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utIlIty WEEK | 18th - 24th July 2014 | 9 Interview T he 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 call- ing 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 com- mittee to look at the total system cost of various genera- tion 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 cabi- net. 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 dan- gerous 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