Climate Change: Targets

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, on calling this debate and on her excellent introduction. In my brief time today, I would like to urge the Government to consider the use of pension scheme assets in our battle against climate change. They are the ideal long-term capital source to mitigate risks and prepare for both the known and unknown unknowns that we are facing. Climate change is potential catastrophe, both for us and for countries globally, and for future generations. We perhaps have an opportunity, if my noble friend agrees, to use our huge sums—more than £1 trillion—in pension assets, which are significantly larger than those in most other countries, to build back better; to ensure that traditional investments in global industries do not become worthless in the transition to low-carbon economies; and to address some of the inconsistencies in our policy stance, outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. Pension assets could support a hydrogen strategy; they could encourage fossil fuel reduction and encourage traditional energy companies to diversify and build alternative sources of energy before their assets become stranded. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, has been working on some of this for a while and talking about capital requirements and risk-weighting for such assets. I would be grateful if my noble friend could give the Committee his thoughts on those.

I have two further quick points. Do the Government have targets for building new, eco-friendly homes, especially for older people to downsize to, while ensuring that existing housing stocks can be retrofitted and upgraded to be more energy efficient? Do the Government have plans to ban cryptocurrencies from all regulated activities, given the measure of carbon emissions entailed in this socially worthless exercise?