Greater London Authority Bill

moved Amendment No. 112: 112: Clause 40, page 42, line 29, after ““in”” insert ““clean or green”” The noble Baroness said: I wish to explore the fact that the Bill suggests that the Mayor would be ableto support innovation and investment in energy technologies that are not clean or green. I am in no way suggesting that the Mayor would be likely to do that, but it is possible. I have tabled the amendment so that we may have a discussion of exactly what is meant by the clause. As part of a climate change mitigation energy strategy, it is appropriate to focus on explicitly green and clean technologies. By ““clean””, for instance, I mean things like scrubber technologies for reducing emissions from conventional energy production. By ““green”” I am talking about renewable technologies. Conventional energy technologies have received enough subsidies over the years. The Stern review talks of a strong historical bias in subsidies going to more polluting fuels. The International Energy Agency estimates that word energy subsidies were still at £250 billion in 2005, of which subsidies to oil products amounted to £90 billion. That is surprising, considering that we are now well aware of climate change. By contrast, renewables support has been minuscule. I hope that when the Climate Change Bill arrives, it will help to usher in change. It would be a good start if clean and green energy were explicitly in the Bill. Even when they want to, people cannot make emissions reductions unless the technological opportunities are available to them, or they choose to do nothing at all. Part of it will be energy efficiency and lifestyle choices and changes, but an awful lot of the change we are looking at will come about through technology. At Second Reading, I spoke of the importance of informing people about climate change, but that is no use unless we then give people the consumer choices to do something about it. Renewable energy certificates from genuinely renewable sources are still in short supply. Knowing what is a truly green tariff from your electricity supplier is confusing, as has recently been highlighted by various programmes, including ““You and Yours””. It sometimes means that companies are investing in renewable technologies, and sometimes it apparently does not—although they can still be called something which implies that you are simply buying green energy. If the consumer cannot be sure, how can we be sure that we are really encouraging new demand for renewable energy and giving the investment to meet that through the marketplace? Several renewable technologies are just on the cusp of commercialisation. They need as much support as they can get to make them commercially viable, especially when schemes such as the government renewables grants are proving so limited. Indeed, we have heard within the past couple of weeks of some things which will not now be funded. It would be valuable to have a clear support strategy set out in the Bill, as well as a statement from the Minister now. London should be at the forefront of researching and deploying technologies which will make the difference in mitigating against climate change and investing in them. I beg to move.