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Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I must say how grateful I am for the cross-party support and indeed the support of my own Front Bench. It is good to have that for an amendment. I should make plain that I am not a member of a park authority, but I take a close interest in their affairs both as vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks and as president of Friends of the Lake District. The amendment would put national park authorities on an equal footing with the rest of local government in terms of the ability to generate and sell renewable energy. The current position for other local authorities is that they can sell electricity from renewable energy resources. Existing legislation—Section 11 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976—already allowed them to generate electricity and heat. Following the change made by the Government last summer through the sale of electricity by local authority regulations, they were given these additional powers. This change makes it much easier from a financial point of view for local authorities to install renewable technologies, and so play their part in the transition to a low-carbon society because they can benefit in full from the Government’s feed-in tariff. For their part, the national park authorities are tackling climate change on a number of fronts, including providing leadership on low-carbon innovation and national park communities, while also reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from their own activities. An important aspect of this can be the installation of small-scale renewable energy measures that are suitable for a protected landscape. Since the park authorities are not included in the relevant piece of legislation—Section 11 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976—it would appear that they do not currently have the power to generate or sell renewable energy. Through amending the relevant provisions of the 1976 Act to include the Broads Authority and the national park authorities as set out in this amendment, it would be possible to put this right. The prescriptions on the sale of electricity as set out in the 2010 regulations would then also apply to the Broads Authority and the national park authorities. There might be other means of achieving the same outcome which the Government prefer. However, what is important is to put the national parks on an equal footing with other local authorities in terms of the generation of the electricity and heat from renewable energy and the potential to sell any surplus electricity from this renewable generation. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively. The national park authorities are keen to set an example of what can be done in an environmentally and aesthetically acceptable way. It is surely important for us all to give them every possible support.