Energy Bill [HL]

The golden rule is that it generates energy efficiency. It is not intended, as I understand it, that boilers are part of that. Boilers were part of Warm Front, so there has been a lot of activity in that regard. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, refers to deep geothermal, as do, unsurprisingly, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others. We are exploring a licensing scheme as we speak. I hope to return to that subject in Committee. It is a very valuable and useful way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raised the issue of water. We will support the reduction of leaking, provided it can be demonstrated that it reduces the energy cost to the household. He mentioned issues relating to the accreditation framework, as did the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I think I dealt with several of those but the devil will be in the detail. With their permission, I hope we will go through that quite extensively in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, offered the very good suggestion of an alarm system, which I will take away and consider as a valuable issue. I am grateful for her support on that. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding raised several points. First, who pays for the assessment? This is a market-led endeavour. We would expect a lot of it to fall within the promotional incentive of the people who are going to supply it. The most important thing is that the Government support those who are needy and cannot pay for it themselves. That will be done through an ECO or other function. I am glad my noble friend also mentioned EPCs because I have instigated a review of these. I would like to keep my powder dry until the review is finished. However, by the time we go through the Committee stage, we should have had the full review. I will give further details of that as it goes on. EPCs clearly need a great deal of looking at to make sure that they are fit for purpose. Who bears the cost of a consumer default? A consultation process on that is going on at the moment. It may live with the providers of the Green Deal or the energy companies themselves. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, that we have not had a big initiative on gas storage due to factors I mentioned previously. To slightly embarrassingly blow my own trumpet, I signed the planning permission for a 15 per cent increase in the nation’s gas storage, which had been sitting around waiting for a new Government. We have taken keen action on that, which we need to increase, although it is not our primary concern because we have the most sophisticated terminals in the country for receiving gas. They are also the most flexible, so we can get gas from various supporting operations. Twenty per cent of our supply still comes from a Norwegian network and we still have a diminishing 50 per cent here in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord McFall, posed the question of how Rupert Soames would like to be remembered. As he is a friend of mine, I feel he would like to be remembered as the CEO of a business that got into the FTSE 100 and generated great employment not only in Scotland but in England. In fine Churchillian tradition, he has achieved a great deal. We seek to reform planning, which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to, by bringing more direct control—and therefore quicker decision-making—over such matters as onshore and offshore wind back into the ministerial department so that they can then be dealt with quickly and efficiently. The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, referred to HECA, which came from a Bill that she triumphantly took through the Commons in 1995, although she no doubt worked on it for some time before that. HECA was indeed a very good measure that served a great deal of purpose. However, time has moved on dramatically in this area and there has been much consultation on the subject. The consultation carried out in 2007 indicated that a change was very much on the cards. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness and for her advice on consulting various people, including ACE. I understand that ACE feels comfortable that our proposals will be a good follow-on to the great work that she carried out, for which we all owe her a great deal. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, fed me some interesting stuff. We all learnt about the Jevons paradox—apart from the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, who explained the point to me while sitting beside me, for which I am very grateful—which my officials tell me we take very seriously. However, as I had not heard of the paradox beforehand, noble Lords will not have expected me to know that. We build in a substantial discount for estimated energy savings from energy efficiency in all our impact assessments to account for increased consumption. Nevertheless, significant net savings still occur even with this conservative assumption. Job creation, new jobs, net jobs and the renaissance of our manufacturing industry, which the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, raised, are absolutely fundamental. We believe that 100,000 new jobs will be created through the installation industry. That will appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, as an economist.