Energy Bill

I am uplifted by that, and very grateful. I was also particularly impressed by the right reverend Prelate’s speech this evening, which I thought was excellent. I hope that after the election—which I believe is to come fairly soon, though I do not think that he will have to elect himself—he will be back and still on the Front Bench, along with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, who often speaks on climate change issues as well. I was very pleased to hear that the Conservatives have at last given birth to their energy policy. I think that we have been waiting for this for six months but it has now finally arrived. I apologise that, unlike many Members, I have not yet read it, but I will rectify that before we meet again, probably on Monday to discuss national planning issues. The Bill is part of the big mission of decarbonisation, as the Minister said, and it contains a number of things that noble Lords have generally welcomed. Carbon capture and storage has met with universal approval, though the views perhaps ranged along a spectrum from scepticism to concern about whether it will happen at all. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, who knows well about these issues, fingered the central problem—that this is taking a huge amount of time. It reminds me of the debate that we used to have on nuclear fusion—another area that we did not err on to this evening—which is always held 50 years ahead of time. With CCS, it always seems to be a matter of another four competitions before we can get round to making the technology work. That is a concern. I also welcome the provisions for social tariffs. It is a good move to say to the six main energy companies that this is now going to be on a much more statutory basis. However, given that we have moved from some 1 million people in fuel poverty in 2003 to at least 4 million now, I would be interested to hear from the Minister what effect he thinks this provision will deliver in bringing down the number. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, was right to emphasise the importance of the subject, which costs an increasing number of lives each winter. On too many occasions people have to make a genuine choice between buying food and buying energy. Ofgem has not been discussed at length this evening. We welcome the fact that its remit—though perhaps not its principal objective—very much concerns not just competition but climate change and energy security. Although its prime directive focuses on competition, throughout 2009 we have seen an increasing gap between wholesale energy prices and the prices that we as consumers, even those in fuel poverty, have to pay. We welcome the widened policy but surely this prime directive of competition has not worked at all over the past 12 months. Does the Minister feel that it has not worked? If so, what will be done? We also talked a great deal about provisions that are missing. One area is increasingly important, but we have not yet talked about it and it is not in the Bill: the issue of smart grids or intelligent networks. The Minister will come back and say that we now have a roll-out of smart meters, which all sides of the House have welcomed. However, that is only one part of getting an intelligent electricity and energy grid in this country. I would like to know how we will move this forward in terms of what are called, sometimes quite alarmingly, "smart appliances". It rather worries me that you might go to your fridge in the evening and discover that it has an intelligence of its own. However, one of the key ways in which we can iron out and flatten energy demand is through intelligent devices. This will be even more of a challenge because of two other things. First, rightly or wrongly, we in the UK—the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, talked about this a fair bit—do not have a vertically integrated energy system in terms of corporate ownership. So it is difficult to get a commercially co-ordinated approach with energy companies in relation to these grids. The second area is the Climate Change Committee’s report, which we debated earlier this year, and which quite astounded me. It quite abruptly described how the number of electric cars will need to increase in the next decade and beyond to meet our energy and carbon targets. These cars will have a huge effect on the grid, on energy demand and in the need for the quick recharging of batteries. We will therefore have to get our act together very quickly in terms of a smart grid. The noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh and Lord Jenkin, talked about how CERT has operated. I was sorry to see that the Bill does not revise the scheme. It has operated only since 2008. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said, there is a great gap between how it works and operates, the financial accountability of how it works, and the way in which the energy companies disperse this obligation. They may send out several million light bulbs, but that seems too random, not sufficiently financially accountable, and the effects have not been measured. I have always been highly sceptical about giving energy companies—whose expertise is in making money from producing energy—one of the main energy saving targets. It goes utterly against their DNA. I believe that we need to find another way to achieve that. The Minister talked about some of the ways in which competition does not work correctly for consumers and in relation to dual fuels. I agree, but I would also remind him that for those living in rural properties—as I do, and as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, does as well—there is no chance even of getting dual fuel; that is, gas through pipelines and electricity. I wonder what the Bill provides for rural users who do not have such opportunities. On energy savings and fuel poverty, I do not see beyond CERT, which is not dealt with here, or see a real roll-out of energy efficiency across cities, town and even streets. That is essential for us to meet our carbon targets, yet there is still no credible government policy to achieve this. I believe that that is financially possible, but we do not see those proposals here. Again, this comes back to fuel poverty and the whole area of having to save carbon, rather than increasing our energy capacity. Many other areas have been talked about. I will not prolong my comments any further except to mention emission performance standards. It was a tragedy that that provision was not passed by the other House. My noble friend Lord Wallace went through it to some degree. Given the uncertainty about CCS and this sitting on the fence in relation to carbon capture and storage, we need to give the industry some certainty. In any other area, we do that by laying down standards that we expect to be met in the future. Emission performance standards for power stations seems to me to be an obvious way to start this process of emissions standards—we do it for cars, for trucks and for much smaller items of equipment. We have what always sounds like a cop show: the LCPD, the large combustion power—