Renewable Energy

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate initiated by my noble friend Lady Featherstone. One of the statistics that particularly struck me when I was researching this subject was that, as we came out of recession post-2008, in 2011-12 the renewable energy industry, or green industry generally, accounted for some 30% of growth. At a time when the UK economy is under challenge because of Brexit and other issues, it is really important to debate this focus on the way forward for the green economy and the savings it can provide for the long term. Although I am not going to talk about this, I very much echo the noble Earl’s focus on distribution capacity in certain regions of the United Kingdom—in Scotland but also very much in the south-west.

The area I want to concentrate on this evening is one that my noble friend has already mentioned but which is often not included in these sorts of debates: the renewable transport infrastructure. We often forget that transport accounts for some 28% of emissions in this country—not including international emissions from shipping and air—which is a major proportion. More importantly than that perhaps, as we know from Kyoto, Paris and beyond, we measure our effectiveness on emission reductions in this area against a 1990 baseline. I do not know whether noble Lords are aware of this, but despite our good performance in electricity generation, as the noble Earl mentioned, since 1990 we have reduced transport emissions by 2%—over 26 years, we have managed to reduce those emissions by a mere 2%. That means that our current target under the 2020 European agreement for greenhouse gases—a 10% reduction in transport emissions from 1990 to 2020—is very unlikely to be met on our current trajectory. Vehicle efficiency is good, but the only way we are going to significantly reduce those emissions is through the introduction of electric vehicles, whether they are driven by, I hope, renewable electricity generated through the grid or by hydrogen cell technology. The latter gives greater range—up to 300 miles—and allows recharging in as little as three minutes, which is like filling up your car with petrol or diesel at present.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. I welcome the work being done by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles, and the number of registered plug-in vehicles has risen from some 3,500 in 2013 to 63,000 this year to date. But a lot of those vehicles are hybrids and have a range of only 20 or 30 miles. They are not mis-sold exactly, but are something of a “greenwash” effort by certain manufacturers to get subsidies and do not really meet the challenge of creating a genuinely renewable transport system in this country. Are we going to increase our research in this area, particularly into hydrogen cells? I was going to say that the Government have been bragging, which is not fair, but the national network of hydrogen stations they have been talking about will be only 12-strong by the end of the year, which is not great national coverage. How do we accelerate this? At last, we have a cultural change whereby electric vehicles are starting to be acceptable, but to go further, we need the range to be greater and refuelling to be quicker, and confidence in a network of charging points that is available to everybody. This is one of our greatest challenges in terms of emissions and meeting our renewables targets under the 2020 regime, and an area we therefore need to focus on in the future.

I am afraid I cannot declare an interest, because I do not have a plug-in vehicle myself. That may be hypocritical of me, but I am waiting for a vehicle at a sensible price that has the right range and which I can refuel quickly. I commend those people who have bought plug-in vehicles so far. I am one of many who are desperate to move on before I trade in my 10 year- old model. I hope the Minister can give me an assurance that there is a way to promote this. I have one last statistic: as I said, 63,000 plug-in vehicles have been sold up to 2016, but that is only 1.4% of total vehicle sales. We still have another 98.6% to go, and I hope the Minister can reassure me on this and encourage me in my hope that change will happen rapidly.