11:34 Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)

A growing body of evidence also suggests that wind turbines have an adverse impact on health and that ETSU-R-97, which regulates noise produced by turbines, is not fit for purpose. I assumed that that was a European Union directive, but unfortunately it is not. Still, it is the sort of thing that would come out of Europe, if it had the opportunity. I know that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is looking into the issue of amplitude modulation at present, though it needs to get a move on, as I am planning to abolish the Department on 20 March in another private Member’s Bill. Leading experts in the field are also looking into that issue, independently of that process, and it will be interesting to see whether those studies reach the same conclusions. This is one of those issues where the evidence tends not to get in the way of fervent belief.

With all that in mind—I am in no doubt that these frustrations are mirrored in communities up and down the country—is it surprising that people have had enough? That said, credit where credit is due: Conservative Ministers have sought to tighten planning controls to give local communities greater power over deciding these matters and, I hope, to give them more protection against unwanted wind farm plans. In July 2013, Ministers unveiled planning practice guidance for renewable and low-carbon energy that was replaced in March 2014 by updated guidance. The aim was to make it clear that the need for renewable energy did not automatically override environmental protections and local communities’ planning concerns, while ensuring that sufficient weight was given to landscape and visual impact concerns. It also included guidance on how local planning authorities should assess impacts such as noise, safety, interference with electromagnetic transmissions, ecology, heritage, shadow flicker, energy output and cumulative landscape and visual impacts.

I shall return to the Bill because I want to be brief and we have a lot of Bills to get through today, and, as I said, it is uncontroversial. In July 2013, the Energy and Climate Change Committee issued its report, “Energy Prices, Profits and Poverty”, which said:

“The main driver behind energy prices has been wholesale gas and electricity costs, but network charges, energy and climate change policies and company costs and profits also contribute. In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.”

“that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.”

“The increasing use of levies on bills to fund energy and climate change policies is problematic since it is likely to hit hardest those least able to pay. We note that public funding is less regressive than levies in this respect.”

Wind turbines are an expensive way of generating electricity and are clearly bad value for money. I go back to what the Leader of the Opposition said when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in the last Labour Government:

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11:55 Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)

Onshore wind is one of the cheapest large-scale renewable energy technologies. With the right support, it could be subsidy-free by the end of the next Parliament. This Bill, in the unlikely event that it should ever become law, would kill the UK’s onshore wind industry and, in doing so, destroy thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of investment and lead to higher energy bills.

If the hon. Gentleman had his way and we shut off support mechanisms such as the renewables obligation and contracts for difference, the UK would simply be more reliant on more expensive technologies to meet our crucial carbon emissions commitments. Opposition Members are committed to decarbonising at the lowest possible cost to the consumer. That is why we are committed to setting a 2030 power sector decarbonisation target, which will give investors the long-term certainty they need to invest.

Let me point out a few important facts. Last year, onshore wind generated over 5% of UK electricity generation, and the independent Committee on Climate Change estimates that onshore wind can provide over 15% of our power needs by 2030. Onshore wind generated over 16 TWh of electricity in 2014—enough to power almost 4 million homes. There is currently more than 8 GW of onshore wind capacity, with a further 1.2 GW under construction and more than 5 GW with consent. Last week saw the results of the first allocation rounds for CfDs. Labour supported the introduction of CfDs, as we did during the passage through Parliament of the Energy Bill. Cost reductions—which mean less subsidy, which translates into lower consumer bills—are real and are happening now. New onshore wind projects from 2016 to 2018 will produce power at £79.23 to £82.50 per megawatt-hour—less than other renewable energy technologies and less than new nuclear. The industry is committed to being the cheapest form of new large-scale electricity generation by 2020—cheaper even than new gas plants.

This is a job-creating sector: the onshore wind sector employs, directly and indirectly, 19,000 people in this country. Onshore wind is popular. The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s public attitudes tracking survey has found consistent public support for onshore wind. The latest figures show that 68% of the public support onshore wind, with opposition at only 12%. That is not just theoretical support for the concept of onshore wind. It is important to note that people support onshore wind developments in their communities. A 2014 ComRes poll found that 62% of people would be happy for an onshore wind farm to be constructed in their area.

It is, of course, crucial for local communities to be consulted, and to be fully engaged in any renewable energy development. The Government and, in particular, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government preach localism. However, the Secretary of State has taken Whitehall intervention in the planning system to unprecedented heights.

If I had a pound for every time I heard a Conservative Member criticise clean energy technologies for reasons that bear no relationship to cost, genuine public concern or engineering feasibility, I could personally fund the levy control framework for several years. The fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provided overwhelming and compelling scientific evidence that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that it will have devastating consequences if urgent action is not taken to cut our carbon emissions and invest in mitigation.

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12:02 The Minister for Business and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on securing the debate. I know that he has a long-standing interest in ensuring that the nation has affordable, secure, economic and sustainable energy supplies, and the Government fully support that aim. His Bill would eliminate subsidies for onshore wind that are provided by the Government via the renewables obligation, contracts for difference and feed-in tariff regimes, and paid for by bill payers.

Our policy is intended to achieve our goal of reducing subsidies while meeting our global carbon reduction obligations and securing supply at the lowest reasonable cost. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) referred to the “trilemma” in energy policy. Energy policy needs to balance the long-term requirement to live within international obligations on climate change and mitigate the risks with guaranteeing security of supply, which involves the costs of ensuring that enough energy infrastructure is constructed, and with ensuring that those costs are as low as reasonably possible. That is the standard “trilemma”, but rising to the challenge means not only balancing those three requirements, but ensuring that our policy can hit all three goals at once when that is possible.

Alongside new nuclear, gas and carbon capture and storage, renewables, including wind energy, are an important component of the balanced energy mix that the Government are creating. It is clear that we need to increase our use of renewable energy. Renewables provide clean energy and reduce our dependence on finite fossil fuels, but they also increase our energy security, because renewable energy is inherently domestic, and they reduce the need for us to import energy from abroad. At the same time, the construction and operation of renewables create jobs and investment in our economy. It is estimated that £29 billion has been invested since 2010.

Another issue that is often raised is whether wind farms actually deliver carbon savings. Wind power has one of the lowest carbon footprints compared with other forms of electricity generation. Work by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology published in 2011 looked at the carbon footprint of different forms of electricity generation. This carbon footprint assessment was calculated according to the “life cycle assessment” which aims to account for the total quantity of greenhouse gas emitted over the whole life cycle of a product or process—the making, transporting and erecting of wind farms, as well as their operation. The study found that there was a footprint of 488 grams of CO 2 equivalent per kWh for a combined cycle gas turbine and 5.2 grams of CO 2 equivalent per kWh for installations off the coast of Denmark. Further studies demonstrate that, even taking into account the whole life time impact on carbon emissions, wind farms have an incredibly low impact.

The other interesting outcome of the CfD auction was that onshore wind was not the cheapest form of renewable energy. Solar power came out of that auction as the cheapest. Compared with the £80 per MWh for onshore wind, some of the solar projects came through the auction at £50 per MWh, demonstrating clear evidence of a path to lower subsidies. Indeed, an exciting future will soon be within reach, in which the cost of solar will be compatible with the cost of fossil fuel generation. We have already seen instances around the world of lower-cost solar installations being achieved without subsidy and being cost-competitive with fossil fuels.

The commitment from Conservative Members is clear. I personally have fought against the placing of onshore wind turbines in some of the most beautiful parts of Suffolk—and therefore the most beautiful parts of the country—in landscapes that were admired and painted by Constable in years gone by and that have changed little since. As a constituency MP, I have fought proposals to put wind farms in places where they would damage the local environment and the local amenity. The policy that we inherited had an override over local considerations because of the impact on climate change of putting up wind farms.

So we have taken steps in the planning system, some of which have been mentioned today, but we are clear that where local people do not want wind farms, the planning system will be strengthened, and there will not be these subsidies when we can remove them. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) asked, not unreasonably, for a deadline, so I shall set it out this way. The 10% of the electricity system from onshore wind is expected by the coalition Government by 2020—that is a Government figure—and the Prime Minister has set out that then there will be no need for future subsidies. If, as the costs of all renewables come down, we are able not only to deal with the problem of climate change, but to do so in a way that allows us to remove subsidies sooner, so be it. That framework sets a clear deadline, but the clarity of our commitment to remove subsidies for onshore wind is stark—we shall do this. I hope that gives him the commitment he was seeking.

I also wish to discuss the noise produced by wind farms, because I know it is a significant concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, he raised it and it is important to address the point. Again, this is an area where the Government have taken action. The method of assessing the noise impact of a wind farm is described in ETSU-R-97. That requires the likely impact of wind turbines on local residents and those working in the vicinity to be considered in relation to existing background noise levels, taking into account the characteristics of particular locations. Hayes McKenzie reviewed ETSU-R-97, finding that it is fit for purpose but identifying inconsistencies in the way it was being used in practice to measure and predict the impact of noise. In May 2013, the Institute of Acoustics published good practice guidance which addressed the issues Hayes McKenzie identified. The guide, which was endorsed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, will help to improve the consistency of the application of ETSU-R-97 in the consideration of wind farm projects. I hope my hon. Friend will see that good work is being done by DECC there, and perhaps it will temper his desire to abolish me—it—at the next opportunity with his next private Member’s Bill.

We have also published new planning practice guidance on renewable energy, updated last year, which will help deliver the balance required by the national planning policy framework. That will make it clear that the need for renewable energy does not automatically override environmental protections and the planning concerns of local communities. This is what I was referring to earlier when I said that saving the global environment must not be done in a way that damages our local environment. The new planning guidance has also been published to assist local councils and planning inspectors in their consideration of local plans and individual planning applications.

It is important that local communities continue to have confidence in the appeals process and that the environmental balance expected by the national planning policy framework is reflected in decisions on renewable energy deployment. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced a temporary change to the appeals recovery criteria for a period of six months. In doing so, he explained that he wanted to give particular scrutiny to planning appeals involving renewable energy developments so that he could consider the extent to which the new practice guidance met our intentions. Since that planning guidance was issued, more appeals have been dismissed than approved for more significant turbines, reversing the trend before the guidance was issued, when more approvals were approved than dismissed.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has found that the guidance is helping to ensure that decisions reflect the environmental balance we need to see, as set out in the framework, but he also recognises that the guidance is relatively new and that some development proposals might not yet have taken on board its intent. That is why after careful consideration he decided on 9 April 2014 to extend the temporary change to the appeals recovery criteria and continue to consider for recovery appeals for renewable energy developments for a further 12 months. We will continue to monitor the impact of recoveries on onshore wind and on investor confidence more broadly. There you have it, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We have been very clear about the fact that onshore wind plays a role in our energy mix. It produced 7% of the UK’s electricity in the last quarter, but we need to ensure that we tackle the challenge of climate change in the way that incurs the lowest possible cost. In the next Parliament, we will in time remove the subsidies from onshore wind, but I hope that that will happen as part of a wider move to drive down the cost of subsidies, especially as the cost of renewables falls and as some renewables, such as solar, are financed reasonably cost-effectively and reach parity with fossil fuels. That will significantly change the debate about renewables because we will reach a point where going green reduces costs, rather than adding subsidies to consumers’ bills.

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