European Union Bill

My Lords, on the issue of climate change, the subject of the amendment that we are supposed to be talking about, several hours ago the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that Amendment 21 was the most useless, superfluous amendment that he had come across during the hours of Committee stage. I believe that Amendment 23C actually takes the palm as the most useless and redundant amendment we have had. The idea that the European Union is effective in climate change is frankly laughable. Let me remind your Lordships that our policy on emissions is guided entirely by the EU and we have to have 20 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020. Of course, there is not the remotest chance of achieving that, and in the past couple of years, that aspiration—that dream—has begun to collide with reality. Just to give your Lordships a little information on that, I shall repeat what was said in two sets of figures from two separate reports over the degree of delusion that surrounds the wish of our Government in Brussels and their subsidiary here in Westminster that the centrepiece of our energy policy should be to build ever more windmills. The report that drew most attention was from a Scottish environmental charity that focused on the fact that last year, despite our building ever more wind farms, the lack of wind meant that they operated on average at only 21 per cent of capacity, and that was during the period of highest demand. Several times when demand was at its highest the contribution of wind to our electricity supply was virtually zero. I do not know why, but less attention was given to an interesting report put out by our Department of Energy and Climate Change showing that the 3,168 turbines that we have built at a cost of billions of pounds contributed on average less than the output of one large coal-fired power station. From the DECC figure, it is possible to work out that for this derisory contribution we paid through our electricity bills a subsidy of nearly £1.2 billion on top of the price of electricity itself. In return for getting 3 per cent, roughly, of our energy, nearly 7 per cent of our bills are paid in subsidies for these completely useless wind farms, and that will go up as years go on because we have committed to this 20 per cent from renewables by 2020. That report dealt with last year. Noble Lords will remember that this year there have been about two months of cold, windless weather. I have figures that show that during those months only 0.2 per cent of our energy was produced by wind turbines. The director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, Mr Jeremy Nicholson, gave warning that this could turn into a crisis when the UK is reliant on 6,400 turbines accounting for a quarter of all UK electricity demand over the next 10 years. He said: "““If we had this 30 gigawatts of wind power, it wouldn't have contributed anything of any significance this winter””," because there was no wind. He continued: "““The current cold snap is a warning that our power generation and gas supplies are under strain and it is getting worse””." Of course, that is made even worse by the European Union’s large combustion plant directive requirements whereby we have to close 15 of our coal-fired and oil-fired power stations over the next two or three years. I believe that the UK has committed to switching off these by 2015, which will leave it uniquely vulnerable to gas shortages and the intermittency of wind farms. Mr Nicholson of the Energy Intensive Users Group, said: "““We need to ensure that energy can be quickly accessed in times of peak demand through improved gas storage and investment in clean-coal and nuclear power stations””." I cannot see where he mentions wind power at all in that energy requirement. It is completely superfluous and very expensive. In order to help the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on a referendum question, I should have thought that it is very simple. You simply have to ask the British people whether they want to go on spending masses of their hard-earned taxpayers’ money on supporting an energy source which is not only supremely inefficient but massively more expensive than any other energy source. I think that that is quite a simple question.