Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I know it is of significant difference to you, as I have had past indiscretions.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was involved last year in a study tour to Europe and we looked at renewable energy sources, specifically in relation to climate change. I still cannot get over the enthusiasm of the researchers in those various countries. The researchers at the Scottish Crop Research Institute at Dundee were incredible in their enthusiasm for looking at various renewable futures. As I have mentioned in this place on a number of occasions, the European cropping systems are based on baling the stubble, because they have a narrow window of opportunity to plant the next crop. Currently, they bale the stubble and use it as bedding for animals or whatever else. Rather than just stop there, the Scottish are developing enzymes that will create biofuels from that biomass. In Copenhagen, for instance, I went to an electricity-generating plant that was fed by pure waste. The garbage trucks go out of a morning, pick up the rubbish, bring it back, dump it in these massive incinerators—and there are two of those—and create enough energy for half a million people in Copenhagen. That is yesterday’s fish and chips creating tomorrow’s power. There is nothing else involved. A by-product of that is central heating for people’s homes and businesses.

There is an enormous amount that can be done. The member for Braddon made that point. None of us—no party—has done anything other than touch the dictionary and touch the surface on renewable energy. I hope that, if we are serious about renewable energy this time, we will actually start to do something and allow the people on the ground to be partners in doing those things. Whether that is in terms of the farm sector and carbon in the soil, value adding through biomass to renewable fuels, solar, wind, geothermal or using the number of incentives put in place by these bills, we have to make sure that we start to go down that road rather than be trapped at a locked gate.

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