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Energy Providers

May I invite the Minister to visit Kettering, which faces several issues relating to energy providers? Local residents would appreciate the chance to hear his views, and he might learn about some developments that are pertinent to his portfolio. The first issue is an innovative scheme that Kettering borough council is undertaking with the energy provider E.ON UK to encourage people to reduce their energy consumption, and the second concerns the location of wind farms. Kettering borough council, of which I am pleased to be a member, and E.ON have launched an innovative new pilot scheme that offers residents in the borough the chance to earn monetary rewards, if they reduce the amount of energy that they use over the year. The scheme basically gives instant accurate information on energy consumption, to help consumers reduce the energy that they use in their homes. The scheme involves installing dual-fuel smart meters in the homes of around 500 existing E.ON customers in the borough, enabling them proactively to monitor their home energy use and adjust their energy consumption accordingly. The scheme starts next month and will run for 12 months. Should the pilot be successful, one of the leading housing developers in the area is considering using the technology for new developments, as housing expansion in the region takes off over the next 10 to 15 years, to make Kettering borough and north Northamptonshire an exemplar low-carbon region. Through the use of such smart meters, households will be better able to understand the energy consumption of the different products in their homes. Customers who sign up for the trial will have their homes fitted with the new smart metering technology for free. They will also be provided with a smart energy monitor, which communicates wirelessly with the meter and enables them to see their energy consumption instantaneously. The technology will also provide access to a new online smart energy tracker system, whereby customers will be able to monitor their progress against their energy saving goal. The incentive is that if customers reduce their energy use by 5 per cent., they will receive £50 from the borough council, and if they achieve a 10 per cent. saving, they will receive £100. Customers will also benefit from lower energy bills, because their consumption will be less. Let me turn to wind farms. Residents in Kettering are supportive of renewable energy. We have a wonderful wind farm at a place called Burton Wold. There are 10 turbines, and the local authority has given permission to increase that to 17. Indeed, permission may be given in future to expand to 24 turbines. The wind farm currently supplies the equivalent of 10,000 households out of the 36,000 households in the borough, although that figure will increase as the number of turbines increases. The wind farm is not universally popular, but it is fair to say that the balance of opinion locally is strongly supportive of the Burton Wold wind farm, especially in Burton Latimer. Local schoolchildren in the town have named each of the turbines, and there is a substantial grant each year from the wind farm company to the town council to help with local community projects. However, local residents in my constituency, which includes the borough of Kettering and one third of Daventry district, do not want to see lots of wind farms being built all over the local countryside. Five planning applications are likely to be made for additional wind farms, at Rushton, Great Cransley, Harrington, Kelmarsh and Brixworth. Some of those applications are for wind farms in extremely scenic parts of the local countryside. Kettering borough council and Daventry district council both face a challenge in trying to balance the Government's understandable objective of increasing the number of wind farms with the strong views of local residents, who are saying, ““Yes, we're supportive of renewable energy, but not in every case.”” It would be reasonable for the Government to adopt a policy whereby they could tell local authorities such as Kettering borough council that if they are a champion of a wind farm that delivers demonstrable and sizeable benefits to the local community, as the Burton Wold wind farm does, they should be able to use that support to stop other wind farms from being built willy-nilly all over the countryside. That would strike a fair balance between the Government's laudable objectives of encouraging more renewable energy and reducing our dependence on foreign fuel imports, and the understandable concern of local residents, who do not want to see some of the best countryside in the middle of England, which has historic connotations, being destroyed, potentially for a long time, by some very tall structures—they are far taller than Big Ben or Nelson's column—that are likely to remain for 20 or 30 years.