---

Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

My Lords, I am grateful for being permitted to speak in the gap. I declare an interest as a professor at University College and director of a small consultancy company, CERC. I welcome the Bill but I want it to be effective. Sustainable energy systems are likely to be widely installed in houses, offices and industry only if people can have the technical and financial data in a form which will give them the motivation and the confidence to make decisions. At a conference last year, held in the United States with the support of the Foreign Office, we learned from our United States colleagues how their museums of science and technology, together with the private sector, are now displaying the available technologies and services. I hope that some of the worries raised by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, can be answered. Ideally, local government and DIY stores could have self-funded displays of the available energy systems. With the noble Lords, Lord Sainsbury and Lord Kalms, in our House, we have great expertise on the question of retail home equipment. We need those facilities in every urban area in the UK if we are to be serious. These could be arranged with museums and educational research technology institutes. Furthermore, the climate in each area could be recorded and displayed. Perhaps the Meteorological Office could help. I hope that Clause 19 of the Bill may be amended. There should be targets, first, for areas to have such information technology centres, and the Bill should have targets for reduced use of fossil fuel. As a former branch secretary in the 1960s of the Electrical Power Engineers Association, I take some interest still in power transmission. Woking showed how local transmission networks greatly reduced costs. Communities and individuals need to be informed about these possibilities as well as the specific energy systems.