Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on introducing the Bill and on successfully piloting it to Third Reading. It is clear that much time and erudition has gone into the Bill, which addresses a concern of vital importance to local communities and our nation as a whole. As a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I declare a special interest in the Bill. It is good to see that some points that had been for only theoretic discussion are now ready for implementation. It will also delight thousands of my constituents who have raised with me the threat of climate change on the doorstep, in letters and emails and at local meetings. I am more than happy to represent their concerns here today not just because I share them, but to make real decisions in order to act against that man-made danger. In my speech, I shall address two very important points that are included in this Bill. First, I wish to talk about micro-generation. Then I will come to the parts of the Bill tackling sustainable housing, inserted after Second Reading in November, namely clauses 12 to 14. Microgeneration has a particular relevance to the fight for a sustainable energy policy. That is particularlytrue of section 4, which covers national targets. Microgeneration has been sadly neglected in public discourse, which tends to favour the big projects of renewable energy like wind farms, large solar panels and hydroelectric plants. However, microgeneration has the potential to contribute not just to people’s energy needs, but to the way in which a community perceives and interacts with our power generation process. In the Committee’s recent report, called ““Keeping the Lights on: Nuclear, Renewables and Climate Change””, we stated that our electricity generating network was based on a relatively small number of large generating plants situated in remote locations.