Energy Bill
Debate between Caroline Lucas and David T C Davies
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
There are many reasons to support the decarbonisation amendments, and many hon. Members—most recently the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who is just leaving the Chamber—have set them out with great expertise and eloquence. From a security perspective, I want to underline that the stakes could hardly be higher. It is clear that those who will suffer the most harm and hardship from the impacts of climate change are often the poorest and most vulnerable, here in the UK and globally—those who have contributed the least to the problem. In that respect, this crisis is not unlike the banking crisis.
As many business leaders and experts such as Lord Stern have said, there is no business as usual at all in a 3° or 4° warmer world. A couple of years ago, at the launch of the UK’s climate adaptation plan, the big idea was managing the unavoidable and avoiding the unmanageable. “Avoiding the unmanageable” means keeping global temperature rises below 2°. For years, that line in the sand has been recognised by the UK and most other Governments, and enshrined in legal documents under the auspices of the United Nations framework convention on climate change and the G8. That is the basis for the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008, and our carbon budgets, which the policies in the Bill will, or perhaps will not, deliver. Internationally, citizens and Governments of low-lying island states risk their entire nation being literally wiped off the face of the map, even with a 2° rise.
David T. C. Davies
I read recently that Tuvalu would be wiped off the face of the earth within 10 years if we did not do something about global warming. The only problem is that the article was 10 years old, and all those islands are still there. Is this not just more exaggeration from those who want higher electricity prices as a result of decarbonisation?
Caroline Lucas
I do not really know where to start to respond to such an ignorant intervention. I will not even bother wasting my time with it.
As I say, a couple of years ago, we were talking about the fact that entire nation states face being wiped off the map. If the hon. Gentleman cared to look at the situation in Tuvalu, he would realise that it is getting more and more serious. If such a real and present threat were facing the UK, would we not join their calls for much more dramatic emission reductions, to keep the global temperature rise to less than 2°—perhaps to 1.5°? Would we not go, as many nations are, for 100% renewable energy over the next few decades?
I cite those statistics because I want to remind the House what we are talking about. Much of the debate so far has rightly been about the cost of decarbonisation, and about the targets and so on, but the bottom line is that what we are discussing is literally life and death. People’s life or death is at stake today. That is why we need to use this opportunity to make sure that the Bill is as ambitious as it can be.
I have talked about what I would regard as the moral case for swift action. We have heard a lot about the economic case. There is no shortage of companies telling us that a decarbonisation target is essential. The joint letter of more than 50 Aldersgate Group members, for example, said:
“the Government’s perceived commitment to the low carbon transition is being undermined by…the absence of a specific carbon intensity target.”
Many other companies would say the same.
I would like to focus on the impact internationally of what we do at home. A domestic decarbonisation target is crucial if the UK is serious about securing a global deal on climate. We hear a lot from the Government about the need for international action, and it often sounds as though they are saying, “Let’s wait until there is international action before taking action here at home,” but as someone who would know about this, John Ashton, would say, action at home first is absolutely critical if we are serious about getting global agreement.
John Ashton, as many hon. Members will know, was the Government’s special representative on climate change, a Foreign Office diplomat who has spent many decades working on the subject. Last month, he talked about the need for global agreement, explaining:
“British diplomacy can influence this, perhaps critically; the argument that we are just too small to count is nonsense. But our diplomacy starts at home.
I have been personally involved in British climate diplomacy for most of the last 15 years, at the heart of it for much of that time. Nothing that we accomplished could have been accomplished if we had been faltering at home as we are now. You cannot expect others to act as you ask, or even listen to what you say, if you are not doing yourself what you want them to do. If we in Britain appear to be giving up…we will be out of the game. That is why I spent so much of my time as a diplomat, close to half of it, on domestic policy.”
Let us not think that domestic policy and global policy are not linked. They are essentially linked. If Britain is to maintain its position as a real leader on climate change, we absolutely have to act at home. The decarbonisation target is a crucial part of that.
Indeed, I would say that the target does not go far enough, although of course I will support it this afternoon. Let us remember the context: a target of 50 grams of carbon per kWh by 2030, which is what the amendments that we are considering are essentially proposing, is absolutely the minimum that we should seek to achieve. The Climate Change Act 2008 and the carbon budgets that flow from it reflect the overwhelming consensus, stated many times by the Government, that we have to keep below 2° warming, but current carbon targets give us only a 37% chance of doing that. I want to emphasise that, because I sometimes think that when we discuss targets in the House, we assume that if we meet a certain target, that gives 100% certainty of a given outcome. Clearly it does not; it is about a balance of risks. How many of us would get on an aeroplane if we were told that it had only a 37% chance of reaching its destination in a safe way? A 37% chance is pretty low, yet those are the odds that we are arguing about even now.
I wish the argument was about not whether we should decarbonise straight away or by 2016, but the extent, far-reachingness, speed and ambition with which we should do it. That is the debate that we should be having, instead of arguing about whether we should be going in this direction at all. An honest reappraisal of our targets is needed, with science, and the implications for young people, vulnerable communities and future generations, at the forefront of our minds.
The hon. Member for Brent North, who is a leading advocate for action on climate change globally, raised the challenge of the need for tighter targets in his Westminster Hall debate. I would like to know his view of John Ashton’s stark conclusion that the UK could never have achieved anything close to its previous international influence against the backdrop of current policies. Credible domestic targets and action are crucial.
As well as science-based targets, we need an honest reappraisal of the role of fossil fuels and the fossil fuel lobby’s enormous influence over policy making. To say, “Gas is lower-carbon than coal, so let’s get fracking” is disingenuous at best. Gas is still a high-carbon fuel, and gas prices are projected to rise in future, irrespective of shale gas. That is according to most of the expert analysis that I have seen, certainly from independent sources without direct or indirect financial or family ties with Cuadrilla and the wider fracking fraternity.
Through the Bill, Ministers are putting in place mechanisms that offer vastly greater support to nuclear power than to renewables. The Bill is about gas and nuclear; it is not sufficiently about a low-carbon future. Through it, Ministers are offering long-term guarantees for high-carbon gas generation until 2045, and a way for the same gas companies that are putting up bills and raking in profits to take even more money from taxpayers and bill payers through the capacity mechanism. The Secretary of State is offering long-term guarantees and assurances for high-carbon gas generation, and tax breaks for fracking. Ministers have not chosen to give anything like a similar degree of certainty for wind, wave, tidal, solar, biomass, hydro or geothermal power—nothing beyond 2020. That is made even worse by the Government’s opposition to proposals, backed by industry, for 2030 targets for either renewables or efficiency.
The Government had the opportunity, in the Bill, to drive a radical transformation in ownership and control of energy away from the big six to communities, localities, individuals, private companies, public authorities, joint enterprises and co-operatives. Instead, they have chosen a support mechanism that only really works for the likes of EDF, npower, Centrica and E.ON, which will tighten their death-grip on us.
In the light of these actions, it looks extremely unlikely that the UK stands much of a chance of achieving the carbon reductions necessary, or even of remaining on track to meet the 2050 target without a 2050 decarbonisation target. I end with another quote from John Ashton. When asked for his view on the decarbonisation target, he stated:
“I can’t myself see how any MP who votes against the target will thereafter be able credibly to claim that they support an effective response to climate change.”
I know that will not bother some in the House, but I hope that for many other Members it will concentrate their minds on the vote.
Cost of Living
Debate between Caroline Lucas and David T C Davies
David T. C. Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point, because there is a lot that we can do to generate electricity without CO2 and one would think that the Greens would be the first to support it. We had a proposal recently for a Severn barrage that could generate 20% of Britain’s electricity. It was an interesting proposal and one for which I would want to see more costings, but it was totally opposed by the environmentalists. We know that we can generate large amounts of electricity on demand and relatively cheaply from nuclear power without emitting CO2, but where do the environmentalists stand on it? They are totally against it.
In the United States of America, by exploiting shale gas, I understand that they have halved electricity prices and created a wonderful environment for manufacturers—so much so that they are returning to the States. More importantly for the environmentalists, however, that has also reduced American CO2 emissions. One would think that the Greens would be jumping for joy, but instead they are doing everything they can to prevent the Government from encouraging those companies to get in there, drill and exploit the cheap shale gas that we know we have and which could do so much. I question what their beliefs really are.
I hear the environmentalists saying to me, “The most important thing to do is reduce our CO2 emissions”, but whenever anyone puts solutions in front of them that would reduce CO2 emissions and deliver the cheap electricity that we all need, they do not want to know. They are the same people who march against globalisation and capitalism, who totally opposed any form of nuclear deterrent in the 1980s and who a few hundred years ago would have been the Luddites smashing up the spinning wheels. These people live in a fantasy world, believing that if we could just get rid of technology, we could go back to living in wonderful grass huts and things in some Tolkienesque world, like the hobbits before the evil one started attacking them. They are totally opposed to the high standards of living that globalisation and capitalism have delivered in the west and are delivering across the whole world.
It is high time that the Government realised that these people will never support anyone in government. Only recently, Friends of the Earth ran a big campaign against increased energy costs, but one reason energy costs have increased is that the Government have been trying to follow policies recommended by that same organisation—policies of supporting wind farms and solar panels that are bound to increase energy costs. It is ludicrous for the people who have been advocating policies that will increase energy costs to demand that we bring them down.
Caroline Lucas
I really did not want to intervene, because I did not want to encourage the hon. Gentleman and give him an extra minute in which to continue coming out with this rubbish. I thought that the discussion on Europe was where we found the fruitcakes, but I am finding them this afternoon as well. Is he really suggesting that it is not rising gas prices that are increasing people’s fuel bills right now? It is not renewable energy, but the gas imports that are the problem.
David T. C. Davies
It is not rising temperatures that the hon. Lady ought to be concerned about, but rising tempers among the vast majority of the public, who are fed up with paying higher fuel bills and bills for manufactured goods for a problem that simply does not seem to exist.
I say to the Government that we need a proper cost-benefit analysis of our climate change policies before we embark on measures that will drive manufacturing elsewhere in an effort to solve a problem that quite possibly does not exist, and I say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who is no longer in his place but who also referred to me as a fruitcake, that it was the fruitcakes who warned against the euro 10 years ago. We were accused of being fruitcakes then, but the fruitcakes were right. Fruitcake is a cheap and reliable source of energy. I am for the fruitcakes. I am proud to be a fruitcake. Long may fruitcakes continue.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I should like to concentrate on the final two words of the Gracious Speech, which, unfortunately, give the impression of having been tagged on the end, almost as an afterthought. Those words are “climate change”; I am sure that I will not disappoint the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) in what I am about to say.
The forthcoming legislative programme shows that the Government are failing in their first duty—to protect citizens—precisely by failing to address the causes of the worsening climate crisis. They are ignoring warnings, even from conservative bodies such as the World Bank, that without far more urgent and radical cuts in emissions, global temperatures will rise by an average 4° or more by the end of the century, with devastating impacts as a result.
If the throwaway line at the end of the Gracious Speech really does mean that progress on climate change will genuinely be part of the UK’s G8 presidency, then of course I welcome it, not least following reports that the Government have been blocking the attempts of the French and German Governments to give the issue a high priority.
However, for the Prime Minister to suggest that the Government are successfully taking sufficient action to deal with climate change is simply dishonest. I do not use that word lightly, but if we are to have a chance of avoiding the worst of climate change, politicians of all parties and countries will have to get a lot more honest—honest about the scale of the threat that we face and the scope of the changes that we need to make.
Just last week, for the first time in human history, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million. The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannahs spread across the Sahara desert and the sea level was up to 40 metres higher.
The difference between 399 and 400 parts per million may be small in its impact on the world’s living system, but it is overwhelming in its symbolism of our collective failure to put the future of the natural world and its people above immediate self-interest and to tell the truth and admit that reliance on fossil fuels is not compatible with the urgent action needed on climate change. Given the role that fossil fuel lobbyists play in influencing policy, including being seconded into Departments to draft it in the first place, I am also deeply disappointed that the Bill to introduce a register of lobbyists has been dropped from the Government’s plans.
If coalition Ministers are comfortable in their state of denial about the climate crisis and their cosy relationships with the fossil fuel industry, whose core business models are incompatible with keeping global warming below 2°, let it be on the record that young people in particular certainly are not. We can see that in the reaction to the Education Secretary’s attempts to remove climate change from the curriculum for the under-14s and we saw it last week when the fossil fuel divestment movement came in the shape of huge opposition to a new partnership between Oxford university and Shell—a partnership that would have been about getting yet more fossil fuels out of the ground. We see it, too, in the concern that I am sure is manifest in many hon. Members’ inboxes from people still lobbying for there to be a clear decarbonisation target in the Energy Bill, not just promises that that might be looked at in 2016.
If I am disappointed that we heard only one mention of climate change in the Gracious Speech, I am even more disappointed by the lack of meaningful action on fossil fuels. Ministers must be honest with themselves and the public and admit that, if we are serious about avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground.
David T. C. Davies
Is the hon. Lady going to address the issue of why environmental groups will not support methods of generating electricity that do not produce carbon dioxide emissions, such as nuclear power?
Caroline Lucas
If the options were either nuclear or more and more fossil fuels, obviously nuclear would be the least worst option. But that is a false choice that we are not facing. There are plenty of technologies out there that need further support—solar, wind, geothermal and many others that are now coming to be equal in terms of price parity. We do not need to go down the nuclear route, which is hugely expensive as well as dangerous. We do not need to go there, so why would we? Why not use the technologies that we know will get our emissions down and keep the lights on much more cheaply, effectively and safely?
I turn to a report published last month by Carbon Tracker. It makes the point that we cannot go on using more and more fossil fuels. As Lord Stern explains in the foreword,
“most fossil fuel reserves are essentially unburnable because of the need to reduce emissions in line with the global agreement”
to keep temperatures below 2° warming. That 2° warming is the first critical number in the Carbon Tracker report. Governments around the world have agreed that we should not exceed that level of warming. There is already an increase of 0.8° in the atmosphere, so we are getting close to 2°, and 0.6° is locked into the atmosphere. If we are not careful, we will get to 2° very fast, and many people believe that 0.5° would be a safer threshold.
The second number is the 2,795 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide that industry figures indicate are locked up in the known, proven coal, oil and gas reserves around the world. Finally, the figure of 565 gigatonnes is the amount of CO2 that research by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research identifies as remaining in our carbon budget for the period 2011 to 2015. In other words, we can safely burn only one fifth of known fossil fuel reserves and still keep within the global carbon budget, as the International Energy Agency confirmed in its recent report.
Many people will suggest that carbon capture and storage is the way out of this problem. However, even if CCS were deployed in line with an idealised scenario by 2050, that would extend fossil fuel carbon budgets by only about 125 gigatonnes, which is equivalent to only 4% of the total global budget. CCS is not likely to come online in any serious way until at least 2030, by which point the carbon budget may well have been used up.
The implications of all this are clear. First, the decarbonisation target needs to be in place. We need to make sure that we do not have a second dash for gas. Most crucially, Ministers must require extractive companies to include the greenhouse gas emissions potential of fossil fuel reserves as part of an update on company reporting regulations. If they do not, there is a real risk that our financial markets will have a carbon bubble worth an estimated $16 trillion globally. Because we are so over-exposed in the UK given the global role played by London, our financial centre, in raising capital, there is great concern that companies are inflating their worth because of these reserves.
Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency
Debate between Caroline Lucas and David T C Davies(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
We are all united today in lamenting the fact that so many people are suffering as a result of fuel poverty. I listened with great interest as the Minister, the shadow Minister and right hon. and hon. Members discussed what they would do about it—all the schemes that they have put in place, the Warm Front scheme, cold weather payments, the green deal, the affordable warmth scheme, collective switching, bashing the energy companies, subsidising people to put insulation in their lofts, and whether pensioners were getting £300 or £400 under Labour. There was no agreement about that, but it struck me that there was not a great deal of difference in what any of them were suggesting. The only difference was that Opposition Members were promising to do more of it and spend even more money, although of course they have no money because, as they admitted, they spent it all. There was very little difference.
We are failing to address a fundamental question. The energy policies of all parties in the House are predicated on the fact that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming, that this is a problem and something must be done, and that the something that must be done is to change the way in which we generate electricity so that we do it through renewables and fund this through subsidies, which have to be passed on to consumers. Of course more people are suffering from fuel poverty under this Government and the previous Government. They always will, because we are pursuing policies that are increasing the cost of energy and we should be honest about that.
If we are to be honest about that, we would have to be honest about something else as well: the problem that we are trying to confront does not appear to be a problem. In 15 years, according to the Met Office website, there has been no increase in temperature. Let us think about that for a minute. Since 1992 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been chucking out predictions, one after another, telling us that there are going to be monumental rises in temperature as a result of the fact that we are putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In the 150 years of industrialisation, the temperature increase has been around 0.7° and much of that will be due to the fact that we were coming out of a period of unusual cooling anyway from about the time that we industrialised. But for the past 15 years there has been no increase whatever. All the industrialisation that has gone on in China, India, Brazil and all those other countries has not led to a trace of an increase in global warming, which is another reason why so many people will stay in fuel poverty: they will continue to have to spend large amounts of money heating their homes.
I have spent a great deal of time looking into this issue. I voted for the various carbon taxes and the climate change Bills, and I am coming to regret the fact that I did. But I did not have the information that is now out there. For ages I could not even find the Met Office figures that show that there have been no increases. If there are no increases, it is surely reasonable to conclude that something other than carbon dioxide is affecting the atmosphere and climatic and temperature changes. If that is so, perhaps we need to rethink our entire energy policy—all of us.
I have come to the conclusion that it is time to do away with the carbon taxes, the subsidies and all the rest of it, to allow energy companies to generate electricity as cheaply as they can and to sell it to consumers as cheaply as they can. I look at America, where this approach has been tried out. The price of electricity for domestic users has halved in the United States as a result of the exploitation of shale gas through fracking. Obviously, Ministers will get no support from the environmentalists, but they will get no support from them anyway.
The first Member who intervened on the Minister was the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), the Green party Member, complaining about subsidies. I have never heard anything so ludicrous as a member of the Green party complaining about energy subsidies and energy price increases. We have followed its policies to some extent and obviously all renewable energies need subsidies and they will always lead to an increased cost, which is passed straight on to the consumer.
Caroline Lucas
I did not want to interrupt the hon. Gentleman because I did not want to give him any encouragement whatever, but he has now challenged me. Does he accept that fuel bills are rising now because of rising gas prices, not because of anything to do with support for renewables?
David T. C. Davies
I can assure the hon. Lady that I need absolutely no encouragement whatsoever. It would be a pleasure to discuss this issue with her at some point. She will understand that gas prices in the United States have not just halved—they are around a quarter of what they were a few years ago as a result of the exploitation of shale gas. I am tempted to suggest that she should join me in supporting that exciting new technology, but I have a feeling that I know what the answer will be. Of course she will not support it, and she will not support the Severn barrage, either, even though that would allow us to generate electricity without carbon emissions. She will not support nuclear power, even though that allows us to generate electricity without the carbon emissions that she would suggest are the greatest threat to our climate.