Transition Towns and Fossil Fuels

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I can only say to the Minister and her colleagues that whatever is happening in renewables, we need to double or triple it if we are to meet our carbon reduction targets. My experience is that we have seen it stalling, whereas we need to be increasing it. I will be interested to hear what she has to say in her remarks.

What commitments will the Minister make to policies and resources to support and expand the impact of transition towns to end our use of fossil fuels? The rapid development of renewable energy sources over the past few decades had helped to reduce hugely the UK’s carbon emissions. Transition towns show how emissions can be reduced in practice by involving people in sustainable energy choices, but individual and hyper-local actions can only go so far. They need Government leadership and support.

The Transition Bristol linked organisation, the Bristol Energy Co-operative—this is similar to the example cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard)—has raised more than £10 million to build solar farms in our area. These projects reduce emissions and build support for transition, but, frustratingly, recent Governments have cut support for the feed-in tariff introduced by the last Labour Government for small-scale renewable energy and changed planning laws, which apparently makes it harder to get planning permission for onshore wind.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister ought to be made aware of the places where onshore wind was planned but, because of the changes in the financial regime, has been dropped, such as the two large turbines just south of Ipswich?

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I was not aware of that particular example, but I am sure that the Minister will be interested to hear that and will perhaps have a response to it in her summing up.

I understand that the deployment of solar and new onshore wind has fallen drastically since 2016. I am also worried by the interest in fracking, because that is surely pouring fossil fuel on the fossil fuel fire, when we really should be doing everything that we can to put that fire out. Does the Minister agree that we should support transition towns by leaving fossil fuels in the ground?

On a study fellowship that has been organised for me by the Industry and Parliament Trust, I have learnt about the potential for expanding renewable energy. That includes the potential for energy from wave and tidal—from marine sources. I believe that it is the Government’s job to help to fund, invest in and support emerging technologies precisely at the point when they cannot yet turn a profit but have the potential to do so. Only by supporting these early stages can this country become a world leader in these technologies, allowing us to export them, as well as to create jobs and reduce fossil fuel use. This reflects the transition towns’ spirit of involving communities in the transition away from fossil fuels. For instance, in Swansea, everyone seems to be very knowledgeable about and supportive of the Swansea bay tidal lagoon project and the science behind it.

Other forms of marine energy are of course available, as I know the Minister knows from a recent meeting that she and I were both involved in. I would be interested to know whether she has had chance to reflect on what we learnt in that meeting, because the UK has massive untapped potential for marine energy generation, but it needs investment and support. Will the Government commit to investing in helping emerging renewable technologies to move from the developmental stages to being fully commercially viable, with subsidies or other support, especially in industries of the future?

One of the most striking places that I visited was the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult in Blyth. That area, devastated by the collapse of the traditional coalmining and shipbuilding industries, is now helping to creating the jobs of the future as it tests the biggest wind turbine blades in the world—I have been to see it and it is pretty impressive. This is transition in action, but I would like to see more. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to invest further in renewable energy industries, such as wind, tidal and wave, especially in the most deprived parts of the UK?

We can also do much more to make our homes more efficient. Labour’s zero carbon homes standard was designed to reduce energy use in new houses, but unfortunately, the standard was scrapped in 2015, causing great disruption to industry preparing for it to implemented. It would also have saved families living in new properties around £200 a year on increased energy bills. Labour policy is to reinstate the zero carbon homes standard, but in any case, new standards only deal with new houses. What about existing homes, which are some of the poorest insulated in western Europe? Our cold, damp homes lead to recurring illnesses that Age UK and the Institute of Health Equity have warned are costing our NHS over £1 billion each year.

Transition Bristol members have taken on that challenge, insulating existing homes and making them more energy-efficient, but unfortunately, we have seen a Government cut to the energy company obligation, resulting in a 97% fall in the installation of new boilers and home energy-efficiency measures under this scheme and a significant fall in funding for cold homes. Labour policy is to bring all homes up to a good standard by 2035, with all fuel-poor homes fixed by 2030. I would love that to be something that the Government decide to take on, because frankly, we need this now. Given that insulating homes reduces fuel poverty and energy demand, what are the Government doing to reinstate energy-efficiency measures?

Transition Bristol and campaigners have been very effective in changing our ideas about travel, and I am proud to represent a constituency where people walk and cycle more than almost anywhere in the UK. However, freezing fuel duty for almost a decade has effectively subsidised car use by tens of billions of pounds, while train fares have gone up by approximately twice the rate of inflation. I therefore ask the Minister what more can be done to encourage more sustainable transport use, thereby supporting transition towns in their efforts to reduce fossil fuel use further.

There are many other ways the Government could support and build on transition towns’ excellent work, and I would like the Minister to consider some suggestions, which are meant in the spirit of generosity. Recent analysis from the European Commission found that the UK gives the most subsidies to fossil fuels of any EU country, while equivalent subsidies to renewable energy industries were apparently much lower. I would like that to be rebalanced. If the Minister wants to correct me in summing up, I would be grateful.

We also need to stop supporting polluting projects abroad. UK Export Finance has a record of financing fossil fuels in low and middle-income countries. It is estimated to have provided £551 million in support of fossil fuel production overseas per year between 2014 and 2016, and that must stop.

Currently, the planning application fee for a large solar farm is the same as that for developing a shopping centre covering the same surface area. That should also change. If we continue to support the excavation of fossil fuels, and fossil fuel power stations, these fuels will continue to be burned. The barriers are no longer technological or even financial; they are political.

On Friday, I met some young women at the climate change demonstration on Parliament Square. Rosa, Rebecca, Tilly and Grace were all so inspiring, and they made so many great suggestions, such as a real ban on single-use plastics. I know that that is the Government’s intention, but they would like a real ban, and they would like it right now. They told me they want that sort of leadership from the Government; they do not just want to see individuals being made responsible for making all the changes. They also said they wanted the net zero carbon emissions target to be met by 2025 and that they did not want us to wait to 2050.

As I draw to a close, let me say this. For all the young people demonstrating in Bristol, in Parliament Square and everywhere else against climate change; for the people of Bristol West who tell me how much this issue matters to them; for their children and grandchildren; and for my own nephews and nieces and their children—the next generations, for whom the Minister, myself and all hon. Members come to work every day to make the world a better place—I ask the Minister: will she consider declaring a national climate change emergency and work with Members on both sides of the House to do everything she can to support the local work of transition towns through Government action and take a lead internationally as well as nationally?

To conclude, I return to Aliyah and to Svalbard. Svalbard and its extraordinary geography and ecosystem need us to act right now. Meanwhile, Aliyah has recently finished all the field and lab work for her PhD, and she gave birth earlier this month to the first Debbonaire of the next generation—baby Olive Emilie Debbonaire-Crabb. I am going to meet Olive for the first time this weekend, and I cannot wait, but she and others of her generation also cannot wait for us to act. I know the Minister will share my ambition, because children being born now in Bristol, in her constituency and across the country depend not just on transition towns but on businesses, scientists and us politicians to protect them from climate change.

When new baby Olive turns 18, I want to be able to look her in the eye and I do not want to say, “I tried to stop climate change, but I failed. I’m sorry.” I want the polar bears on Svalbard to survive, and I want this beautiful planet to thrive for her. I want to say to Olive, and to all the next generations, “My generation of transition town campaigners, businesses, scientists and politicians in the House of Commons and in local councils everywhere, motivated by our love for you and for our beautiful planet—from Svalbard to the south pole—stopped climate change.”