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Dr. Desmond Turner (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab): At least the Conservatives are even-handed—they say, "Not in anybody's backyard", whereas the Liberals stick to their own backyards.
To be a little more serious about energy policy, our problem here tonight is that we are discussing a Bill that should be the launching pad for an energy policy that makes a serious contribution to the future survival of the world, in terms of climate change. All that it is, in fact, is a set of housekeeping measures, which does not do anything seriously to promote renewable energy. The White Paper gave us all hope when it identified and set in lights the 60 per cent. target for CO 2 reduction as a prime policy driver. Since then, the threat of climate change has been reinforced and emphatically stated from many sources, including the Pentagon and the Government's chief scientist, all of which have made it clear that climate change is the most serious threat to the security of the planet.
The problem with climate change is that we cannot start too soon to try to do something about it. Even if we achieve the 60 per cent. target by 2050, of all the climate change scenarios even the most moderate is still quite extreme, by comparison with current circumstances, and anything else starts to move into the apocalyptic. Energy, therefore, takes centre stage. Virtually all the CO 2 output is derived from energy use, so it follows that we should be concentrating on moving away from the habit of burning fossil fuels. That has to be the ultimate driver.
Although this might not be the Secretary of State's fault, to have a Bill that starts out by imposing a duty on her to keep the lights on, which she already has, is laughable. Even George W. would understand that one. We need to do a little better than that, and CO 2 reduction has to be the prime driver. There is now probably general agreement on both sides of the House, and with everybody in the industry, that the present aspirations for renewable energy generation in this country will not be met—and, sadly, the Bill does nothing to correct that. We have to ask ourselves why. What is wrong?
For me, wind turbines are definitely not the be-all and end-all of the renewable energy industry. New technologies coming on stream could be far more
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potent, especially in the United Kingdom. How fast they are exploited is another question. As everybody probably knows by now, my favourite candidate is tidal power, closely followed by wave power. Between them, those two natural resources have the inherent capacity, if exploited, to supply twice as much electricity as this country now generates and consumes. That massive potential has to be worth exploiting.
Not only can those sources generate that huge amount of electricity, but tidal power can supply base load as well, because tides are totally predictable, to the minute. We know exactly when they will flow and exactly how fast, and the times change around the country, so if we locate our generation sites strategically, we can have constant predictable baseline power, with no CO 2 emissions and no serious environmental consequences. That must be a goal well worth pursuing.
We have seen the advantages that Denmark and Germany have gained from wind power, for all its problems. Denmark is a world leader in producing wind turbines, which provides thousands of manufacturing jobs in a small country and is a very significant contributor to its economy. We have that opportunity with the marine technologies, if we can exploit them fast enough. There are fantastic export opportunities.
We have worried about the industrialisation of the developing world. What if China, India or the whole Pacific rim were to industrialise by burning coal? They do not have to do that, because there are magnificent tidal opportunities in the Pacific rim. Anywhere there are islands, there are tidal power opportunities. We still just have the world lead in this technology, and we could have a fantastic export industry, creating 50,000 jobs—or perhaps 100,000, or more. If we do it right, the sky is the limit. We cannot afford to miss that. Why are we not doing it more quickly?
The example of our near neighbours Germany and Denmark shows how determined Governments, without massive expenditure, can promote the introduction and deployment of a technology. We must do that too, yet the sad thing is that the Bill does nothing about it.
I have here a report by the Select Committee on Science and Technology. I probably do not have time to talk about its recommendations in detail, but it supplies the policy that is lacking, and if its advice were followed the funding would be supplied, through a carbon tax and carbon tax credit system. CO 2 -producing technologies would be taxed, and renewable technologies would get a credit. That would solve the problem that technologies other than wind power, which is already there and is readily deployable off the shelf, have in attracting investment. The current system of ROCs—renewables obligation certificates—is too small and too uncertain to attract investment. But if we are to get a new technology into the marketplace, it needs support. By definition, it cannot possibly come in straight away at a commercial price, because the early machines do not have absolute design optimisation and economies of scale. That is why new technologies need guaranteed entry prices. Germany has achieved such things through its renewable energy legislation. Whether or not one likes wind power, we should note that Germany has deployed it several times faster than we have, or even plan to.
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The report also clearly sets out grid companies' obligation to connect new generators to the grid—we will have to rewire Britain completely—and how that will be paid for. We could do this. For example, our Committee proposed a renewable energy authority. We are to have a nuclear decommissioning authority, which I totally support, but promoting renewable energy is at least as important to our future. We could derive enormous benefit from such a body taking over the functions currently exercised by the Department of Trade and Industry, the Carbon Trust and other bodies that, frankly, are not as effective as they might be, and from its producing as concentrated an effort in developing renewable energies as the UK produced in developing nuclear power after the second world war.
There are possibilities out there, but the Bill does not reflect them. It is not too late to incorporate some of these principles.
8.46 pm
Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD): The good news, if I may say so in a spirit of generosity, is that the Government's energy White Paper is almost coherent in setting out the way forward; the bad news is that the so-called Energy Bill does not implement the White Paper. This is becoming a serial fault of the Government. The Waste and Emissions Trading Bill, which should have produced an holistic view of how we deal with waste, was simply the "landfill directive implementation Bill". The Water Bill was a series of small, unconnected measures that failed to recognise the water framework directive, which was being implemented at the same time through regulation. As hon. Members have said, this Bill is not simply a missed opportunity, it is a worrying sign. There is a window of opportunity to get this issue right, but the Government are missing it.
I agree with those hon. Members who said that security and diversity need to be key drivers in energy policy. Of course, a third driver is minimising environmental impact, yet the Bill contains virtually nothing on energy efficiency or energy conservation. Labour Members rightly talked about the impact of high energy charges on their constituents, and the way in which people have been taken out of fuel poverty. I admire the desire to get people out of such poverty, but the best way to deal with the problem is to conserve energy: to reduce the cost of energy by reducing the amount that people have to buy, through energy conservation and energy efficiency measures. That would help individual constituents and reduce the impact on the environment, yet we hear nothing about that idea in this Bill; nor did the Secretary of State say anything about it in her opening remarks. That is another missed opportunity.
The Government also need to look at transmission losses. We have long transmission lines, and as a recent parliamentary question of mine demonstrated, we lose more of our energy between the point of generation and the point of consumption than other European countries do, probably as a result of the transformer arrangements. It is a big issue that the Government have not even begun to address.
The second failing is in respect of renewables. I, too, believe that renewables should and will provide the bedrock of our energy generation requirements in the
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years ahead. They will do so through diversity of supply, rather than through onshore wind power alone, as the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans)—he has disappeared from the Chamber—would have us believe. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) suggested, there are a number of alternatives, which are listed in the Bill. But the Bill does not set out how to promote them, other than to wish and hope for the best.
The Government fail to intervene in the energy market in a meaningful way. The days when the Department of Trade and Industry would intervene before breakfast, lunch and dinner—when Michael Heseltine was Secretary of State—have long gone. It is now a matter for market forces, but the idea is taken to a ludicrous degree. Some of us had lunch today with the senior environment official in California, who told us that the land of the free is intervening to get its energy policy right and making sure there is pump priming for renewable technology and low-interest loans for private sector companies to make sure that technologies are developed. Targets are being set for photovoltaics on 50 per cent. of homes in California. What are our Government doing about that? I am tempted to say something unparliamentary, but the diplomatic way of putting it is "Not very much".
Much more could be done, and we have a window of opportunity in which to get things right. There will undoubtedly be increasing uncertainty over fossil fuel supplies. We are seeing the run-down—rightly, in my view—of the nuclear industry. We must make sure that we start actively to fill the gap, and we must do it now. We can do that, first, by reducing energy demand, and then by having a big renewables programme. We are not seeing that happen.
Of course, it suits some people very well to pretend that there is no renewable energy industry able to meet the gap and that we must therefore fall back on nuclear power. It suits some people so well that wind power and other renewable energies are being talked down so that people are encouraged not to invest in them. That is what is being said from the Conservative Benches, and there is a spectrum of views—to put it kindly—among Government Members. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs believes that renewables are very important and that nuclear power has no future. Lord Sainsbury, on the other hand, believes that nuclear power is the best thing since sliced bread and that we should be investing in it as fast as we can. The Secretary of State for Trade and industry is stuck somewhere in the middle, which is why the door to nuclear power has been left open. It would be helpful if the Government finally settled on a view and implemented it, rather than hoping that market forces will dictate. That abdication of responsibility means that renewables will not have the support that hon. Members on both sides—particularly on the Labour Benches—want for that industry. The way things are going, we will not see that.
Conservative Back Benchers have told us that nuclear power is the solution, and their Front-Bench spokesmen—I hope that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) will do this—should have the decency to say, if they believe in nuclear power, that it is their policy to have new build. They cannot honestly
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carry on articulating a need for nuclear power while saying that they have an open mind on whether nuclear new build should occur. New build is a respectable policy; I disagree with it, but if it is their policy, they should say so instead of pretending that they are stuck in the middle, like the Government. They do not want to offend the green lobby or someone else, but they should advocate the policy they believe in.
There are three good reasons why nuclear is not the future and why it would be wrong to go down that road. First, there is security, which is a real issue in the age of terrorism. Nuclear installations and nuclear fuel present a threat and a target, and we should be careful not to exacerbate that. The Government should minimise the exposure of the nuclear industry. For example, they should be minimising transport movements of nuclear material, but they are not. Movements of radioactive material are a matter, they say, for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. or for British Energy, or for anyone apart from them. In fact, according to answers to my parliamentary questions of last year, unless they have changed their mind since, the Government even allow nuclear material to be carried, in theory at least, on passenger ferries and through the channel tunnel. That is the Government's official position, and if I am wrong on that, the Minister should stand up and say so. That is what his predecessor said in answers to me about a year ago.
The second issue is cost. Hon. Members, now absent, have berated the cost of wind power. We were told it would be £400 million, and how terrible that is, if it is correct—and I must say that the figure varies from day to day. But there was no mention of the £48 billion that we are being asked to find from the taxpayers' purse to decommission the nuclear industry. That is an enormous sum, and far more has been given over the years to the nuclear industry than to renewables. Parliamentary answers demonstrate that while renewables have been given a pittance—pennies here and there—shovels full of cash have been thrown at the nuclear industry.
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