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Energy Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, most of whose points I agree with strongly. I declare an interest as a professor of climate modelling at University College and a member of the EDF energy stakeholder advisory group. The Government have moved a long way since the energy White Paper of 2003, which set unrealistic objectives for reducing carbon emissions solely through conservation and renewables. Now the Government have developed a sensible portfolio of energy plans, which I am pleased to hear the Liberal Democrat Front Bench now supports. Despite the views of various nationalist parties, which we have just been hearing about, my first question to the Minister is: will nuclear policy apply throughout the UK? I am pleased to see that there is now greater consensus about the portfolio approach in all the major industrial and emerging countries. I am a vice-president of GLOBE—Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, that it has been very useful to hear the views of other countries. That consensus now includes the United States, which has become much more aware of the need to adapt its energy policy to deal with global warming. One should realise that certain elements of the energy portfolio will or could develop much faster than others. Hence the concept of the so-called wedge approach is a little misleading—I refer to the sausage approach, because some areas will grow very rapidly and others much more slowly. For example, energy conservation, wind power, small-scale river power, carbon sequestration and very high efficiency coal/gas power stations may emerge quickly, while areas, such as nuclear power and wave power, will take longer. As the Minister implied, the Government now have a more flexible approach through the renewables obligation. That is necessary as we have such different timescales for the new technologies as they emerge. All those technologies present exciting challenges to the UK engineering community and industry at every level, which as other noble Lords have said, should provide a tremendous range of jobs. As nuclear power becomes as widespread as it is in France, it will perhaps overtake certain of those technologies. Carbon sequestration may become less significant and we should be able to dispense with large onshore wind farms—a point of view expressed by the American Department of Energy. Onshore wind farms are clearly unpopular and scar much of our landscape, so I look forward to the idea of smaller, cleaner nuclear power stations, which have less impact. However, it should be mentioned that there is no trend in that direction in France, where there is not only continuing nuclear power and the building of a new nuclear power station but the rapid development of onshore wind power in many parts. As the Minister explained, this welcome Bill has a number of critical elements. They are all necessary if the programme of energy supplies is to be secure and produce much less carbon than we do now. As noble Lords have mentioned, this programme must be urgent as the ice sheets melt and start slipping into the sea faster even than the IPCC estimated in its report last November. The IPCC is a consensus body; if anyone on the committee suggests that things may be happening more rapidly and others object, that is not included in the estimates. The target of 60 per cent or, perhaps, 80 per cent reduction becomes even more essential as the global temperature averaged over the land areas, not over the land and the sea, continues to rise rapidly—by about 0.2 degrees per decade. That may worsen as the greenhouse gas emissions from the growing economies of India and China continue almost unabated. Furthermore, the earth may be worsening the situation. The long-threatened extra emissions of methane into the atmosphere from the unfreezing of the Arctic tundra is beginning to be as bad as was feared, with the possibility of an extra one or two degrees of global warming by the end of the century. Serious as that effect may be, it is still not included in the rather conservative estimates of the IPCC. I hope that as part of their energy trading with Russia, the Government will encourage much closer scientific collaboration—which, in the view of the Royal Society here and the Russian Academy of Sciences is currently rather weak. International action will be much more likely to succeed if there is agreement about the scientific measurements on which policy needs to be based. The need for storage is made clear in the Bill. We should make use of the oil companies' past expertise in pumping carbon dioxide for secondary oil recovery. My question for the Minister is: what kinds of European and international collaboration will there be on that technology? The implication of what we were just hearing about was a UK approach. It is important that there is widespread collaboration on this technology. Since the possibility of the gases coming out from the underground reservoirs has been raised, accurate monitoring of the sites is extremely important. Which body will be responsible for that? Nuclear is a secure and well tried method for producing electricity with minimum carbon emissions. It is interesting to note that the EDF nuclear power station being built in Flamanville in Normandy is on time and on budget. It is always commented that nuclear power is impossible economically; that is not the experience in France. The size of the site needed is much smaller than that for any other non-carbon-emitting method. That is generally welcomed by the communities where they are located, as I have seen on visits to the north-east of the UK. We see this in France, the UK and the United States. There are many supporters of nuclear even in Germany, especially for importing electricity produced by nuclear power stations in France. The two main technical issues which concern many members of the public are decommissioning of sites and dealing with nuclear waste. The UK demonstrated decommissioning of a small plant in the 1960s, and as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, there are companies in the United States which are greatly familiar with this. The costs are reasonable, and I understand that the industry is quite satisfied with the provisions in the Bill for its contribution to the costs. It sees a plan with solid political support going forward in the UK, and the economic case is quite satisfactory to it. Its only reservation is that the Minister may intervene in determining the decommission process. That is quite reasonable, but there should perhaps be some system for appealing the Minister’s decision. The Bill does not deal with nuclear wastes, but I am informed that new plant will store wastes on site for perhaps 20 or 30 years before either the deep-storage facilities have been introduced, which is the policy of CORWM and the Government, or the research being funded by Euratom and around the world—in which UK scientists are involved—leads to new technologies for enabling nuclear wastes to be turned into other materials and elements via the so-called transmutation technology. As a result of it, wastes, instead of lasting 10,000 years in the ground, will last perhaps 100 years. Noble Lords should be reminded from time to time that storing material in the ground for 10,000 years is neither necessary nor, in the usual definition of the word, sustainable. The renewables obligation will encourage more renewable energy production, be it from large offshore, or small river-water, turbines. However, there is concern among the smallest operators, as I have found in speaking to some of them along the rivers of Somerset, about the rigidity of the banding scheme. An increase from a 50- to 60-kilowatt system can penalise the operator. Is there to be a fair system for such small operators to avoid disincentives? Officials in BERR who have to deal with these tricky matters—I presume that they continue to be tricky under this legislation as boundaries are changed—have been very open to discussion with the operators, but such a system must be introduced. It would be useful to know exactly how it would come about. Will it be by way of private discussions with officials or will there be some more open, transparent method? At the larger end, offshore wind schemes will as I understand it from those who are planning them benefit from the renewables obligation clause, but they are concerned about the considerable planning hold-ups in the schemes, to which the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, referred. All the issues in the Bill pose considerable scientific and engineering problems where research is essential for greater efficiency and safety. In the fields with which I am familiar, offshore wind and some nuclear issues, the amount of research sponsored by the UK Government has been very limited in relation to the vast investment that is required. I hope that there will be the kind of expansion in energy research—new organisations exist for that—that will bring it up to levels proportionate with those in the United States. It is essential for the future.