is a necessary step to ensure that the investment is there to meet those targets. I beg to move.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Is the basis for this amendment that somehow it is preferable for us to have offshore wind rather than access to oil and gas? For many of us, it is as important in this country that we have access to the reserves of oil and gas in order to sustain a number of our vital industries. They will depend on electricity for a lot of their fuel sources. If I were still speaking as a constituency MP representing a seat near Grangemouth, the last thing I would want to do would be to support offshore wind at the expense of adequate supplies of gas and oil to go into the oil refinery and the chemical processing plants that are a major source of employment for my constituents. My noble friend needs to be rather more frank with us. Is it just for the convenience of investors or it is based on the assumption that somehow oil and gas are bad and windmills are good?

[Lord Whitty]

I think it is just as well that the MP for Grangemouth does not determine our energy policy. It is important to recognise that there are substantial employment opportunities in renewables.

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[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Do those jobs exist at the moment?

[Lord Whitty]

Indeed. Many of those jobs have the skills that will be required in renewable technologies as well. However, at the moment it is the Government’s policy, the previous Government’s policy and the policy of all parties in this House to reach the target for renewables in this country. That is not saying that we should close down oil and gas opportunities; it is saying that in future we should give the renewables industry, whether wind, tidal or wave, equal opportunity with gas and oil facilities. When offshore wind providers are seeking private investment in a relatively new technology, the confidence of those investors and the realisation of government policy in this area are inhibited by the threat of the oil and gas facilities trumping them. To look at it the other way around, if proposers proposing a renewables process operation are faced with the possibility of an oil and gas facility coming in, they have to negotiate. At the moment, there is no obligation on the oil and gas companies to negotiate, which is the injustice that I am addressing.

To be frank with my noble friend, I think that, yes, it is a matter of public policy to give some preference to renewable industries and that we reduce the carbon content of our energy supply. It is therefore important to reduce the reliance on carbon-based fossil fuel. But that is not quite what this amendment is addressing. It is to address the disparity of treatment between the two sectors and to ensure that confidence can be inspired for developing renewable technologies offshore.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I was not going to speak on this amendment, but I have to say that there is a lot of water up in the North Sea and I am not sure why the two cannot coexist. You cannot move the oil and gas fields, but a lot of windmills can be moved because there is rather a lot of wind up there, which tends to be spread over a bigger area. I think that it is incumbent on the mover of this amendment to be more explicit about in which areas he would envisage a degree of overlap or competition. At the moment, he is seeking to legislate by assertion, not by evidence, and seeking to tell us that there could be some need for reassuring of investors. Frankly, there are lots of other reasons why investors are a bit leery of offshore wind farms. The technology, the durability of the metals and the exposure to all kinds of elements mean that the North Sea is more inhospitable than a lot of areas where offshore wind developments have taken place so far.

However, perhaps the noble Lord can tell us where there is likely to be an overlap; that is, where there is a clear need for wind power in addition to reservoirs of oil and gas. I have to come back to the point that not all the output of the North Sea is used for energy-generating purposes. A lot is used for the high-tech existing industries. We are in the process of losing Pfizer, but the petrochemical complexes across the United Kingdom are sources of high-tech, well paid employment for large numbers of people. These jobs exist and they will carry on as long as oil and gas is coming through to be reprocessed. National security and various economic objectives would stand up just as robustly and strongly as anything in relation to renewable targets, from which I do not demur.

I have yet to see where we would find that there would be a conflict on such a scale as to require amendments of this kind. If there is a case, it has not been made. If there is not a case, I think that it is part of the anti-oil and gas mentality of certain sections of what chooses to call itself the green and renewable movements in this country. Therefore, it has to be balanced out. I do not think that the case has been made adequately for such an amendment.

[Lord Oxburgh]

In the interests of reducing internecine strife, I think the prospects of serious incompatibility here are quite small. There is not really as much scope for moving wind farm locations as it might appear—wind is pretty variable—but, given the kind of technology of which I spoke in relation to the previous amendment, one can now exploit gas fields or oil fields at an angle from some distance without too much difficulty. It is important to give some confidence, as far as it is needed for investors in this area, but I do not think this is going to be a big problem.

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I have words of comfort for the noble Baroness. I have on previous occasions said that I totally share her dismay at the complexity of the legislation, and I have arranged a meeting next week with the chairman and the chief parliamentary counsel of the Law Commission to discuss the whole process of consolidation, how the Law Commission approaches it, where the initiative lies and whether it considers that the Electricity Act and the Gas Act would be a case for consolidation. I am not just talking the talk; I am, I hope, walking the walk. I hope that Ministers and officials in the department will recognise that some of us are not going to let that matter rest.

I am very glad that the noble Baroness said that this is a probing amendment, because the issue is extremely simple. Section 48 of the 2008 Act gives the Government power to impose changes on a funded decommissioning programme after it has been done. It has, no doubt, been represented by the nuclear industry that it contains a considerable element of uncertainty about additional charges possibly being made after the original programme had been agreed or about changes being made to the timing of the payments. At the moment, the payments are intended to be spread over the life of a plant so that by the end of that time there will be a sufficient fund available to cover the decommissioning and waste treatment. It is absolutely right that that should not now fall on the taxpayer but is part of the cost of producing the electricity. Under that section, the Government have the power to impose a change. All this clause is doing, as I understand it, is requiring the Government to agree a change with the developer. It may well be possible for the Government to suggest there should be changes, but the developer has to agree. Given what we have been saying in earlier debates about the need to try to create certainty, I think this clause is entirely right. I am glad the noble Baroness decided to table merely a probing amendment because I think the clause should be allowed to stand in the interests of certainty for the nuclear industry.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords, one thing that has struck me about this House is that although we often talk about scrutiny we rarely use the probing amendment, which is one of the regular tools of the discredited Standing Committee process in the House of Commons. It is often used there for time-wasting purposes as well. However, in today’s case it is useful when there is a certain degree—in fact, a large degree—of opacity in the wording of the Bill, for quite understandable reasons. You have to work your way through the network to try and get to the point.

On the substance of the issue, speaking as the chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, we are quite relaxed about this. We think that there will always be something which we have not anticipated—God forbid that, in terms of nuclear power generation or waste management, it was of the order of any terribly serious or dreadful prospect. My real point is that we recognise that there can be unforeseen circumstances. The Government have, on occasion, to change step for whatever reason but should do so, as far as is reasonably possible, with the agreement and understanding of those who are going to be affected by that. At the moment, with the agreement which has been reached on waste management—in terms of both the funding of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the costing programme for its long-term cost—the industry is, within reasonable bounds, happy on that issue. On that point, I hope that my noble friend is only probing and will withdraw.