Energy: Renewables

I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley for initiating this debate on using less oil and gas through replacement with renewables. Climate change has not been mentioned a great deal. Of course, a large number of Peers have used the Committee stage of the Climate Change Bill to make Second Reading speeches. I speak as someone who has sat on the Front Bench and has listened to the many interesting contributions. It is very clear from the Climate Change Bill that, although we lost the amendment on 60 per cent to 80 per cent, with the Government saying that the 80 per cent would be initiated by the Committee on Climate Change by 2050, there is a massive hill to climb if we are to meet those targets. I have a real issue with that because the target is almost aspirational and will be incredibly difficult to achieve. We are not short on aspirations. In November, the Prime Minister said: "““Globally, the overall value added of the low carbon energy sector could be as high as $3 trillion per year worldwide by 2050. It could employ more than 25 million people in jobs. If Britain maintains its share of this growth there could be over a million people employed here in our environmental industries within the next 2 decades””." I say that the targets are aspirational because, if we are to achieve this, there has to be enormous moves now. The first moves that have to take place are in the regulatory sector, which is where I have a real issue. I am no stranger to trying to prod the Government and I introduced a Private Member’s Bill a number of years ago, which then became Mark Lazarowicz’s Climate Change Bill in another place and the Government added a large number of clauses. I remember going to the DTI and my researcher saying that trying to get the clauses accepted by the DTI was like head-butting a swamp. It was very hard work and very messy. You felt slightly degraded at the end of the process and you did not think that you had got anywhere at all. I now realise that everything has changed and there is a great deal of movement. During the Private Member’s Climate Change Bill, there was talk about permitted development orders being changed. I thought that we had won this battle. However, perhaps the Minister would write to me on that because it is unfair to spring it on her at this stage. There was a proposal to deliver from DCLG in the Changes to Permitted Development: Consultation Paper 1—Permitted Development Rights for Householder Microgeneration, which stated: "““A revised system would deliver a more permissive regime than exists at present and remove the need for planning applications for many householders””." We thought that that was an excellent application. However, we are looking now at an amended situation—this comes from the Renewable Energy Association which is particularly concerned about this. I thought that under permitted development orders we could do just about anything as long as long as they meet commitments. But it referred to: "““A height level which is set so low as to prove impossible for approximately 50 per cent of solar thermal panels and installation brackets. A mere increase of 50mm would solve that problem””." I very much hope that this is not the case, because it seems utterly ridiculous that such a small planning application would knock out half the whole solar/thermal industry, which would have a devastating impact. Another issue is noise levels. With no evidence base to support the Government’s assertion, noise levels have been reduced to, we believe, 40 decibels. This would mean that the noise produced by small microgeneration turbines would have to be almost less than background noise. It seems ridiculous that we should not go back to the World Health Organisation limit of 45 decibels. I speak on this issue particularly as I fought through the planning process to install a small wind turbine. It was a 6.2 kilowatt turbine, which you would not have heard from 5 metres away; yet everyone said that it would be heard from miles away. It is very difficult to get these things through. Microgeneration takes a lot of effort to bring about. If this reduction proves to be the case—I very much hope that the Minister can give some guidance on this—it is yet one more step backwards for the microgeneration industry, which has suffered. It will also mean that the Prime Minister’s assertion that we will get this wonderful expansion in the economy of microgeneration will not be met. We have that problem not only with microgeneration. At a conference recently, I talked to an investment banker who invests in large-scale renewables. His point was that we have a real issue here. It is very easy to say that we should put turbines not onshore but offshore, and that that will solve the problem. The problem is that we never got into the turbines market, and Denmark leads the field in that. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned the MoD. I have always wondered whether Denmark is totally safe because it is surrounded by turbines, or is indefensible. It does not seem to be too worried about that, but that is a side point. We live in a global market, and there are only a certain number of turbines. We have very large aspirations. The London Array turbine field will be the largest turbine field in the world. It will be rather disappointing if we have this aspiration to build this but we cannot supply the turbines because of the planning difficulties and the hold-up. The people who produce the turbines are quite happy to sell them to other countries, and the market has rocketed up, especially in the United States. Onshore turbines in the US are a very rapidly growing area. It is much easier to produce and deliver those turbines there without the cost associations. We could find ourselves with great aspirations without being able to meet them. I very much share some of the concerns expressed by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, about biofuels. I have severe issues with biodiesel. Indeed, I sat on a Select Committee on Science and Technology some 10 years ago—I cannot remember exactly when. The committee looked at the whole issue and discovered that you would have to plant up all the agricultural land in the country to meet this country’s diesel requirement. There is a real problem with saying that we will try to attach biofuels to all this and skew the economics of the market. I have a real difficulty with the Americans looking at corn ethanol, which does not make sense financially or in emissions terms because it produces far more carbon. I end with a couple of other points. This debate gives us the opportunity to say that the Energy Bill will come to your Lordships’ House. I followed a number of amendments with great interest in another place, although unfortunately they did not get anywhere. I am happy to see from the Conservative manifesto that we and the Official Opposition have a great deal in common on this, and the Government may receive a reasonably rough ride if they are not a little more accommodating. These are basic issues, and we will have problems meeting our targets on renewables if we do not address them. Our first approach should be to adopt the EU renewable electricity directive priority access provisions. There involves the whole thorny issues of feed-in tariffs, which is an important point where the electricity companies are going to have to agree to this, so that microgeneration makes some economic sense. The second issue would be to change Ofgem’s primary remit to align it to national policy. In the past, Ofgem has had two main gods in its pantheon, reliability and cost, but a third has to be added now—I know that Ofgem has gone a great deal further in the past few years to meeting it—namely, reducing carbon emissions. The third approach involves enabling powers to bring in a production tariff for on-site renewables. It is unfortunate that that was rejected, because it is a major difficulty. Merton was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. This is a hindrance to on-site renewables. The last one, which was in the papers today, is the ability to feed renewable biogas into the natural gas network. This could be a massive source of income for the dairy industry, which could get rid of its slurry and pump it into the national grid. I know that there are certain problems with that, but it would be rather nice if you could heat your milk in the morning, if you wanted hot milk, using the gas coming from the cows that produced the milk.