Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I, too, rise to support the Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on his tenacity in building consensuson it. However, the House should be honest in acknowledging that it is a quite modest measure. It will certainly not transform the landscape of domestic climate change policy. For that, we need to look to the bigger beasts: the outcome of the energy review that the Minister is conducting and, critically, the decision taken on the national allocation to the second phase of the EU emissions trading scheme this summer. A recent report by the National Audit Office to the Environmental Audit Committee highlighted the latter as the policy decision that would have the greatest impact on carbon emissions reduction in the short term. Those will be the real tests of the appetite of the Government and the House for reducing carbon in our economy. The Bill is welcome, however, because it takes a small, positive step in the direction of promoting greater accountability to the House on the progress made in tracking carbon through the economy and the progress of the Government in reducing it, as the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) rightly pointed out. A second important step will beto force central Government—and, to a lesserextent, local government—to think more about microgeneration and energy efficiency. The increase in accountability will be hugely important, because the lack of accountability is undermining the effectiveness of the international process to reduce carbon. Many countries will not meet their Kyoto targets, yet they will suffer very few penalties for that failure. This country probably will meet its Kyoto targets, although , as the Government now acknowledge, there are significant doubts about the 2010 target, and there is complete uncertainty about the 2050 target. It is very difficult for the House and all other interested parties to get to grips with the reality of how carbon tracks through the economy, and with the probability of success for the various policy measures that the Government are implementing. That makes it difficult for us to hold the Governmentto account. The desire for greater accountability, transparency and rigour in the review process underlies the cross-party consensus—on the Conservative Benches, at least—in suggesting the creation of an independent body, which could add tremendous value to the ability of the House to understand what is really happening with emissions and to assess the probability of success in meeting the longer-term targets. I suspect that that would have a much greater impact than the measures introduced in the Bill, but I welcome what is on offer today. I echo the sentiments on microgeneration expressed by the hon. Member for Hove (Ms Barlow), with whom I had the pleasure of serving on the Environmental Audit Committee. Microgeneration has the potential to play three important roles at a time when energy policy must necessarily shift from focusing only on the cost of energy to considering the more complex set of issues with which the Minister is wrestling, including security of supply and the impact on climate. The sources of energy and technology that we are considering under the banner of microgeneration will have three important benefits. The first is reducing carbon. The second is reducing the waste of energy in our system. It was pointed out in Committee and in the debate that, if we are to believe the reports, two thirds of our energy is wasted between the point of production and the point of consumption. If it is true, that statistic ought to be a matter of considerable concern to the House in a new energy age in which security of supply, efficiency and affordability will become increasingly pressing issues. The third benefit, as the hon. Member for Hove pointed out, is that microgeneration will bring people closer to their source of energy. The evidence is that, where that happens, it is successful in changing attitudes to demand and to energy conservation.