Lords And Baronesses Are Not Backing Down

On the Monday before Christmas, we made another stride forward in our campaign to create dramatic growth in community renewable energy generation.

This time the setting was the House of Lords, where our two amendments to the Government’s Energy Bill were debated. To recap, these amendments are based on our Local Electricity Bill, which would enable community energy schemes to sell their clean power to local people, thus triggering a surge in community renewable energy generation.

Power for People Director, Steve Shaw, went in person and watched the proceedings, which involved supportive Lords and Baronesses from the Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Crossbenchers (of which there are over 180), pushing the Energy Minister, Lord Callanan, hard for Government support. A highlights video of the Committee Stage debate described can be found below:

When the Minister failed to state support in his response – as we expected at this stage – he was given a tough time by the Lords and Baronesses present. This rather rattled him and he ended with: “I say without much optimism that I hope noble Lords are reassured that the Government recognise the role that community-owned and locally owned renewable energy schemes can play in supporting the UK’s national net-zero targets.”

These words show we achieved what we intended: the Government see the situation, which is that we likely have enough support in the House of Lords to win a vote on our two amendments at the next stage of the Energy Bill, which will probably be in early February.

If this happens, it would mean that the Energy Bill would come to the House of Commons, probably around March, with our community energy enabling powers contained in it. And with all opposition parties and 125 Conservative MPs lined up in support because of our nationwide public campaign, we are in a strong position to see what we are calling for ultimately pass into law.

Baronesses and Lords came up to me in the corridor after, shaking my hand and expressing congratulations on how much public and Parliamentary support we have built. They offered to keep helping and to give their backing at the next stage.

After a much-needed bit of Christmas rest, we are now working to bring Ministers and Whitehall officials to the negotiating table. It is clear that support for our amendments rattled the Minister. Thank you to everyone who has supported us.

Please get involved and help continue the momentum: