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Energy Efficiency

I begin by congratulating all Members who have made their maiden speeches today. They have been fantastic, and after hearing some of them, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon), I suspect that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury could soon simply scrap all the tourist boards in this country, such is the eloquence of the case that hon. Members have made for their constituencies. This has been a fantastic debate. There has been some good knockabout, but hon. Members have also made some serious points. I am slightly curious when I hear coalition Members talk about fuel poverty and the fact that they will square the circle by voting to freeze child benefit and cut housing benefit. We have not really teased out exactly how that will tackle fuel poverty. I should like to put the subject of energy efficiency into the context of the wider energy debate. As part of my leisure reading I often have a glance at DUKES—the digest of UK energy statistics—a thoroughly interesting document that I get from the Department's website. I had a glance at it this morning and it contains some interesting statistics about our consumption as a nation over the past 40 years—since 1970. We have seen a 60% increase in the amount of electricity we consume as a nation. However, manufacturing and industrial consumption has remained steady at some 14,000 GWh, and it has largely been domestic consumption that has driven up the figures, plus some transportation. One thing that brings a wry smile to my face is hon. Members talking of the need for more railways and electric cars. Those are admirable suggestions, and I support them, but it is never explained where we will get the energy to power those new electric trains and cars. If we compare our consumption statistics with our supply statistics, the result is worrying. At its peak in 1998, the nuclear industry provided approximately 90,000 GWh. In 2008, the latest year for which figures are available, that had fallen to 48,000 GWh, although it has risen again slightly since then. At the same time, many of our coal-powered stations are coming to the end of their lives. By the end of the coming decade, all our Magnox nuclear power stations will have closed, as will almost all of the advanced gas-cooled reactor nuclear power stations and many of our coal-powered stations—either because of new European regulations on carbon emissions, which both sides of the House would support, or because they have simply come to the end of their lives. I suggest that we need to understand that, although the aim of being more efficient in our energy consumption is laudable, we face a massive energy gap that needs to be addressed. We have seen some consensus break out this afternoon on how we can achieve that. I have a constituency interest in power generation, in Longannet power station—one of the two sites bidding for the Minister's money under the carbon capture and storage scheme. I notice that his colleague, when asked about carbon capture, gave us some warm words about the coalition's general support for it, but—I assume that it was an oversight on his part—did not give a guarantee that DECC will meet the previous Government's target of a decision by October. I would be delighted if the Minister could give the House that guarantee when he winds up. The hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) is unfortunately no longer in her place, but she made an excellent maiden speech. I suggest to her that, if we are to have a surge in the volume of renewables, especially those that come from offshore and elsewhere, we cannot simply say that we do not want improvements to the national grid. I suggest that the Liberal Democrats are in their usual situation of saying one thing in the House and doing something else outside. I look forward to seeing how the hon. Lady squares that circle with her constituents. The wider issue is how we close the gap between our desire for a low carbon British economy and our need for energy. I suggest that we will do that through three forms of generation. I accept the role of renewables, although I am on the record as being slightly more sceptical than some of my colleagues about the size and scale of that. For example, biomass, which was seen until recently as the great white hope of renewable energy, has now, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) knows, run into serious difficulties with how quickly it is gobbling up forestry in the UK. It is now suggested that several schemes in Scotland proposed by Forth Ports will have to import wood from around the world.