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Energy Bill

Along with other hon. Members, I warmly welcome the Lords amendments that bring in the feed-in tariffs. I am glad that the Government have moved a considerable distance towards this. That is not something that the Minister will hear often from my party, and I hope that it does not damage him too much in the eyes of the Prime Minister. I fully support amendment (a), which was tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). It is important that there is certainty regarding when the feed-in tariff will be introduced. The sooner we know, the better. As others have said, the hon. Gentleman led a very good campaign that received support from both sides of the House to get this far on the matter, on which he deserves our congratulations. Hopefully, he will be able to get us a little bit further, so that we can all be satisfied that feed-in tariffs are definitely coming. My interest in the matter comes about because I represent a largely rural area. In many parts of rural Scotland—this also affects many other rural areas—there is a problem because many homes are not connected to the gas grid. I have for a long time raised questions—the Minister's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), heard me raise them often—about the problems of off-grid supplies for hard-to-treat homes. That is a serious issue for my area and many other rural areas. The hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) rightly talked about fuel poverty, which is a real problem for those not connected to the gas grid at the moment, but wanting to heat their homes. I believe that feed-in tariffs offer the opportunity to look at renewable energy as a way of tackling the problem, and significantly alleviating fuel poverty in rural areas. It is not without its problems, one of which was touched on briefly by other Members: that many of the renewable energy resources are very expensive to install at the moment. The feed-in tariff will help to some extent, but we also need to ensure that the capital cost of the equipment is reduced, to allow many other people to take advantage of this. I look forward to the day when smaller communities can have their own renewable energy, and feed in the excess to the grid. That raises yet another problem—the nature of the grid itself. There have been ongoing problems with renewable energy's access to the grid—an issue that I have spoken about on many occasions. I shall not rehearse all the arguments again, but I note that only this week, the Crown Estate Commissioners started their licensing application for renewable energy through wave and tidal power in the Pentland firth, which offers huge potential for renewable energy. Even there, however, there are problems accessing the grid. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South mentioned the Pelamis development. On a visit, I actually stood under a Pelamis machine—thankfully, it was not in the water at the time. It has huge potential, but it needs to get into the grid. This a problem that we are going to have to tackle through Ofgem, to ensure that the grid can take on both large-scale and small-scale renewables and allow the feed-in. I suspect that many energy companies will allow grid access difficulties to stand between customers and feed-in tariff.