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Green Energy (Definition and Promotion) Bill

My Lords, this is an important Bill which shows the way to producing green energy on a smaller scale. As I am involved in climate science, I should perhaps mention that climate warming seems on the way up again. I looked today on the door of my colleague, Professor Mike Davey, at University College, where he regularly has the El Niño temperature, and it is definitely on the rise. So, despite some scepticism on the Benches opposite, we can be sure that the climate temperature is on its way. The other point made by the climate change committee is that step changes are needed in the way in which we deal with energy. I welcome the fact that the Government are finally getting ahead with nuclear energy, which of course enables France to have 80 per cent of its electrical energy producing no carbon emissions. In this county, it will be a slow climb to that kind of level but both large and small-scale green energy measures are necessary. I have been going around the UK and have seen some small schemes along rivers which, at the moment, are full of bureaucratic difficulties. In some ways, the bureaucratic difficulties are because producing energy then affects other parts of the environment—for example, the way eels and fish go along these rivers—which have to be considered. Therefore the Environment Agency’s caution has some merit. However, the point of the Bill is to push this along. The important point about Clause 1(2)(b) is that it refers to energy efficiency measures. Some of the best uses of smaller-scale energy are not necessarily to feed into the grid but to provide wind energy for pumping water. There was a nice scheme in the south-west of England which essentially uses wind for recirculating sewage and making it decompose much more quickly. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has mentioned, combined heat and power has been an effective method. For example, Woking has made its famous reduction of 50 per cent in energy in council facilities and 70 per cent of its carbon emissions over a 10-year period, which is, of course, still an unbeaten record in the UK. I follow my noble friend Lord Giddens on the politics of this aspect. One of the important features of the political aspects of small-scale power is that there is a devolution of power, if you will excuse the pun. This enables communities to have their own sources of power, which is important. We saw this, for example, in Woking, near London, when there were power cuts in the rest of London and it stayed on in that area. This is very much a Secretary of State Bill. Nowhere do we see in the Bill the fact that the responsibility for local initiatives should come from county councils or local regional government. I suggest that there might be some amendments to the Bill along those lines. I speak as a former city councillor in Cambridge, where we carried out a few devolved activities in other aspects of the environment. I see that Wales is cited and this is an important aspect. The other important point on which this and much of our legislation fails is the concept of integration. If you go to Rotterdam you will see dykes there protecting against the floods, and on the dykes you will see windmills. That is an interesting example of so-called combining adaptation and mitigation. Some of the measures being taken against rising sea levels and storms can also be used for local power, but this is not happening very much in the UK. I feel that there should be another dimension to the Bill of local integration. For example, wherever roads are built, you can place windmills and solar collectors and you will have a natural channel for your electrical power. With those two caveats, I endorse the Bill.