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Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill

I entirely agree. This point is probably most starkly illustrated at present in the field of photovoltaics, which are currently very expensive, but if they were produced in tens of millions of units, the unit cost would come hurtling down. We have seen something similar happening in IT, and there are some strong parallels between that industry and photovoltaics. The Government should be stepping up their action in this area. I know there is talk of reducing capital investment, but in my view there ought to be more Government and private capital investment in energy saving, particularly in people's homes. That is green, and it would save energy, create jobs and promote social justice, all of which cannot be said for many things in this life. I am therefore strongly in favour of it. There must also be energy efficiency in non-domestic buildings. A lot of businesses need to do more to reduce their consumption. Quite a lot of them spend quite a lot of money on the physical security of their offices, factories and warehouses, but the fact of the matter is that despite the value of all the things that might be vandalised and stolen, they lose a lot more every day from energy escaping through the roof, chimneys, doors and windows of the buildings that the security guards are roaming around. I think they need to pay a lot more attention to that. We must also recognise that there is a great deal of waste through overheating and over-lighting. As for the IT industry, I always smile wryly when I see somebody being interviewed on television advocating green measures while they are standing in a room with about 40 visual display units flashing away, with all the electricity consumption that that entails. I also think that there is a timeless element to energy saving, because once we have done it, we have done it—we may need to do a bit of maintenance occasionally, but it is done. Any form of energy production that we consider may go out of fashion, or its relative costs may change, whereas the relative gains of energy saving are permanent and continuous. I am not a recent convert to the idea of energy saving. I can recall that within two or three days of being elected to this place some 30 years ago I had a drink on the Terrace—I have not done that very often since, but that has nothing to do with the particular incident I am describing—and talked to someone who had been a No. 10 adviser to the Callaghan Government. I asked why the Government were not putting more money into energy saving and instead of putting more money into building power stations, to which the response was, "It is so much more difficult to monitor and control that sort of investment, and it is less easy to demonstrate to the public that it is being done." That did not seem to me to be a particularly good answer at the time and it has not become one since. When I first started working for a living, I worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board, whose chairman at the time was a most distinguished engineer, Sir Christopher Hinton. He was the boss of the generating organisation; he was probably the person who made possible the establishment of nuclear power stations, and he did that by what can only be described as engineering and managerial genius. He also had a great deal of common sense. He used to upset the marketing side of the electricity industry by saying that it was making money out of ridiculously high temperatures in offices. Even at that time—this has grown since—the custom was that everybody went to work and then took off their jacket. He used to say, "I can remember when I was a graduate engineer for the Great Western Railway at its Swindon offices. During the winter we did not just wear a jacket; we put on a jumper or a waistcoat under our coat in order to keep warm." He pointed out that if everybody in an office in Britain did that, we could probably close two 2,000 MW power stations. So we need to examine our own individual behaviour to see whether we could tolerate not being roasted in a hotel, train, plane and so on—it does not matter what example we use. We ought to be pursuing that approach; we ought to try not to consume energy wastefully through our own behaviour, rather than just look at other people's energy saving. I move on to the other aspects of the Bill, which do involve dilemmas. The microgeneration proposals for dwelling houses and non-domestic land are intended to make it easier to install wind turbines—I call them windmills, because I am so old-fashioned—or air source heat pumps, and I am in favour of doing that. The proposal seeks to make it easier by amending the permitted development controls, and I support that. In relation to the proposal's application to domestic buildings, we need to take care not to end up with someone's wind turbine causing a nuisance to the house next door, the flat upstairs or the flat below. That is not likely to happen where modern, properly installed and continually well maintained wind turbines are involved, but wind turbines will need to be modern, of a high standard, properly installed and continuously well maintained. I do not know whether they already have a noise rating, but we clearly need to address that issue. I do not say that because I want to prevent wind turbines from being installed. I want them to be installed and I do not want to be negative about things, but it would be a real setback if some are installed using the general permission only for there to be a tremendous row about a particular incident involving a particular old lady who is being driven mad by the windmill next door. All the enemies of all the green measures that we wish to push for would jump on that, publicise it and gloat, and could set back all the developments that we want to take place. I note that the Bill's definition of "non-domestic land" for these purposes includes "buildings" and that the proposal would not apply only to rural areas. I am happy about that because my constituency is at the urban end of things, despite containing Primrose hill, Chalk Farm, Oak village, Elm village and so on. Much more use should be made of non-domestic urban buildings as, in effect, the towers for wind turbines. There is a great deal of scope for wind turbines in urban areas, provided they are not too intrusive on particular parts of the urban landscape. I say that because urban landscapes are just as valuable as rural ones and many of them need to be protected. The source of electricity in some shopping streets could literally be above the shop. One of the most famous sights in my constituency used to be the gasometers behind St. Pancras station. Some of those have been temporarily demolished, whereas others have gone for ever. Their example prompts me to suggest that a perfectly sound site for wind turbines, and one that would be inoffensive in terms of the urban landscape, would be on top of the new, modern extension of St. Pancras station. We need to take that sort of approach all over our urban areas.