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Energy Bill

My Lords, I was delighted to add my name to this flurry of amendments. I will speak only the once and hope that what I have to say will apply to everything I have added my name to. I woke up this morning, in common with many of your Lordships, to hear a young man tell almost 300 million people, ““Yes we can””. It reminded me that if I go back over the 50 years I have been in the commercial world, there has been one common factor: the incumbent will always throw apparently insuperable obstacles in the way of those who wish to change the way that anything is done—in this case, we are talking about the microgeneration of power. I was intrigued to hear the Minister say that he does not wish to close down options. I applaud that. We should not close down options by becoming fixated on an upper capacity of 3 megawatts. To make economic sense, one may in some circumstances have to go to 10 megawatts—certainly, I would say, to 5 megawatts. It seems possible that, at 3 megawatts, many perfectly good schemes will be ruled out as being purely uneconomic, and that communities wishing to take advantage of this opportunity to create their own microgeneration schemes, but on a scale of 5 to 10 megawatts, cannot do so because the incumbents do not wish it to be possible. That would be a poor start to an otherwise brilliant and encouraging initiative by the Government. I urge the Government not to become fixated by an upper capacity of 3 megawatts, because, over time, I suspect that very good schemes will be developed that require a significant increase on that cap.