The Energy and Climate Change select committee (ECCC) has launched its final few inquiries for this Parliament, but the “human hand grenade” in its ranks is calling for one final investigation.
It is to do with the cost of electricity generation.
This is a perfectly legitimate and sensible route for the committee to probe, but given that the person calling for it is Peter Lilley, there is also an agenda at work. The Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden quickly shares with Utility Week why he is so keen for the committee to look at the total system cost of various generation technologies.
“We’re getting to a stage with the level of wind where you’re having to ramp up and down your combined cycle gas turbines,” he says, launching straight into his first attack on renewables for the day. “They’re not designed for that and they will fall apart and shorten their lives and you will have to replace them. And that will cost £30 billion – allegedly – so all this would be good to look into.”
It was his fellow committee member Alan Whitehead who applied the “hand grenade” moniker to Lilley, a former social security secretary in John Major’s cabinet. Lilley was one of only five MPs to vote against the Climate Change Act in 2008, and was elected to the ECCC by his Tory colleagues.
Whitehead’s tag doesn’t bother Lilley at all. In fact, he laughs about it, but he rebuffs the accusation that he is a climate change sceptic. “I’m thoroughly orthodox,” he says. “Global warming exists. Indeed without it the planet would be very cold.”
Without need for further encouragement, Lilley launches into an attack on the “so-called” consensus on climate change. “Add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and, things being equal, you warm it up, and probably not by very much. And in any case so what?
“One or two degrees is nothing. If you move 300 miles to the south you warm up by two degrees. It’s not dangerous to move from Newcastle to Newquay. And if it takes place over a century we’ll adapt to it.”
Pausing only for breath, he moves straight on to why the climate change consensus is bad for consumers and results in higher energy bills – the “premature action” to develop low-carbon generation.
It is the notion that the UK is locking itself into “immature, high cost” technologies – namely solar and wind – that appears to rankle with the MP the most.
He calls the subsidies for onshore and offshore wind “absurd” and says renewable generation technologies should prove exactly how cost-effective they are by surviving without subsidies.
“They constantly tell me solar is nearly competitive, and I say fine, let’s cut the subsidies. Then they say no, no, no – so they don’t really believe their own propaganda.”
Despite his scathing criticism of “windmills”, Lilley says this is based purely on economics, rather than their visual impact, which is so detested by some of his fellow backbenchers.
The ECCC member goes so far as to say he finds them “quite elegant” – in particular the ones around his holiday home in France. This is undoubtedly helped by the fact “I don’t have to pay for them – that’s for the poor French taxpayers”.
The answer to the country’s energy challenge, according to Lilley, is shale gas. The Conservatives are pro-shale, and Michael Fallon (until this week the energy minister) has said the UK will “go all out for shale”. That is a view Lilley wholeheartedly supports. “I would go hell for leather for shale gas,” he says.
He claims there is a real chance for a shale gas boom in the UK, with the economy benefiting either from higher tax revenues or from lower energy bills. However, despite his enthusiasm for fracking, Lilley is disappointed with the rate of development, saying it has been “very sluggish”.
What is standing in the way of Lilley’s gas boom, according to the MP, is the earthquake in Blackpool in 2011 deemed to have been caused by fracking in Lancashire. Or as Lilley has it the “seismic tremor about the size of a bus hitting a bump in the road outside your house”.
Lilley is sceptical both that fracking was the cause of the tremor and that seismic activity of that magnitude would have any material impact on people or property. The reason for his confidence? “I used to live on a main road and had these seismic tremors all the time.”
The real issue the UK would face in the event of a shale gas boom is how the glut of gas would fit in with the Climate Change Act, and the drive to decarbonise the power sector and reduce the country’s overall carbon emissions.
Lilley, somewhat unsurprisingly given his opposition to the Act, has a simple way of ensuring Britain can make the most of its newfound gas reserves – withdraw from the targets, or just ignore them completely.
However, recognising his isolation on the issue, and the “terribly law-abiding” nature of the UK, he adds: “I would want to see them achieved at the cheapest rate possible – which is probably by gas.”
Indeed, Lilley is eager to remind Utility Week of the chancellor’s statement that the UK will only go as fast and as far as other European countries in deploying renewable technology.
He says the Danes are already leading in terms of offshore wind, while Germany, France and China are leading in relation to other renewables, so he says we should avoid supporting these nations’ economies by buying up their developmental technology, when we can wait to bring prices down – it’s not like continuing to run gas and coal-fired power stations is going to exacerbate significant climate change, he says.
Lilley reports that the ECCC’s report on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on climate change is being compiled right now, and he is trying to make sure it “reflects reality a little more”, rather than following the scientific consensus on the effects climate change is having.
Within the ECCC, Lilley has found himself with an unlikely ally, Labour MP Graham Stringer – another “rare beast” whose climate change views reject the accepted views of climate science.
But that is where Lilley’s admiration for Labour begins and ends.
While he says that all three major parties “have a share of the blame” for forcing consumers to take on extra costs incurred by moving away from cheaper fossil fuels, some parties are more equal than others when it comes to getting the energy price rise blame.
Labour leader Ed Miliband receives the special Peter Lilley treatment: “Here is a man who was secretary of state for energy and committed us to all of these things which are going to drive up energy bills.
“To say you can freeze household energy bills when you have introduced, supported and wanted to go even further on making people switch from low-cost energy to high-cost energy is sheer hypocrisy.”
Lilley is also scathing about the Conservatives’ coalition partners, painting a picture where the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) was given up as a sacrificial lamb to the Lib Dems.
“Unfortunately, in the coalition we’ve given Decc over to the Liberals, so the chance of reality breaking through has been diminished,” he says.
Lilley says that when business minister Michael Fallon was parachuted into Decc to add the role of energy minister to his responsibilities, it was “to try and bring a breath of hard-headed thinking”. However, the Sevenoaks MP’s job of shepherding this department, as well as the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills had to be done under the tender ministrations of Ed Davey and Vince Cable. “He’s got two Liberal secretaries, and we can’t expect a minister of state to control two secretaries of state,” says Lilley.
Fallon’s efforts obviously impressed Cameron – he was promoted to defence secretary in this week’s reshuffle.
So where does all this leave the UK, the coalition, and Lilley himself?
The UK will continue with its transition towards a low-carbon economy – as a law-abiding nation we have got targets to hit, regardless of Lilley’s disregard for them – but it looks highly improbable that the Lib Dems and Conservatives will renew their vows.
Lilley himself has his eyes set on returning to Parliament, but in the shorter term, also on getting back to work with the ECCC.
The MP is also keen to quiz witnesses on the ECCC’s inquiry into network costs. The driver behind this interest, as it is behind his loathing of wind generation – cost.
He says he is keen to see “falling energy bills” for the end user, so examining network costs and driving through any additional efficiency savings, if they are available, is something he would warmly welcome.
Also top of his hit-list is the inquiry into small nuclear power, which is already underway. Why the interest? Lilley thinks the UK will be able to quickly – and cheaply – manufacture small reactors, providing consumers with low-cost electricity.
Which means emissions targets can be hit without the need for those “elegant” but “expensive” windmills.