---

Energy Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may support the amendment from a particular perspective, community microgeneration, which is one of the areas where we are not seeing any movement with the ROC system. I am rather less sanguine about the ROC system than the noble Lord, Lord Whitty: it remains to be seen whether it will deliver a great increase in renewable generation and have a real impact on smaller-scale generation. The ROC system appears extremely complicated and unattractive to community generation schemes, and has signally failed to be accessible to them. There is great capacity for community generation and, for that reason, I press the Minister to make sure that if there was a cap, as I think there should be, it was not set at a low level and did not cut out of the mix those middle-range schemes that are simply not being driven by the ROC system. They include a wide range of technologies: wind, biogas and even water. We need to make sure that whatever scheme that the Government come forward with promotes the ability to set up community generation schemes. My other point relates to the scale of our ambition for microgeneration. A study conducted for BERR showed that 30 to 40 per cent of the UK’s total electricity production could be achieved by microgeneration by 2050. Even with the best will in the world, the current proposals will not get us even a micromillimetre off the ground. I welcome the Government’s commitment to introducing the feed-in tariff amendment, but ask them not to put too tight a cap on it.