Clause 36
Energy Bill
5:00 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
The hon. Gentleman is addressing an important idea with this amendment, which is locking in incentives to research and development. That is a laudable aim and we would be entirely happy to support the amendment, should he press it. That is a legitimate thing to take into account, and the Liberal Democrats generally would support an amendment to the banding system.
In order to address amendment No. 21—and I am treading cautiously, having been corrected this morning—I would like to comment on why we think this would be a good idea. We also want to add a paragraph (g) to proposed section 32D(4), so that the Secretary of State would be asked to take into account the possible impacts on the environment associated with generating electricity from each of the renewable sources or with transmitting or distributing the energy so generated.
It is worth remembering that the environmental movement has been around for a long time, discussing many issues other than climate change. We can become so focused on carbon emissions that we can sometimes forget that there are other, wider environmental impacts that should also be taken into consideration. The development of different, renewable technologies, while obviously broadly a very positive development that we absolutely support, can have environment impacts of their own and those ought to be taken into account when banding is developed. This simple and elegant amendment would ask the banding process to take into account those wider environmental impacts.