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Energy Bill

My Lords, I find this somewhat embarrassing. I fear that I am not going to agree with my good friend, who is sitting behind me and who has such knowledge on these subjects. I hope that he will forgive me. As I said in Committee, we support the amendment. An emissions performance standard would send a clear and much needed signal to the market about the future direction of UK energy production. It would prevent any more wobbles in the Government’s commitment to their CO2 reduction targets and to the recommendations of the Stern review—wobbles that would result in unabated coal plants being given the go-ahead. I believe that six are being considered. It would also encourage the long-term investment in carbon capture and storage that is needed if the UK is to develop the technological expertise that will become ever more critical as climate change moves up the international agenda. The Government explained in Committee that they supported a carbon cap only when it was applied at an EU level. Their argument was that a cap delivered through the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the level of which is of course decided with the involvement of all EU members, would result in a credible and effective framework for the reduction of CO2 emissions, but that a cap on individual UK power stations, set entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State, would lead to a crisis in our energy supply. As the noble Lord, Lord Stern, warned, the ETS will not make a sufficient impact on the power generation sector soon enough to prevent us from being locked into a high-carbon infrastructure. Why have the Government decided to ignore his recommendation that they take further steps to prevent this from occurring? Other countries have seen the danger of allowing new unabated coal-fired power stations and have imposed moratoriums of various sorts, so why not us, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has just said? In further discussions, the Government have suggested that an emissions performance standard would be of no value because it would not automatically lead to the reduction of CO2 emissions from other EU countries. Will the Minister explain the value of the Government’s commitment to making all schools zero-carbon by 2016 and to reducing carbon emissions immediately in newly built schools by at least 60 per cent? Such policies will not directly improve the carbon emissions from other building development and will of course impose a cost on the taxpayer. Yet, in this example, the Government thought it worth while. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I hope that he will be more receptive to this enabling power than he was when it was last discussed.