UK Parliament / Open data

Energy Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Teverson (Liberal Democrat) in the House of Lords on Monday, 4 November 2013. It occurred during Debate on bills on Energy Bill.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for going through that so comprehensively. She is right that this is a very green Bill. My noble friend Lord Lawson was quite right to accuse it of being a decarbonisation Bill. That is exactly what it is.

I very much welcome my noble friend’s comments about Amendment 71 and my amendments around grandfathering clauses. I do not think that I got the phrasing absolutely right and I look forward to her looking at that.

On Amendment 74, I want to come back to something said by my noble friend Lord Caithness. He said that

we need to be practical and down to earth and to get involved in the reality of energy. This amendment was precisely about that. We have to remember that, as this provision stands, it does not guarantee that coal capacity will be there; it is left entirely to the whims of investment committees of the big six as to whether they decide to invest. We give up control at that point—we do not know. The future is indeterminate. If we passed this amendment and it became part of the Bill, we would then know what would happen. To me, that is better than knowing what might or might not happen.

As the Minister said, we are looking for investor certainty here. The only way that new gas will be invested in as an intermediate technology is through that certainty. At the moment, that investment is not taking place, despite the clear ambitions that it should. However, I understand the position of the Minister that if it were not for this Bill we would not have an emissions performance standard. I advocated it several times to the party opposite pre-2010 and it was never accepted, so this is a major step forward. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 71.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

749 cc45-6 

Session

2013-14

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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