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Planning and Energy Bill

My Lords, the Bill covers some very important ground. If the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, will forgive my saying so, I think that he has got his timing wrong because it would have been much better to look at the necessity for such a Bill after we had had our deliberations on the Planning Bill, for which we are all waiting. The Bill leaves many issues unresolved. It spells out some important principles, but there are a number of issues which are the real challenge. I like the ethos behind the Bill. As a society, we have been historically spoilt and misled. We have become very dependent on the National Grid. There is an interesting argument that the National Grid is an obstacle to building up social responsibility for energy and the provision of alternative energy because people have got into a deep culture of simply switching on the light and somehow or other the power will be available. We have to bring people closer to their personal responsibilities. I always feel—I hope that it is not to make too light of it—that we ought to live by example here. I am quite shocked when I walk around in the evenings and see how many lights have been casually left on by colleagues in their offices. I have become a little neurotic about turning off the lights and the stand-by on our television in our office. We have to bring society much closer to its responsibilities. Local democracy has an important part to play in that, and, in that sense, the noble Lord has brought up an important issue. We have to take other considerations very seriously. Have we learnt from the industrial revolution? With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the ruination of our countryside—some of our loveliest valleys and other environments—could have been avoided even then if we had had the benefit of hindsight. It is imperative that we increase the supply of alternative energy. It is not just something that we ought or would like to do, but an imperative which should be among the priorities of every government department. However, in the rush to do that, will we repeat the avoidable mistakes of the industrial revolution? We want the energy because we want a society that is worth living in. Therefore, there ought to be imperatives in whatever we do about planning and alternative energy: imperatives for aesthetic conditions to be high among the commitments and requirements of those involved. Social issues, too, are involved, because so often in schemes of this kind the articulate middle classes can argue off a proposal—““not in our backyard””—and those sections of the population which already have most disadvantages environmentally and everywhere else get the projects on their doorstep. There should be a requirement therefore to take seriously into account the social implications of what is being done. It is not a matter simply of the generating plant. We often overlook the infrastructure that becomes necessary even with alternative energy. We will need to give more specific guidance than is provided in the Bill. The noble Lord would perhaps say that it was more than was appropriate, but I suggest that the Bill is good on principle but weak on the detail of how it is to be handled. We need more specific guidance on what we mean by alternative energy. What is lacking—my point relates to what I said about the National Grid—is a recognition that small communities and hamlets such as that in which I live might be encouraged to think about how they work together to get a solution. I have in mind schemes not just for individual families or households but the hamlet as a whole. For example, great advances in modern technology mean that one now needs less water to generate power, although I understand that one needs consistent supplies. More specific arrangements for encouraging small communities to work together in finding local solutions ought to be built into legislation. There is a range of other possibilities. We never take seriously enough in our considerations the contribution of geothermal heat. I am not a scientist, as will become obvious from my remarks, but there seems to be some confusion about it. Geothermal heat is sometimes marginalised because people say that it does not produce power, but it can make an important background contribution to energy-saving. We do not do enough in our society to encourage the examination of geothermal possibilities in small communities and individual premises. We need more specific guidance and responsibility in that direction. I have been disturbed of late by a case not far from where I live. A consultancy firm was given a brief to produce a plan for alternative energy for what was seen as a deficit in our area. It produced a scheme for a gigantic wind farm in a very beautiful setting. When people asked whether it was really necessary to have a wind farm there and asked what was the aesthetic and social cost—and this was not in my back yard, I might say—the response was that the terms of reference for the consultancy were specifically on wind power. The firm was given no terms of reference that permitted it, in its consultancy, to look at other possibilities. I live in Cumbria where, at an earlier stage of our social and economic history, there were lots of interesting water projects for providing power to industry. Why is a firm that is given a remit of that kind not given the task of asking about the alternatives and the range of possibilities that could be undertaken? Why was it given no alternative other than to go in and ruin the setting, because that was the only means to meet the energy deficit? In saying all that, I emphasise that I take second place to nobody in the priority and urgency of producing alternative energy. I do not belong to the no-wind-farm ideology, which is very foolish—particularly when it comes up with the theory that anyway wind farms do not produce that much energy. If we are talking seriously about alternative energy, it will be an aggregate of projects producing very modest amounts of energy. But in saying that this is an overriding priority, let us get the context right with regard to the wider social responsibility, including aesthetic and social values. We should not, in the rush for energy, which we must have, go and ruin the society for which we are trying to produce energy.