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Energy Bill

I add my voice in support for the objectives of the amendment. I very much support what the noble Baroness said in both her earlier rhetoric and her recognition that the amendment may not be 100 per cent precisely what the Government should adopt. I support her strong urging of the Government. Frankly, very late in the game, it is time for them to take that on board. I want them to take the amendment away to look at it seriously between now and the next stage. I know that they are considering heat and the renewable energy strategy. They should consider the experience of Germany and other continental countries in using forms of feed-in tariff to achieve much higher levels of renewable energy than we have. I serve on Sub-Committee B, which is considering the renewable energy target set by Europe, which is giving the UK a 15 per cent target, which in generation terms means pretty much 40 per cent. We are nowhere near achieving that target on the basis of existing policy alone. That does not mean that we should scrap the ROC system and start again—I might have thought that if we could go backwards, but ROCs are at last beginning to deliver, so the feed-in tariff should not be considered as an alternative to ROCs. In parts of the spectrum, it could coexist with ROCs. There are many potential users, from households to community and public sector users, to which my noble friend Lord Puttnam referred—and I hope that the commitment shown by Ed Balls is spread to other departments engaged in public investment in new facilities—as well as commercial users, who may not want to play in the ROCs market in general, but have an on-site use for decentralised energy based on renewables or waste heat. Unless we mobilise all that potential, there is no way in which we will meet the European renewables energy target or the targets that we set ourselves with such enthusiasm, with great leadership from my noble friend Lord Puttnam, in getting the Climate Change Bill through this House and almost on the statute book. The amendment appears a little technical in some respects. Many people who support various aspects of renewable energy argue about the minutiae of it. But the central issue is whether the Government will take on board the need to mobilise all that small, medium and micro generation capacity, which has not been mobilised by ROCs, by government commitments or by the Government seeing it as a priority on their own estate. This is a very important amendment and a strategic moment for the Government. I ask the Minister to take away the amendment and seriously attempt to convince his friends not only in BERR but in other parts of Whitehall that this must be a central plank of our meeting our climate change objectives. I know that there is government interest in this area; I just hope that it is turned into something solid before the next stage of the Bill. I offer my support to Members of the Committee who have spoken in favour of this principle.