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Energy Bill

Let me seek to elaborate the principle—or, as my noble friend Lord Whitty might say, the prejudice—of the department in this area. We believe that it is important that the consumer does not support generation that is not from renewable sources. For other plants which burn fuels such as biomass, the renewable obligation has always required both delivery of the actual fuel to the station and that the biomass content of the fuel can be determined on the site. Breaking that link opens significant scope—and I hope that this answers the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh—for double counting or even fraud, as audit of the arrangements would be very problematic indeed. For example, it would be possible for the renewable biomethane gas in theory to be shipped and premixed with fossil fuel from overseas as part of the load from a liquefied natural gas tanker. How would Ofgem tell whether that was the case? Arranging for the shipping might also be a low hurdle to clear to benefit from the renewables obligation and it would be difficult to audit to ensure that consumers received value for money. It is possible that those issues may be resolved, but we do not think that that is the case at present. We are not sure that we would be able to control the operation of the renewables obligation. The noble Lord, of all people, ought not to seek to occasion the Government to pursue a strategy which might open the door not to the increased consumption of renewables but to their substitution through the subsidy and to the destruction of the crucial relationship between the renewables obligation and the generation of electricity. Once we depart from that point, we come up against difficulties. Noble Lords will anticipate all sorts of potential developments. I shall listen very carefully to them and shall take up the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, to write to him if I can reply further. However, the noble Lord has to establish why he thinks that it would be of benefit to break that crucial link; he must recognise that it is a basic principle of the Government’s approach to the development of renewable generated electricity.