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Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill

One of the curious things about my parliamentary career and that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) is that people continually get us mixed up. Over the years, each of us has frequently received letters addressed to the other. So when I recently got a letter congratulating me on introducing the Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill, I felt that I ought to come along here today to set the record straight by saying that it was nothing to do with me. I also congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this extremely important Bill, which I thoroughly support and which will be of enormous benefit to many of my constituents. My constituency is a rural area, much of which is off the gas networks. The future for microgeneration is therefore extremely important there. At the moment, most rural households rely on oil, liquefied petroleum gas and, of course, coal. In Northumberland, we still burn a great deal of coal. Curiously, at certain times of the winter in still weather, the pollution levels in some of the country villages approach levels that are not permitted under European or domestic air purity regulations. If those regulations were tightened further, some villages would fail the test. Moving away from burning fossil fuels to heat our homes is therefore extremely important. We are making considerable progress in the north. We have a lot of timber, and wood energy is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, the new swimming pool that has recently opened in Hexham is heated exclusively by wood energy. However, the use of such energy is really available only to the larger institutions that can handle the storage and transportation of the wood. One or two other larger institutions in my constituency are introducing it, including a local hotel which makes a great issue of the fact that it is heated using sustainable wood products. This is part of the idea of promoting green tourism in Northumberland. In agriculture, farmers are extremely interested in developing anaerobic digester systems. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) that an impediment to the success of this process is the linking of the digesters to the grid. In areas where there is no gas network, the digesters produce gas to work turbines that generate electricity. That is a sensible idea for farmers, but the cost of linking the system to the grid is a considerable disincentive. I have no specialist knowledge of this matter, but it seems to me that the amount that the electricity supply companies are charging for upgrading the grid or for connecting to an anaerobic digester are prohibitively high. Those costs need to be looked at more carefully. I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) about ownership of individual turbines and other generators of decentralised energy. My constituency has been defined as an area suitable for large-scale wind turbine development, and there are now applications in place for 80 turbines in a relatively small area. As hon. Members can imagine, that has caused considerable annoyance and irritation to the locals, who believe that the landscape of Northumberland, which is one of our big selling points, will be damaged by the overdevelopment of the turbines. They will also get no benefit from them, apart from the small amount of money—the bawbees—that the companies give back, perhaps to renovate a village hall or something like that. There is no real payback for the community for having these things on their doorstep. Microgeneration involving turbines within a community would provide a direct benefit, however, and the whole idea would become very much more popular. I do not want to detain the House, because I believe that the Bill should go through. It is an extremely worthwhile Bill and I thoroughly support it. What microgeneration needs is that gentle push to make it economic, and once it passes through that barrier, there will be an explosion of decentralised energy across the country, which will make a huge contribution to the cleaning up of our planet.