My Lords, I very much support the amendments of my noble friend the Minister. The socialist in me would say that I do not see why individual landholders should have particular rights over ground
more than 300 metres deep. It does not in any way disturb their properties above; 300 metres is a long way down. Certainly all shale gas, conventional gas or oil, geothermal or hot rocks geothermal extraction takes place below that level.
I thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin for his excellent exposition of geothermal; I can see that the exchange of information will be more than two-way in the future and he will quickly overtake me on this issue. There has been an uncertain legal position over the right to heat; how do you define heat? It is not a substance but a characteristic of substances that you then extract. These proposals make the situation absolutely clear to developers so that geothermal extraction can start to take place and investors can have some confidence in this form of energy.
I had a great experience earlier this month. I went to a quarry called Rosemanowes, near Penryn, some 10 miles away from my home. More than 20 years ago, the then DTI carried out some boring for geothermal experimentation there. Under DECC’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund, an organisation called Geothermal Engineering Limited has been able to reuse that borehole by putting down another polypropylene pipe for 1.5 kilometres. Water was pumped down and came back up from that depth at a temperature of 60 degrees. The company reckoned that they could increase it to 90 degrees. Obviously, the further you go down the more you can increase the temperature. With the renewable heat incentive introduced by the Government, deep geothermal heat becomes possible. As my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, in the short term, extraction of heat from geothermal will be far more important than the potential for electricity generation; you have to go down to some 9 kilometres to increase the temperature to 200 degrees. With much smaller investments, there is potential to reuse existing boreholes —the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that there are 2,000 scattered around England—for geothermal heat. That is why I particularly welcome these new clauses.
I predict that in the medium to long-term future, geothermal will be far more important than shale gas. I also think that the shale gas revolution, which I am not against as a substitute for North Sea oil strategically in our energy security, is probably overhyped. However, if it can be made to work under exacting environmental standards, I do not want to get in its way. I therefore welcome these clauses and accept that they must be considered within the context of very strict environmental control and licensing outside this piece of legislation.
As to some of the other amendments, I agree with my noble friend Lord Jenkin and do not understand why there is an exclusion regarding geothermal energy. I agree also with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that there should be some specific restrictions in the legislation. I am not sure the whole of her list should be included but we need to be firm about certain areas, and it would be useful if it were stated in primary legislation.
I very much agree with the objectives of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, but am not sure about some of the detail. Why do we need a whole 12 months of monitoring beforehand, looking at base data? I am sure there are all sorts of technical reasons for that but I wonder if they go a little far sometimes in standing in the way of a development that can go ahead. I agree that there
are a number of areas that we have to be very careful about. Whether those are put in secondary legislation or in the Bill, I am not sure. I congratulate my noble friend on bringing these amendments forward. They will do great things for our energy mix in future.