Alternative Energy:Practical advice on installing solar photovoltaic and wind power on your house

This time last week, I visited the home in my constituency of Mr. Paul XXX of XXX, who
has installed a series of solar panels of his house. He has already had remarkable success. In recent weeks, he has managed to produce more solar energy than he is consuming. In addition to the savings that he is making, which he estimates will be in the order of £300 a year, he is saving about 1,000 kg of CO2 emissions. That stands as an example of how rapidly the technology is moving. It is already at the point of being economically viable. When we have beautiful days such as we had this morning before I left, MrXXX finds great satisfaction in the knowledge that the sunshine is contributing to energy that goes beyond his own requirements and is powering the houses of his neighbours.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out the contribution that the sun can make to helping us to deal with climate change. The example that he mentions shows the contribution that can also be made by technological developments. Does he agree that economic growth need not be the enemy of dealing successfully with climate change, and that when we welcome growth, we need to ensure that it comes with an environmental component? In particular, when it comes to dealing with the whole question of how we protect our garden space, is not his own Bill an admirable recognition that housing growth must go hand in hand with respect for the environment, particularly the gardens that play so much of a part in cooling the atmosphere in urban areas and fighting climate change?

: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the shadow housing Minister, and delighted to have his support. He is right that technology, far from being the enemy of progress on climate change, offers the potential to help. As anyone who cares to visit XXX house will see, it is a living example of how technology can offer us hope and allows us to step back from the cliff edge that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) mentioned.

Is my hon. Friend aware of roughly how much XXX solar panel installation cost, so that we can work out roughly over how many years there will be a payback for someone thinking of doing similar?

My information is that it cost in the order of £15,000. However, one of the features of new technology is that once it goes into mass production, prices fall very rapidly. If it is that price today, I would expect that next year it will be much less, and so on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said, technology, particularly innovation in technology, can make great strides very quickly.

Does my hon. Friend agree that cost is absolutely crucial in getting widespread take-up of these technologies? Some years ago, I lived in a house with solar panels that provided hot water. They were fantastic, but when they broke and we looked into replacing them, the cost put us off. If we really want to

get everybody on board in installing new technologies that will save energy, we have to ensure that the market is right.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I completely agree that we should not be put off by the cost. If we had been put off by the cost of early computers and concluded that they would never make a contribution to business or to the consumer, we would never have engaged in the research and development that has resulted in their being so indispensable today. I am absolutely certain that the costs will fall. We should take a dynamic view of the state of technology. It is evolving very rapidly. The example that I cited uses solar power to generate electricity rather than to heat water, which is much more flexible, as my hon. Friend will appreciate, and allows it to be transferred, in effect, from the house in which it was generated to the national grid and to other houses in the vicinity.

It is particularly admirable that the constituent to whom I referred is the deputy head of a very good junior school,I know from my postbag, and I am sure that other hon. Members find, that young people are among the most interested in the technology of new sources of energy and the concerns about climate change that we all address in our correspondence with them, and it is particularly good to have a role model.

I now turn to some specific aspects of the Bill, which I welcome. It was watered down in Committee to a regrettable extent. Nevertheless, it represents progress. It takes a step forward in energy policy by recognising the contribution of microgeneration.

Microgeneration makes a contribution in several ways, which I commend to the House and which the Bill reinforces. First, it contributes to the heating of space and water, as we have seen in the case of the gentleman in my constituency whom I mentioned. That contribution is tangible, immediate and it is not years away from development. Given that the heating of space and water accounts for a considerable proportion of national annual energy consumption—higher, indeed, than the proportion accounted for by electricity consumption—that is important. Secondly, the model of microgeneration has the potential to overturn the centralised approach to electricity generation, which, as we know, involves enormous costs in the running of transmission and distribution systems. Microgeneration is taking us into a new paradigm, and it is good that the Bill recognises the progress that we are making here.

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