Internet Activity: Energy Use
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Lilley(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
We will hear from the Green Party.
Long-duration Energy Storage (Science and Technology Committee Report)
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Lilley(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, since I am speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, and having listened to his contribution, I feel I must defend the BBC’s intention to contextualise his words. I note an article on the LSE’s website, dated October last year, headed “Misinformation in the UK’s House of Lords”, which focuses on statements made in the House by the noble Lord on the climate emergency, and speaks about
“the promotion of misinformation about climate change”.
The BBC is surely taking on board such analysis.
Lord Lilley (Con)
Is the noble Baroness saying that it is right for the BBC to say an untruth because she does not agree with what I say?
Lord Lilley (Con)
Will she condemn the BBC for saying that I have interests in an oil and gas company when I do not, and have not for more than 10 years?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I have no awareness of the details of the noble Lord’s financial position, but I understand the BBC’s intention to try to make sure that it contextualises the information that is being presented to listeners.
I welcome the Minister to the House and to her position, and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, and the committee for an excellent report and the entirely expected comprehensive and detailed introduction to it. It is a reminder that your Lordships’ House needs more people with a science and technology background, particularly those who are able to look at technological claims critically and, where necessary, sceptically.
I begin with paragraph 12 of the report, which talks about the global energy crisis as being an object lesson in our vulnerability to fossil fuel prices. Those who question the net-zero and 2030 electricity decarbonisation targets really need to focus on that paragraph. We need homegrown or regionally linked solutions, as well as sustainable ones. I pick up the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, about the evident state of our climate emergency now, and offer my sympathy to the 130,000 people forced to evacuate Los Angeles. I urge those who doubt the need for climate action to look at those images and question why they still have doubts.
The report covers the fact that the Climate Change Committee forecast that electricity demand will increase by 50% by 2035 and double by 2050 in its balanced pathway scenario. I want to go back further than the committee report does: can we afford that increase in electricity demand, economically or environmentally? Can we make other choices about the way our society works? We think of it in terms of bulk demand for electricity, but we can also think about it in terms of balancing the grid from moment to moment. How can we reduce demand and make sure that that is part of our story, as well as saying that we have got to have the storage?
Paragraph 129 of the report says that long and medium-duration storage is critical,
“but it will not always be the cheapest option”.
The committee stresses that energy efficiency, which I want to focus on, is often a cheaper option. The cleanest, greenest energy you can possibly have is the energy that you do not need to use. I fear that sometimes, when we reach out for technological solutions and think about growth as a mantra or religion, we fail to think about the fact that the cheapest, cleanest, best possible energy is the energy that we do not need to use.
In that context, your Lordships frequently hear expressions of excitement from the Government about the possibilities of so-called AI or large language learning models. One study suggests that a generative AI system uses around 33 times more energy than a machine running task-specific software—33 times more energy to get the same outcome. In 2022, the world’s data centres gobbled up 460 terawatt hours of electricity and the International Energy Agency expects this to double in just four years. Data centres could be using 1,000 terawatt hours annually by 2026.
It is interesting that Dublin, for example, has just put a moratorium on the construction of new data centres. Nearly one-fifth of Ireland’s electricity is currently used by data centres, and that figure is expected to grow significantly. Ireland is starting to ask the question: can and—importantly—do we want to do this?
Finally, perhaps we could do with a little bit of light relief. I suspect that a new word for your Lordships’ House, at least used in this context, is so-called AI slop, which is junk, nonsense material being created at enormous scale by AI-generating machines. There has apparently been a huge explosion of images of Jesus made out of shrimps. Do we want to create energy storage so that AI systems can do that?
Coronavirus: UK Deaths
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Lilley(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Energy Bill [HL]
Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord LilleyMonday 16th January 2023
(2 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Energy Act 2023 View all Energy Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 39-VI(a) Amendment for Grand Committee (Supplementary to the Sixth Marshalled List) - (13 Jan 2023)
Lord Lilley (Con)
So, had the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, got her amendment in first, the noble Lord would have signed it. It is interesting to know that the Liberal Democrats are against any new fields in the North Sea.
What I want to try to get home to those members of the Committee who have not yet taken it on board is that up to now we have pursued a path to net zero which involves reducing demand for fossil fuels by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. That is a logical path to pursue. We have not been seeking to achieve it by reducing supply of fossil fuels. As a result, if people choose to produce more fossil fuels than there is demand, as demand falls fossil fuel producers will be left with stranded assets and lose money. It could not happen to a nicer bunch of people, but why should we think that our judgments are better than theirs or worry about them erring and producing too much, investing too much and not getting their money back? That is up to them.
Lord Lilley (Con)
May I pursue the point? When I have made it and made my own case, I look forward to the noble Baroness demolishing it.
We will continue to use gas, albeit in reducing amounts, for decades, probably alongside carbon capture and storage. That is accepted by almost everybody I know. If the UK bans production, which would be an absurd thing to do, given that we do not ban imports of natural gas, we will simply leave others to supply our needs and needs elsewhere in the world. If lots of countries decide to ban new supply, if they succeed in reducing supply faster than we reduce demand, there will be shortages. Prices will shoot up. There will be the same sort of crisis—and huge profits for the oil industries—and we will have done to ourselves what Putin has done to us by reducing supply more rapidly than demand. I want to know why the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, want to introduce that sort of risk into the system. Why not just pursue the steady path of reducing demand until it is net zero?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
It is interesting that the noble Lord’s analysis bears a great deal of resemblance to that of the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty proponents, who point out that we have been seeking to reduce demand and say that they explicitly want to reduce supply. I think the noble Lord was making the case that the price will go up if there is not enough supply. Of course, the reverse is true: if there is too much supply, the price will go down. Indeed, we saw this during Covid, with petrol in the United States—gas, as they call it—where people were actually being paid to store and hold it, because you cannot switch these supplies on and off like a tap. Once you build a field, you are going to keep producing that stuff: you cannot suddenly switch it on and off. So, if you have overproduction, you have extremely low prices and those prices, of course, do not reflect the actual cost and the damage being done, either in terms of the climate or all the other damages that the WHO, signing up to this treaty, points out, in terms of the damage done to human health by burning fossil fuels.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I have good news for the noble Baroness, because those issues were covered in Shale Gas Extraction in the UK: A Review of Hydraulic Fracturing, produced by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. We are all constantly urged to follow the science, so let us follow the science in that review. She discussed water, and according to the review:
“Overall water use is important. Estimates indicate that the amount needed to operate a hydraulically fractured shale gas well for a decade may be equivalent to the amount needed to water a golf course for a month”.
That seems something with which we can probably cope. She then discussed the possible results leading to the pollution of aquifers. The review says:
“Concerns have been raised about the risk of fractures propagating from shale formations to reach overlying aquifers. The available evidence indicates that this risk is very low provided that shale gas extraction takes place at depths of many hundreds of metres or several kilometres.”
In the UK’s Bowland shale, it would be kilometres deep. The review continues:
“Geological mechanisms constrain the distances that fractures may propagate vertically. Even if communication with overlying aquifers were possible, suitable pressure conditions would still be necessary for contaminants to flow through fractures.”
When you have a kilometre or more of stone—impermeable rock—bearing down, you could not get a better seal.
Nevertheless, we do not have to worry about scientific analysis and theory, because we have practical experience. Over a million wells have been fracked in North America; not a single one has resulted in a building falling down from tremors or in a single person being poisoned by contaminated aquifers. So we are bound to conclude that lots of people have been spreading the sort of scaremongering that would make anti-vaxxers blush—even Andrew Bridgen would probably blush if he heard some of the stuff that has been put out by the friends of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, at their various camps around every conceivable attempt to get fracking going. We should rely on the science and the scientific reports and regulate the industry well, as we have done in the past.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Since the noble Lord addressed me directly on fracking, I ask him if he is aware of the article published in 2020 in Environmental Health Perspectives in the United States which showed that babies with low birth weight are significantly more common in families living close to fracking wells in the US. That demonstrates the practical reality of the outcome of fracking on health.
Lord Lilley (Con)
What is the mechanism by which those babies are born with low health when they are near a well?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
The scientists behind that study say that they cannot explain it, that it needs further examination and that there are a number of possible mechanisms.
Lord Lilley (Con)
I have not read the report, but I will read it. I have read similar reports, and almost all rely on the statistical phenomenon that random events are as likely to be bunched together as they are to be evenly spread; I say that as someone who studied statistics. This results in bunches of things; for example, you will get bunches certain cancers somewhere near Windscale, as it used to be called, yet there are bunches elsewhere not near Windscale but people do not worry about them. I very much doubt that there is any scientific basis—and indeed the authors of the article could not think of any scientific basis—as to why we should relate one thing to another in that case. It is the sort of thing that the anti-vaxxers say when they find a little concern. Obviously we should always be concerned about issues such as vaccination or drilling under pressure, but we should not exploit people’s fears to stop something we do not like for other reasons. I hope that my amendment will be adopted and that it will mean that we actually regulate the shale gas industry on exactly the same basis as we do all other industries which can produce similar environmental impacts.