Lord Stephen
Main Page: Lord Stephen (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Stephen
“Energy storage systems
The Secretary of State must—(a) set out a plan to support the development of storage systems for electricity that is generated from renewable sources,(b) put in place pilot schemes to store renewable energy and reduce the problem associated with intermittency of supply,(c) set targets in relation to the provision of renewable energy storage capacity, and(d) set out progress made on these issues in the form of a report, which must be laid before Parliament.”
Lord Stephen
My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register. Amendment 55D is tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Teverson. When I was the Minister responsible for energy in Scotland and, in particular, for renewable energy, the Scottish Government set some very ambitious targets to increase renewable generation and decrease reliance on fossil fuels. I used to give speeches saying that 100% of Scotland’s electricity should come from renewables. I got challenged on this quite substantially from certain sources. One of the big challenges was intermittency. People said that it was okay if renewables were 10%, 15% or 20% of what we were generating, but if it went higher than that and into base load territory, it would be a disaster as renewables could not be relied upon and could not be a secure source for future energy supply. When you adopt that line of argument, what happens when fossil fuels become extremely expensive or substantially start to run out, I do not know, but there are plenty of people, some of whom we have seen in this Room over the past few weeks, who are quite prepared to put that to one side and hope for the best.
Lord Stephen
I thank my noble friend the Minister. I absolutely agree that there is a lot of very good work going on within the department and some of the other government or public sector organisations providing support in this area that she has referred to. I do not see that as in any way contradictory to the benefits of bringing in this sort of amendment. In being prepared to withdraw it today, I would ask the Government to consider the benefits of introducing an amendment of this kind at a later stage in the consideration of the Bill. This is such a centrally important issue that it merits introduction to the Bill, for the reasons that I have mentioned. I will not go over all those reasons again, but we need to say that it is important and include it in the Bill, in the same way as we think that decarbonisation is important—and a number of us want to include a target in the Bill for decarbonisation.
I was interested in the comment from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, that she is not particularly keen on targets, because I thought that the issue of targets was pretty central to the arguments coming from the Opposition Bench in relation to its criticism of the Bill. When I first came into government in Scotland in 1999—and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, referred to that—one issue that we had to deal with in coalition negotiations was the enormous number of targets that the Labour Party wanted to introduce into every aspect of government. At that time, there was a general view in Scotland and in my party that we could do with slimming down considerably the number of targets that the new Labour Party—bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in 1997—came surging forward with in its early days of government.
Baroness Worthington
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I want to clarify that, as I said in my speech at Second Reading and as I have consistently said in Committee, I agree with the setting of outcomes in terms of what the Government want to achieve. However, I am nervous of the micromanagement of individual technologies through ever smaller targets. An editorial in the Financial Times this week asked why we could not have a process where the Government set the objectives and the market chose the least costly and most sensible solution. I have consistently said that is what we should be doing. This Bill is not taking that approach and I fear that another very specific technology target might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Lord Stephen
We have touched on a very interesting area but we can all agree that a strategy is a very good thing here. Even the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, thought that a strategy was a good idea. Sometimes in government you have to be bold and ambitious in setting strategy and, sometimes, in setting targets. I take the point made by the noble Baroness about the importance of outcomes and not micromanaging. If the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, had been given John F Kennedy’s speech about sending a man to the moon by the end of the decade, he would probably have set it to one side and declined to go for it. Sometimes we have to be ambitious and we are dealing with very important change that needs to be driven by government. None of the major changes we are seeing in energy infrastructure in the United Kingdom and many other developed nations would be happening without huge intervention and commitment from government.
In many aspects, the Energy Bill will deliver exactly the sort of change we are all hoping for but not in relation to storage where much more needs to be done. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, was exactly right that when these big targets for renewable energy were first set storage was seen as a vital issue if they were to be introduced. They can also be achieved through a mixed basket of renewable energies, not all of which are intermittent in the way that wind and solar energy are. Storage is not rocket science; it is not so uncharted. We are aware of the technologies right here and now: the issue is how to deploy them sensibly. It is not all about balancing the network: it is about focusing some energy storage on renewable energies. I was interested to hear about the proposal for an individual turbine having its own internal storage capability. When we are building, as we have done, the biggest wind farm in Europe, there should be consideration of some sort of energy storage alongside such a huge investment. We have a lot more to do and I am excited at the prospect. I am ambitious for all of this and genuinely believe that we can do it. With the right commitment, support and focus, we can make this happen. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.