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Energy Bill

My Lords, I welcome the intent of the amendment. Whether it is precisely right, I do not know, but we should do something along these lines. In the whole renewable energy area, there are no silver bullets. Although 10 years ago geothermal energy would not have been at the top of one’s priority list for exploitation in this country, technology moves on and commercial firms are now seriously interested in looking at and investing in it. I regard this kind of enabling legislation effectively as good housekeeping. We do not know what will come but, certainly, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, geothermal exploration is expensive; it involves drilling deep holes and it almost certainly involves conditioning the rocks underground with hydrofracturing techniques so that cool water from the surface can be pumped down, circulated through the warm rocks and brought back to the surface. That is very expensive. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out, we do not want people to feel that, after they have made this investment, it can effectively be hijacked by someone else. We need some way of encouraging these people and protecting their investments, probably using the same kind of legislative framework that has been used in other countries.