Energy Bill

Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord May of Oxford]

At the risk of being tedious, can I ask for a response to this account of what the IPCC said? This is not printed by some bunch of touchy-feely greenies, but comes from the Economist of a week or so ago. It stated that,

“the upper 75 metres of the oceans have warmed by 0.1°C a decade in the past 40 years and there is no sign of this slowing down. Water expands, and ice melts, as temperatures rise, so sea levels have risen 19cm in the past century and the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by about 500,000 square kilometres a decade since 1979.

These facts matter because the oceans cover seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface and are its primary heat sink (90% of the extra warming over the past 40 years has gone into the oceans). By most measures—though not all—global warming is continuing.

But what about the pause in air temperatures? Isn’t that a fact? Indeed it is. But right now it matters more to climate science than climate policy”—

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will understand that we are at Report stage. I am conscious of the rules at this stage and if there are frequent interruptions it gets very difficult. We should try to keep the rules on these matters.

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, I will try to be brief. There has been no increase in sea surface temperatures over the past 10 years or so. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, says that shale gas does not provide an excuse to rethink this target, but the shale gas break-even price has come down dramatically in the United States as a result of increased experience of how to develop shale gas. Fields that were once thought to be break even at $6, $8 or $9 are now breaking even at $3, $4 or $5. Then if you add gas liquids—some fields have gas liquids and they are much higher value—and so on, it is very possible that we will see shale gas have the same effect on prices in this country as we saw in the United States.

I feel we must retain flexibility to research low-carbon technologies, to explore the possibilities of solar, carbon capture and storage and other forms of nuclear and, above all, to see what shale gas can do, but we should not lock in an expensive target now.