Energy Bill

I did not quite understand that intervention. The point is that today, we are where we are. If councils are not embracing the opportunity for renewables, we need to look at ways of incentivising them to do so. What is wrong is that despite 10 years of commitment by this Government, the contribution to Britain's energy requirement made by renewables has gone from 1 per cent. to 1.3 per cent. That is not good enough, considering the pressure that we are under to find other ways of providing our energy. It is almost as if a pilot were to take off without knowing how much fuel was in the tanks and then started searching around for somewhere to land to refuel. That is not sensible planning for the future. That is my basic argument. What has happened in the last 10 years, as the oil and gas have been running out? The initiatives that we need to prepare ourselves for the future when the lights may be threatened, or indeed turned right out, have not been forthcoming. In Germany it is against the law to run out of fuel while driving a car on the motorway: one has to plan ahead. I wonder what the fine would be for a Government who were running towards empty, or if their tank ran out completely. It would probably be more than this Government could afford. It is helpful to remind ourselves of our energy needs. It is fair to say that for many years we have been blessed with energy efficiency in this country, as we have had an ample supply. Our requirement is roughly around 60 GW, although it is likely to decline this year, simply because of the recession and the consequent reduction in requirements. Current capacity is 76 GW, so one might ask what all the fuss is about. According to the Government's own statistics, our energy requirements are likely to increase by around 40 per cent. over the next 20 years. Let us look at our resources more closely. We have known for years that North sea oil is on the decline. Surely the recent oil price spike at $147 a barrel would have set the alarm bells ringing to say that what we are doing is not sustainable. We clearly cannot carry on this way—and not only on account of the cost of the fuel, because it is simply running out. Labour has watched, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, as the North sea oil dials swing round towards empty. The story with gas is not much different; about a third of our requirements are now imported. UK storage capacity has also changed little. That was pointed out a number of times to the Secretary of State, who gave the most waffly reply I have heard in this Chamber about the reasons why we cannot have a legal requirement, as France and Germany do, to keep a certain number of days' supply of gas in storage in the UK. In France it is 125 days; in Germany it is 95 days; in the UK we average around 15, but last winter we went down to just four days' capacity, coming very close indeed to running on empty. The question has been raised—the hon. Member who raised it is no longer in his place—about an issue that the Front-Bench teams need to answer: rough storage, and who owns the gas itself. Germany owns a number of the companies that operate in the UK, but is it right that when they are running low on gas, they can remove gas from rough storage here in the UK and take it back to Germany to look after their own residents? The Government should provide an answer to that question. The nuclear story provides another tale of woe. Again, 30 per cent. of energy needs were once being met, but we are now down to 12.5 per cent. The Magnox fleet is going to disappear almost completely over the next few years, as are pressurised water reactors. These cannot be replaced overnight. The Government are at last waking up, but they will turn around and say, "What are the Conservatives going to do?" That is not a powerful argument, when it is under their watch that the nuclear power capability has been reduced to the point at which we cannot replace those power stations, like for like, in time to meet the same energy requirements as before. As I said in an earlier intervention, it took 22 years to get planning permission to build the Dungeness nuclear power plant. The processes have been speeded up, but the technology is no longer here in the UK. Virtually every nuclear power station is different—unique—as we have built one, learned from it and then moved on to build another one. That is not a good story. Much of the technology and the people have moved elsewhere, to places such as South Africa, Canada, the United States and France. We should be looking to international organisations to come over here to teach and train us so that we have the right nuclear capability to we can meet our needs in the future.