Clause 9 - Promotion of community energy
Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill
4:45 pm
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister (the Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
Clause 9 requires the Secretary of State to promote community energy schemes, and lists the ways in which that could happen. That would set up a cost-effective, flexible way of assisting the set-up or establishment of such schemes. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith all make a great deal of sense. However, before we skate on in our haste to get through the Bill, I do not want to do without a short discussion of the potential of community energy generation.
We rightly spent a fair amount of time this afternoon extolling the virtues of microgeneration, and talking about our hopes and aspirations for a revolution in that sphere. However, we must equally talk about the fact that in many circumstances microgeneration is not appropriate, or would be difficult to make available. Alternatively, in some cases community energy may be a better option. Heat sources can include conventional boilers using conventional fuels, but, in our war on carbon emissions, we must hope that the phenomenon could trigger a move towards biomass and domestic or agricultural wastes, and, importantly, combined heat and power plants, in which the heat generated by electricity production is captured and used to generate more electricity, or is distributed around the community via a heat network.
I understand that there are now about 1,300 sites in the UK that utilise CHP and that they generate about 6 per cent. of our electricity. It is not just an energy source of the future; it is happening now, and we should be doing what we can to encourage it. Probably the greatest exemplar of its potential, and of what is happening, is Conservative-controlled Woking. Woking borough council has done some extraordinary things. I have not been to Woking yet, but I hope to visit it in the near future. My eyes were opened to what has happened there only by a terrific presentation given to me recently by Greenpeace. They extolled the work, in particular, of Allan Jones, the former energy services manager of Woking borough council.