---

Renewable Energy (S&T Report)

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and the right reverend Prelate for initiating this debate. Energy policy, if it is driven by anything nowadays, must be driven by sheer necessity, if we wish to do anything about climate change. It was a particular pleasure this afternoon to hear the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, with whom I have argued on so many occasions, and to find myself, for once, in wholehearted agreement with him. We already have a deep problem in this country. We have moral pretensions to lead others on this issue. I would not have a problem with that, provided that I felt that we were genuinely leading. The awful truth is   that, only two days ago, a press release from the European Environment Agency showed that carbon dioxide emissions increased throughout Europe in 2003 and that the largest contributor to that was the United Kingdom. We cannot hold our head high in the international forum, if that is the situation. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, will forgive me if I concentrate my remarks on the right reverend Prelate’s proposition. I have had the privilege of serving on the Science and Technology Select Committee; the committee members develop an expertise that I have no pretensions to keep up with. However, there is congruence. The first point that I want to make concerns an installation called the South East London Combined Heat and Power plant. It is a state-of-the-art installation created 10 or 12 years ago. All the planning obstacles were overcome to provide an installation that would incinerate waste and provide electricity and provide heat to the houses with which it was surrounded. It was a remarkable planning achievement. The plant has worked very effectively. Waste has been disposed of and electricity has gone into the grid. But not one single house has received any warmth. There was no agreement between the site owners and the local authority on how that difficulty should be overcome and who would be responsible for plumbing the heat round the area. Unfortunately, there was no   regulatory system to give any encouragement or inducement and there was no financial inducement to bring it about. That is a scandal. I was amused on speaking to someone at lunch today. He lived close to the site of the old Battersea power station and his apartment was still plumbed to receive heat. Unfortunately, there is no longer a power station there to provide it. I turn to a different scandal in which we all, in a sense, share the blame. The noble Lord, Lord Methuen, has remarked on my recent Written Question to the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, and the Government about heat waste from power stations. I asked how much heat was dispersed to the atmosphere. It is worth reading out the reply:"““For the UK as a whole, in 2003 electricity generators’ fuel inputs . . .  totalled 86.66 million tonnes of oil equivalent, which is  . . . 1031.1 TWh””." One terawatt hour equals one billion kilowatts, which means that we add nine zeroes to the positive digits. It continues:"““For the same period, total generation . . .  production less pumped storage . . .  was 398.8 TWh. From this it may be inferred that 632.3 TWh [of energy] . . .  was used in the generating process””.—[Official Report, 20/6/05; col. WA 152.]" Now there is a question of exactly how much of that was the generating process and how much was waste heat. My guess is that it all escaped as waste heat. What does that really mean? Who understands what a terawatt hour is? It means that when I switch a one kilowatt heater on to warm a room in my house, I pay for the electricity generating industry to use another one and a half kilowatt hours of power in order that I receive my one. When I think about that I find it very difficult to think that we are running an efficient system and, in the modern context, running an ethically sensible system. I have to accept that there is not much one can do about that. We are dealing with a history where all of the power stations have been put in the most remote parts of the country. Although heat can be moved about, it cannot be moved that far. Of course, there could be a response. The Government could say clearly that in all future planning matters, energy will be an overriding factor in planning decisions. In particular, that ought to be the case for electric generating plant. It gels with paragraph 3.22 of the committee’s report, which states:"““A further consideration, strictly speaking outside the scope of this Report, is the fact that CHP generators allow biomass, or for that matter any combustible fuel, to be used more efficiently, producing overall energy efficiency of around 80 per cent, rather than the efficiency of generating electricity alone, which is typically between 30 and 40 per cent””." The fact is that when things need to change, the greatest obstacle is past practice and, more importantly, past investment. I have to accept that there is not much that can be done in a hurry about these matters. But something has to be done. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, who expressed concern about the highlands, that I have considerable doubts about the benefit of generating electricity in the outer isles to supply London, as it would involve huge transmission costs and losses. We must radically review our approach to electricity generation. I have an aspiration different from the Government’s target of a 60 per cent reduction in 1990s carbon emission levels by 2050. My aspiration is that there should be zero mineral hydrocarbons by 2050. I know that I will not live to see it, but it should be our target if we are to behave responsibly and get global warming under control. Anything less will not achieve that goal.