Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to put on record my support for the Bill. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) for successfully steering the Bill through the parliamentary process thus far. I extend my sympathy to him and to his family at this time. Reacting powerfully to climate change is essential if we are to meet the challenge of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions. It is necessary to expand the availability and development and, one would hope, ultimately the use of renewable energy sources as the major means of our energy supply. I am fortunate in having a research centre in my constituency at the university of Durham, which concentrates on enabling renewable energy to make a full contribution to society and to the environment. It undertakes fundamental research into renewable energy technologies, including solar and photovoltaic research and wind and wave energy. Critically, in respect of the Bill, it also undertakes research into the technology that underpins microgeneration. I should like to say in passing that the north-east is ideally placed to lead the UK development of the production of renewables, as wind and waves are in plentiful supply there. If the Government are to meet their long-term targets of reducing CO2 emissions by 60 per cent. by 2050, and of producing 10 per cent. of our electricity supply from renewables by 2010, it is essential that we make renewable sources, including microgeneration, more efficient, to bring down their costs and give them a wider application. The Bill will play an important part in contributing measures that will help the Government to achieve those targets. It is worth highlighting the fact that the use of microgeneration is important if we are to encourage individual householders, small groups of households and communities to adopt an energy supply based on micro-renewables. All the clauses in the Bill are very welcome, and especially those relating to permitted development and to support for community energy schemes, as they will help to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions and assist us to meet our targets. Critically, the measures will empower individuals and communities by giving them the tools to get directly involved in the use of renewable energy sources. Many people are very keen to find out what they can do personally to use energy more efficiently in their homes. Clauses 7 to 10 are important in encouraging that, and in helping to cut the fuel bills of those who install and use microgeneration systems by making them more efficient and more widely available. The use of micro-combined heat and power could also contribute to ending fuel poverty. Clause 21 will require the Secretary of State to consider what steps he considers appropriate to promote the use of heat produced from renewable sources. I hope that this measure will help to stimulate the demand for renewable heat produced by solar, thermal or photovoltaic sources.