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Energy Bill

I thank Members of the Committee who have taken part in this debate. The noble Baroness, not for the first time, raises an important issue; namely, energy consumption. A similar amendment was tabled in the other place. Let me reiterate some of the points that were made. Saving energy, or energy efficiency, is a key part of our strategy to tackle climate change and to help ensure secure supplies of energy. Reducing energy consumption can help towards our goal of reducing carbon emissions as well as helping with security of energy supply by reducing the need for energy imports and reducing the new investment needed in large-scale electricity generation. Fully implemented, the measures set out in the 2007 White Paper are projected to deliver an additional 7 million to 12 million tonnes of carbon savings. As the Committee will know, our policies include helping consumers make more informed decisions about the energy they use through improved awareness, information and services, raising standards for the products we buy, and increasing the energy performance of new homes and buildings. We have also increased the obligation on energy suppliers to deliver carbon savings and energy-efficiency measures in existing domestic homes, including through loft and cavity wall insulation. For the largest industrial users of energy, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which we talked about yesterday, together with the climate change levy and climate change agreements, incentivise companies to improve their energy efficiency and to save energy. We have also recently announced the carbon reduction commitment, which I believe Members of the Committee have already considered. That commitment will drive energy and carbon savings in the large non-energy intensive sector which includes companies such as banks and supermarkets. Obviously, communicating information and advice on energy-efficiency measures and benefits to householders is a key plank of our strategy for reducing energy efficiency. We have provided £100 million funding for the Green Homes service with the Energy Saving Trust to provide a single point of contact for advice. In addition, as part of the wider Act on CO2 campaign, we have launched the carbon calculator, which allows householders to calculate their carbon emissions and provides suggestions on how to reduce them through improved energy efficiency. In other words, I want to stress that this is an issue the Government take very seriously. The point has been made that it does not play a part in this legislation, but we do not believe that new primary legislation is necessary to help us drive our energy-efficiency strategy. However, I listened with care, as I always do, to what my noble friend Lord O’Neill said on that and would be grateful if later, outside the Committee, he would give some examples of where he thinks that it will be useful for future legislation to deal with energy efficiency. We should beware Bills that put in everything covered by a topic. We have all seen Bills that are top-heavy and have too much about too much in them. This Bill has a specific purpose and primary legislation on the subject is not necessary. I hope that I have an ally in the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, on this at least. Of course, the issue is a crucial part of our strategy for tackling climate change and will remain so. The question therefore is about whether we should produce the type of document or information that the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked for in the amendment. We already produce reports which compile such information and as a result I hope to persuade the Committee, particularly the noble Baroness, that the amendment is unnecessary. Information on energy consumption in the UK is contained in the department’s Digest of UK Energy Statistics, updated and published annually. That includes, among other things, information on total energy consumption in the domestic sector and by business. Noble Lords who took part in debates on the Climate Change Bill will not need me to remind them that—if it becomes an Act; I am fairly confident that it will—the Secretary of State will have a duty to prepare and lay before Parliament an annual statement of emissions, which will set out qualitative information on net UK emissions, including energy consumption. There is information, so the question is about whether it is necessary to have more than at present and, if so, whether the amendment is the right way to go about it. We do not think it is necessary, so we cannot accept it. I want to make a point about the light bulbs that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, spoke about. She raises an important issue of just the kind that we try to consider when working with industry in our efforts to increase standards of major energy-using products, such as motors, electronics and air conditioning, as well as lighting. We welcome the European Commission’s intention, at least, which is to work towards regulating against inefficient bulbs. We will ensure that, in the consideration of proposals, such issues are given due consideration before any final decisions are made. Nothing could be more absurd than to have energy-conscious light bulbs, if I can call them that, which people cannot read by. I take her point. I have been asked by my noble friend Lord O’Neill to say something about my noble friend Lord Whitty’s amendments. Let me do my best to do that as briefly as I can. There is what is described as a Keeling schedule on Clause 80, which we are more than happy to share with Members of the Committee and my noble friend in particular; what the amendments would do to Clause 80 is slightly confusing. The amendments relate to our proposals to rationalise reporting requirements in Clause 80. Clause 80 is in the Bill for a number of reasons. First, it was to introduce flexibility around the timing of our annual energy report, and secondly, it was to remove statutory requirements that were either replicated elsewhere or overly prescriptive. We believe it right that we streamline our reporting requirements to ensure that our report is both topical and meaningful. As part of that, we need reporting to be sufficiently flexible to allow us to exclude less relevant technologies and include more relevant ones as developments dictate. Our proposed changes to Clause 80 facilitate that and, as such, we should retain the proposals as part of the Bill. In view of the current range of statutory and non-statutory reports and national statistics that are already published, if my noble friend noble Lord Whitty had been here to move his amendments, I would have asked him to withdraw them. That does not apply to Amendment No. 64. There was considerable debate on this issue in the other place. A number of concerns were raised that our proposal to introduce flexibility around the reporting and publication periods could raise the spectre of the Government being tempted to use that flexibility to somehow delay the publication of our report to obscure bad news. I am sure that the Committee does not need persuading that that was never our intention. The Government take the issue of reporting progress very seriously. We agreed on Report in the other place to reflect on these concerns, and we have been considering whether there is a way to allow the Government to produce a more relevant and up-to-date report, while meeting the concerns about flexibility. As such, officials have been working on a proposal that allows the Government to establish a reporting period that aligns with the calendar year; 1 January to 31 December. That would not only ensure that are we reporting over a continuous period but would avoid a situation whereby one report could cover an excessively long period and the next an excessively short one. Our intention is for each reporting period to cover a full year cycle. Rather than the current 12-month reporting period ending with 23 February, which was arbitrarily based on the publication date of the White Paper in 2003, we want to replace this—perhaps using common sense—with a reporting period of January to December. We are persuaded that it would be helpful to retain a specific period during which the report would need to be published. The current publication period runs from 24 February to 31 December. However, there are real benefits in establishing a new requirement for the report for a particular calendar year to be published no later than October the following year. There are two reasons. First, it would commit the Government to report by a certain time in the year but would still allow the appropriate analysis to be completed shortly after all the latest data become available, which is usually between April and July. Secondly, it would align our reporting with the carbon budget reporting cycle that will be established through the Climate Change Bill. We recognise that this may appear to provide the department with the scope to choose a publication date that suits its own objectives. However, I remind the Committee that such scope already exists under Section 1 of the Sustainable Energy Act 2003. I am sorry to have gone on at some length about that, but we want to consider that amendment and perhaps come back with something akin to it on Report.