New Clause 16 - Planning and renewable energy
Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill
2:45 pm
Gregory Barker (Shadow Minister (the Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
I am struck by two recent developments. First, as in so many areas of public life, it has been at a local level that we have seen the highest profile and most successful examples of zero and low-carbon policy measures, including energy efficiency. In both Merton and the Minister’s own borough of Croydon, the local authorities have successfully implemented a planning policy to require on-site renewable energy systems, such as those based on solar and wind power, in all major new developments. In Croydon, some 55 projects have been approved under the policy in the first 18 months. That is 55 developments with renewable energy systems in just one borough as a direct result of Croydon’s pioneering approach. Why are Ministers not shouting from the rooftops about the success of the policy and urging other local authorities to follow suit?
The second development that struck me is that mainstream developers are increasingly seeking ways to integrate renewable energy and energy efficiency systems into new buildings. Those technologies are no longer considered unfeasible technically, or as imposing an undue financial burden. If anything, they tend to make new commercial buildings more attractive to potential purchasers and tenants. Many companies are demonstrating that they see that as an integral part of good quality building design and construction, of ensuring competitive advantage in the marketplace and of attracting the brightest and best employees, as well as of sending a clear signal to the market and to their customers.
As might be expected, my new clause is supported by a wide range of organisations, including the Renewable Energy Association, the Town and Country Planning Association, Friends of the Earth, the British Photovoltaic Association—known as PV-UK—the Solar Trade Association, the Green Alliance and companies that are active in the sector, such as Solar Century and Sharp UK.
My new clause has also attracted serious business support beyond what one might term the usual suspects. Only yesterday, I received a letter of support from the chairman of Gazeley, a UK subsidiary of Wal-Mart based in Milton Keynes. Wal-Mart, of course, is based in north America. Gazeley is responsible for developing distribution warehouses for many of the top multinational companies across the UK and continental Europe, and is widely recognised as one of the leading, if not the leading, European logistics operators.
Gazely has already embraced the issue positively and cost-effectively by starting to integrate solar and wind technologies into new UK commercial developments. It is doing so for sound business reasons. We are making progress at a pace that may not always be appreciated by Ministers in Whitehall. If Ministers and officials find it hard to believe the solar industry when it talks about the technology’s potential in the UK, and if they discount a little of what it tells them on account of its in-built interest, perhaps they will give more weight to the views and experience of the chairman of a major European property developer of logistic space based in the UK.
Wal-mart is not known for its dewy-eyed approach to business or to anything that would put undue strain on the bottom line. It is renowned for its aggressive pursuit of profits and anything that came out of that company certainly could not in any way be seen as something that could not be adopted and taken forward by others with an equally competitive advantage in the marketplace.
My new clause is entirely in the spirit of the Bill. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) explains in his explanatory notes that clause 5
“will put microgeneration on the agenda of local authorities”
and there is nothing wrong with that. However, we have an opportunity to go beyond the setting of local targets. Many local authorities have expressed an interest in developing policies similar to those in the Minister’s home borough, but two problems remain.
Planning policy statement 22 on renewable energy, published by the ODPM in 2004, enables local authorities to go down that path, but it is subject to inconsistent interpretation by ODPM inspectors and Government officers. Last week, for example, officers at Breckland council in Norfolk reported publicly that they had encountered difficulties with the Government office, and others in the area have reported similar problems. Those isolated examples may be confined to one Government office, but at a time when climate change and the urgent policy responses needed to deal with it are high on the political agenda, it is one problem too many. Frankly, we do not have the time to let ambiguity and misinterpretation get in the way of progressive policy change at a local level.
More important, the new clause challenges the ODPM’s assumption that a simple enabling clause in PPS22 ticks the box on the need for practical, potential planning policy to require on-site renewables in the built environment. It does not. Local authorities are being required to write new local development frameworks, which gives us the opportunity to maximise the number of developing policies similar to those in Croydon.
At a time when ODPM officials are reminding regional and local authorities of the need to include the Barker review assumptions and conclusions in their local plans, it is bizarre that no similar effort has been made to encourage local authorities to adopt best practice and planning on renewables and energy efficiency. As has been stated, energy efficiency remains the cheapest, quickest and cleanest way of achieving our climate change mission targets. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are not either/or options.
I fully recognise that we are not starting with a blank page. Policy is out there, it is legal and in many places it is working, but we need to see more than a few islands of good local authority practice, such as in the Minister’s back yard, surrounded by a sea of minimum standards.
Positive local planning policies also offer a huge commercial potential for the UK renewables industry. It has been estimated that, if 250 authorities were eventually to adopt positive planning for renewables policy, the annual market in the three technologies of solar thermal, solar photovoltaic and micro-wind would be £755 million a year. The annual market for those technologies in the UK is now about £30 million. The new clause would encourage the more widespread adoption of such policies by clarifying PPS22 and ensuring that all local authorities developed a variant of the Minister’s Croydon policy.
The Government have the opportunity to play a leading role, not in picking winners or singling out individual technologies, but in creating a national framework that would stimulate a pioneering industry and make us world leaders. We have a huge economic opportunity as well as an environmental one—if we grasp it now. We can become leaders, and certainly European leaders, in that field.
Lord Rogers reminded us last autumn that the UK’s record on delivering genuinely sustainable communities has so far been pathetic. It does not have to be like that. The Government are not afraid to take a lead in some areas, and they should not be timid in this area. It is no good having a policy of fine words if it is not followed through. Some will argue that such issues need time.
I understand the concerns of some developers about additional costs, but we need to keep those costs in perspective. I never cease to be amazed at what totally inadequate carbon standards are required for new buildings in the capital. Marsham Street, just around the corner from the Palace of Westminster, has been redeveloped. Prices for the smallest flats start at £390,000. I have found no one to explain why it was not made a condition of redevelopment that each unit should be built to the highest standards of energy efficiency, including at least some measure of on-site renewables.
Alternatively, rather than considering an expensive Westminster flat, let us take a mainstream house builder such as Barratt Homes, whose average national house price is £165,000. The additional capital cost of installing the solar PV required to reduce carbon emissions by 10 per cent. on one of its new-build estates is the equivalent of just 0.9 per cent. per dwelling. By installing the PV on every sixth home, rather than all of them, the estate builder can easily and efficiently meet a 10 per cent. reduction target from renewables over and beyond 2006 in terms of part L of the building regulations, and can, of course, market the solar house at a premium on the price of its standard homes.
We have to remember that that is a 0.9 per cent. cost for a technology that many regard instinctively as an expensive renewable energy option. If nascent technologies are to break out of the niche that they currently fill and enter the mass consumer market, the Government have a role to play, not by picking winners or preferred technologies, but by helping to create consumer demand that will feed and nourish the young markets.
Very deliberately, my new clause would not impose centrally agreed renewable energy targets on every local planning authority. I have spoken at length about my belief in localism. In some parts of the country, for good local reasons, the 10 per cent. target—a figure that was adopted in Merton and Croydon, for example—could, following local consultation, be surpassed as an appropriate requirement, reflecting local economic, social and environmental needs. However, I recognise that in other parts of the country, the figure might have to be lower. Nevertheless, all local authorities should have to set a local minimum standard and requirement, taking into account local conditions.
The new clause has the potential to deliver significant results for the short-term uptake of micro-renewable technology. If the Government support it, they will send a strong signal to local authorities that are writing their local development frameworks as we speak. If they do not support it, we will end up with, at most, 12 to 15 per cent. of local authorities adopting such a policy, even though this Committee has the means to ensure that 100 per cent. do so. I call on the Minister to be ambitious, and to take up my suggestion.