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Energy Bill

My Lords, I add my praise to that offered to the Government for coming forward with this amendment on feed-in tariffs, because it is a major breakthrough in circumstances where, for many years, we have seen introduced a series of instruments designed to drive up renewables which simply have not done that at the lower scales. It took us an inordinate amount of time to come to that conclusion. We changed the system a few years ago, and we have begun to see the bigger-scale renewable schemes really start to motor along, which is to be welcomed, but we are still failing on the smaller-scale renewables. The feed-in tariff is therefore to be welcomed and hugely overdue. The series of amendments that have been tabled in this and subsequent groups are well worth the Government considering, as they might improve the amendment that they have tabled. Amendments Nos. 31, 32, 33 and 35, to which I have put my name, ginger the process up a bit. We are running out of road, as we have the 2020 target to meet for renewables, and we could well fail our obligations under the directive. All the work that has been done by the climate change commission and in previous reports has demonstrated that the early carbon reductions will be the most important ones. It is not hitting the 80 per cent 2050 target but achieving very rapid carbon reduction targets in the early stages that is necessary to prevent us running the risk of some of these irretrievable and irreversible whole-system climate changes. So well done to the Government, and two cheers. We would give the proposals three cheers if we could get some of our amendments adopted into the Government’s proposals.