Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) not only on introducing the Bill, but on seeing it through to this stage. I also join other hon. Members in offering my condolences to my hon. Friend and his family at this time. It is a tremendous credit to him that the ideas in the Bill are so widely accepted across the House that—I hope—we will be able to see it through, even though he is unable to join us today. It is now almost a year since the ballot for private Members’ Bills was held. At that time, very few people had any idea of what microgeneration was. Perhaps they thought that it was some new form of computer. Simply in their efforts to get the necessary 100 Members here on a Friday, my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, North and Leith and for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) have raised awareness of microgeneration across the whole House and in the country. Everyone is now talking about energy-efficient buildings and microgeneration, everyone accepts the idea of microgeneration and many people are very excited about the idea of making their own energy within their communities rather than depending on a centralised system that loses so much power just in transmission. As a gentleman in my constituency says, it is always either windy, sunny or raining. We know a lot about how to harness the wind and sun, but he is now thinking about how to harness the rain as it gushes down the gutters on the roofs of our steeply terraced houses in the Welsh valleys. That is just one example of how people are thinking about where energy and heat come from and how we generate them. I welcome the announcement in this year’s Budget of an additional £50 million that the Chancellor has pledged for the low-carbon buildings programme, with the specific aim of boosting the market for microgeneration equipment, working on the principle that an increase in the volume of equipment produced will help to bring down prices.