Climate Change

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith for introducing this debate, which has given us two interesting speeches already. Last week, when we debated the climate change orders, my noble friend Lord Leach of Fairford, at the start of his brilliant exposition which thoroughly demolished the Government’s case on climate change, picked up a metaphor which he said had been used by the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, although I have not been able to find it in Hansard. This was to the effect that the debate reminded him of ships passing in the night. Endorsing this metaphor, my noble friend Lord Leach said that he would rather sail on HMS "Lawson" than on HMS "Stern". I, too, would rather sail on HMS "Lawson", and in the absence today of the captain of that ship—and of the first officer—as a humble rating, I step on deck to put an opposing view to that of the Government. The Minister’s boss, the Secretary of State, Mr Ed Miliband, has famously said that he would like opposition to wind farms to become as socially unacceptable as not wearing a seatbelt or failing to stop at a zebra crossing. Incidentally, not wearing a seatbelt and not stopping at a zebra crossing are both offences, as I know only too well, since the only endorsement I ever received to my driving licence was for failing to stop at a zebra crossing. However, the Minister is, I know, too democratic to wish to stifle debate, and I am sure he will not repeat his boss’s remark, which is as overbearing as it is wrong-headed. He has absolutely no chance of getting those who oppose wind farms to be treated as social pariahs. Up and down the land, the most respectable of citizens—pillars of their local societies who would not dream of not fastening their seatbelts or not stopping at zebra crossings—are coming forward to protest against the destruction of our finest countryside, despite the iniquitous pressures lined up against them. One of those pressures is the regional targets. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool is to speak in a moment. To judge from his intervention the other day, he seemed to be asking for sanctions to be applied to local authorities in cases where regional renewable energy targets have not been met. I hope we will see nothing of the kind. Regional renewable energy targets were set by unrepresentative, unelected and now defunct regional assemblies. In the case of the north-west region, with which I am familiar, the targets set for Cumbria were entirely inappropriate and were opposed throughout by the elected country council. If one believes in the desirability of reducing carbon emissions, encouraging wind energy is the most absurd way to go about it. Why? Because wind power has to be backed up by fossil fuel power stations, which have to be continuously turned on and off as the wind comes and goes. Nuclear power stations are no good for that purpose as they lack the necessary flexibility. However many wind turbines are eventually built, there will still have to be a sufficient capacity of conventionally generated electricity to satisfy on its own peak demand plus a margin of perhaps 10 per cent. Wind turbines also destroy the coastline and the finest landscapes in the country, which have been a magnet for visitors from all over the world. They are viable only with colossal subsidies, which the Government constantly have to ratchet up in a desperate bid to maintain the momentum of their renewable energy commitment. Perhaps I can illustrate the extravagance by the example of the London Array offshore wind farm, which is now back on track as a result of the Government having substantially increased in the Budget the subsidies available to offshore wind power. This wind farm is planned eventually to have up to 341 turbines, spread over 245 square kilometres, 12 miles off the Kent and Essex coasts in the Thames estuary. Let us suppose that the turbines each have an installed capacity of 3 megawatts. The total installed capacity will be more than 1,000 megawatts, producing something more than 300 megawatts per annum, assuming a 30 per cent load factor. At a conservative capital cost estimate of, say, £2.5 million per installed megawatt, the cost will be something of the order of £2.5 billion, or perhaps £3 billion. The ROC subsidy, which is now increased, that is available to the developers should amount at current ROC prices to something between £250 million and £300 million a year, a sum which is added to consumers’ electricity bills. Meanwhile, in the field of unsubsidised energy, the recently consented 2,000 megawatts combined cycle gas turbine due to be built at Milford Haven will produce up to 1,800 megawatts a year, compared to London Array’s 300 to 400 megawatts. Each one of its five turbines will therefore produce as much electricity or more as the London Array in its entirety ever will. It will cost £800 million, according to the developer, compared to £2.5 billion to £3 billion for the London Array. It probably will occupy about 20 acres as opposed to 90 square miles. The London Array will have to have fossil fuel power stations backing it up. Which of those would make the most efficient contribution to our economy? Incidentally, I have seen it written that the London Array will produce enough electricity to power 750,000 homes. Such claims are frequently put forward for wind farms, but they are thoroughly misleading. No wind turbines can ever produce enough electricity for any homes unless the occupants wish to be without power for between 10 and 100 days a year at moments which they have not chosen and usually when the weather is at its coldest. I find it hard to understand why the Government think that wind power is the route to reduce CO2 emissions. The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark are all way ahead of us in the amount relatively of wind-generated electricity they produce, yet none has succeeded in bringing down its per capita CO2 emissions, which are all higher than ours. The two European countries which display considerably lower per capita CO2 emissions than us are Sweden, which produces much of its electricity by hydro-electric power, which this country cannot do much to increase, and France, which produces 80 per cent or most of its electricity from its nuclear power stations. Yet it is the policy of Germany and Denmark, not of France, that the Government have been so keen to follow. The Government’s renewable energy policy adopted to prepare us for the distant and debatable threat of climate change of course does nothing to help us deal with the much more immediate threat to our energy security, posed by the closing down of up to one-third of our obsolete power stations and—taking up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya—perhaps I might add that it is aggravated by a prospect of a London filled with electric cars. Indeed it detracts from the achievement of that objective because it leaves huge quantities of capital up a complete cul-de-sac and it positively retards the other objective of the Government’s energy policy, namely, to abolish fuel poverty by 2016 and in vulnerable households by 2010. This is because the vast subsidies made available are added to consumers’ electricity bills. The effects can be seen already. In a parliamentary Written Answer given in another place on 12 May, the Minister revealed that the number of households in fuel poverty rose from 2.5 million in 2005 to 3.5 million in 2006 and was expected to rise by a further 1.2 million households by 2008. So, not much progress there. It is, however, a relief that after 10 years of going nowhere, the Government have eventually decided to revert to nuclear power, currently the only method of viable generation that will reduce carbon emissions on any scale. But we cannot expect any new nuclear power stations to come on-stream for another 10 years, so where do we go in the mean time? A headline in the Times last week neatly illustrated the risks attached to increasing any further our already alarming and continually growing dependence on imported natural gas. Talking of the Arctic, it ran: ""Russia warns of war within decade over hunt for oil and gas"." Beneath that heading, the article stated: ""Moscow appears willing to defend its interests by force as the region becomes ripe for exploitation in a world hungry for energy"." With the North Sea running down, the proportion of the gas we use that is imported is due to rise from 50 per cent today to upwards of 70 per cent in a few years. We will have to build coal-fired power stations, and indeed we have in this country any amount of unmined or ungassified coal—300 years’ worth, I have heard it said. The Government are inching towards making greater use of it, but everything is made dependent on progress in the EU-led drive to achieve carbon capture and storage. Two questions pose themselves. Can we close the energy gap in time if we wait for CCS, and is it in any case worth the stupendous cost? I do not know the answer to the first question, and the answer to the second depends on which way you look at it. If it is the case that CO2 in the global atmosphere has increased by no more than 23 per cent since 1900 and that at today’s rate of increase it cannot double for another 200 years, and that if it doubles it can only produce an increase in the global temperature of less than 2 degrees centigrade, I think that we have more urgent things to think about. That brings me to the heart of the problem with the Government’s whole renewable energy agenda. Nothing we do, whatever policies we pursue, could make anything but the most infinitesimal difference to the world’s carbon footprint, yet this Government appear willing to see businesses bankrupted, to impoverish consumers, wreck the countryside, destroy the economy and put out the lights, making in the process some completely negligible reduction in our carbon emissions, and all in the hope that we may influence other countries to adopt our largely foolish policies. I only hope that they will have the good sense not to. So it is not society that I wish to see adapting itself to the Government’s renewable energy policies, it is the Government’s energy policies that I wish to see adapted to suit the national interest.