Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, a little less than four hours ago, the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London introduced a moral issue into the debate. That is an interesting concept. I have never thought of myself as a particularly moral man, but I do feel an immense sense of responsibility for the situation in which we find ourselves, as indeed we all should. It was British engineers and technologists in the latter part of the 18th century who began the technical development that subsequently became known as the Industrial Revolution. That led to a situation somewhere near the middle of the 19th century, when 60 per cent of all the manufactured goods on the sea that were being traded in the world were British. The rest of the world very quickly caught on and has been catching up ever since, which is why we are where we are. If there has to be a country that can and should look for the way out of this dilemma, it is this one. We started it; we should be able to demonstrate how to get away from it. This is an energy Bill. It is called the Climate Change Bill, but it is of course all about energy. I have complained before to the Minister about the division of responsibilities for energy in the current government structure. It is ridiculous that we have Defra, which is responsible for the consequences of our energy use, and DBERR—or BERR—which is responsible for the energy supply. Ne’er the twain shall meet, except that I am sure that a Cabinet committee, or perhaps the Prime Minister, pulls them together and bangs heads, if that is what is required. As the Bill is about energy, it is all about how we limit the use of a particular sort of energy. There is a reverse side of that coin which we—apart from a couple of my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer—have not spent much time on: the question of how we answer society when it says, ““Alright, we have to do all this, but how will we keep everything going?””. If the purpose of the Bill is simply to stop things, it will not succeed. We must find the way into the future. I find it intensely frustrating that the way into the future already exists. The technologies are already there but they are not sufficiently discussed. They are not, of course, part of the Bill. Perhaps that is inevitable and perhaps we will have an energy Bill that will begin to make sense of this side of the equation in due course. Other obstacles have to be overcome. The world is not short of energy. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, whom academic Members on the Cross-Benches will recognise, said to me about a dozen years ago, ““You know, Bill, mankind has only one source of energy—nuclear—and he has a choice; he has a nuclear power station 98 million miles away, or he can build one here””. When you think about it, all the fossil fuel that we use today so happily and so profligately is the product of that nuclear power station in the sky 50 million or 60 million years ago. It took more than a million years to scrub the carbon out of the atmosphere then, to make the deposits that have now become oil, natural gas and coal. We, with extreme folly and a degree of ignorance, are attempting to put as much of that carbon back into the atmosphere in the space of a couple of centuries. In no way can such a programme be described as wise. The sun sends enough energy to this planet in 24 hours to supply the whole of mankind’s needs for a year. Where have we got to? We are getting better. They say—there are various estimates—that photoelectrics may be competitive with current electricity generating costs in three to five years. It may be 10 years, I do not know, but the price of photoelectrics is coming down and down. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, and I slightly disagree about energy production, because he would like to produce energy from biofuels and I point out to him that an acre of photoelectrics would produce 10 times as much energy per acre or hectare. It might not be as attractive to look at, but if it is energy that we need, that may be the route that we have to take. That is one source. We can cover every roof in the land with photoelectrics. We can also get a great deal of solar heat, although we have to be a little careful about that. I have a neighbour who has both solar panels on his roof and a 5-metre turbine in his garden. I wish I could say that this was putting him ahead of the game, but the report of his first 18 months of use indicates a repayment period of more than 60 years. There has always been an energy equation, and if we expect households to insulate and reduce their energy needs, a 60-year repayment period is not enough to attract people into that business. I venture to suggest that it also indicates that a level of subsidy of incentive would be required that is probably more than the Treasury would wish to vote. So there is a problem. If fossil fuels rise in price, however, that may become self-correcting. My noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Lords, Lord Vinson and Lord Palmer, talked about other forms of green energy and about the possibilities of nuclear power. One thing that has not been mentioned and ought very much to be is how we increase the thermal efficiency of our power generation. For every kilowatt hour that we purchase, something like 1.5 kilowatt hours of energy are used generating and transmitting that energy and go up into the atmosphere as waste heat. We need to overcome the planning obstacles to make that heat useable. I was disappointed to see that the Government are considering three existing nuclear power station sites in either East Anglia or the south-east for fairly immediate development. They are all on the coast and of course beautifully protected if sea levels rise. More importantly, 50 per cent or more of the energy that they produce will be wasted unless we go into horticulture in a very big way and cover thousands of acres with glass. That problem has to be cleared. We have to clear the administrative obstacles that prevent us making the changes needed to set these forms of energy free. We expect a Planning Bill when my noble friend Lord Taylor and I perhaps may swap positions. He may speak from here and I may speak from down there. We have to find a way to streamline the planning system, not just so that we can do things about nuclear power or wind more quickly and easily. My noble friend Lord Crickhowell inveighs against me on the Severn barrage, but we will have to consider it. It is my view that we need all the green energy that we can get, and that there is plenty of it. I have not yet mentioned solar furnaces, which will not work frightfully well in this country, but we could receive electricity from the Mediterranean basin from them. If you transmit electricity as direct current, the transmission losses go down, not to zero, but to very little. Electricity can be transmitted for up to 3,000 kilometres with about a 10 per cent loss as direct current, whereas you would get nothing at the end of the line if it was alternating current. All these changes can and have to come about. We have half the equation here, but we need to recognise that that is all it is.