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Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill

That is important, but it is also important that the House consider other possibilities that may arise in how we can approach the decentralisation of energy generation. One lesson that struck me in my work on examining arrangements in Germany was that, across continental Europe, there is a much stronger tradition of decentralising not only energy generation but ownership and accountability. In the UK, we have found ourselves consumed by all sorts of arguments about planning blight. There are local objections to the installation of wind turbines, and I expect that there would be similar objections to the development of biodigesters. In Denmark, there is a far greater distribution of localised biodigestive plants, which feed back into either local communities or the gas grid. One reason why there is less controversy in other parts of Europe is that there is a far greater degree of local and popular ownership, and people are stakeholders in their own system. I discovered the importance of that in a community in Nottingham that I am working in, the Meadows. There was an application for a wind turbine, not exactly in the centre of Nottingham but on the banks of the River Trent as it sweeps around that inner-city, poor community. Wind surveys were done by the university and identified three possible sites, one inside the Meadows on the embankment and two across the river in wealthier parts of Nottingham. We had to have inquiries and consultations and everyone anticipated that there would be massive objections. We got it completely wrong. At the very first meeting, a guy stood up and said, "Just let me understand this. This wind turbine, it'll be generating electricity that will be coming into my house, and it'll be coming off my bills. Is that right?" We said, "Well, sort of right. It will be shared between all of us, but technically that is true." We said that we had to decide where it would be located. He said, "There's no question about that; it's got to be located here." People murmured, "Why?" He turned to everyone else in the audience and said, "Listen, if this is a money spinner and we put it in areas outside our own, where the rich people live, that money's never going to come here. If it's going to work for us, we'll have it here." The murmuring became a rumble of enthusiasm and the planning application went through without a single objection from the community where the turbine was to be located. Why? Because it would own the turbine. We need to learn from other parts of Europe that it is not only a matter of renewal of local contracts, but of building in local stakeholding. If people see themselves as the drivers of change, we will discover in the UK what we find throughout Europe: schools that hand over their roofs to solar arrays because that generates income for them; whole towns and cities where local authorities give over their municipal roofs to generating decentralised energy. All that provides a social, economic and ecological momentum, which is incredibly empowering. The Bill represents that for me. For years, many other hon. Members and I have longed for the dynamism that the Minister and the Secretary of State have brought to the debate on green energy. Now we have it. The Bill allows us to dovetail many initiatives that are on the table and make them a coherent whole. I remember a wonderful tale about how a village dealt with a problem. A child fell down a well and was shouting to be rescued. Various villagers lowered their ropes into the well to try to reach the child. The first rope was 20 ft short, the next was 15 ft short, the next was 10 ft and the last was, tantalisingly, only 5 ft away from the child. The villagers could not work out what to do, but a voice from the bottom of the well called out, "Tie your ropes together." The Bill invites us to tie the ropes—many of which the Government, the Minister and Secretary of State have provided—together to harness the enthusiasm and urgency of our times. I hope that Hansard records today that we have an hon. Member, a measure and cross-party momentum that had the sense to tie our ropes together.