Global Energy Sector

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sheehan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the International Energy Agency Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector, published in May 2021.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, the gathering pace of extreme weather events, far earlier than scientists predicted, is the planet telling us that “enough is enough”. The IPCC states that

“some of the changes already set in motion—such as continued sea level rise—are irreversible over hundreds to thousands of years.”

The International Energy Agency, created in 1974, is an autonomous intergovernmental organisational hosted by the venerable OECD. It accepts that climate change is real and happening now. It has put its shoulder to the wheel and used its awe-inspiring expertise in the global energy sector to produce a report that is a road map to meet the net-zero target by 2050, keep global warming to 1.5 degrees and, crucially, safeguard our way of living. This is a report commissioned by our own Government. They should find succour in the IEA’s conclusion that there is a pathway by which net zero by 2050 is achievable, and in how the IEA has dotted the “i”s and crossed the “t”s and detailed how the challenge can be met.

In introducing this debate, I openly declare that I stand with those international agencies and am a fully paid-up member of the “We must act now—this is a climate emergency” brigade. I also declare that I am a director of Peers for the Planet. I suspect that others may be contributing to this debate from a standpoint either of denying that climate change is real or that reaction to it is overenthusiastic. I hope that they will make a declaration on that and on membership of any groups that promote those points of view early on in their contributions.

There is a chant among children in playgrounds, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It is so right. Words alone will not undo the deep damage that we humans have inflicted on our planet and its life support systems. I am not a violent person. Rather than sticks and stones, the metaphorical carrot would be my preference, and it seems to me that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown us the real carrot, the real prize: to rid ourselves once and for all of dependence on essential energy supplies from geopolitically unstable and unpredictable sources of energy. That carrot is being dangled in front of us at a time when alternative sources are available, sources that are free from the taint of human rights abuses, free from dependency on rogue regimes that have heads of states with delusions of grandeur, cheaper by far, and becoming ever more so than fossil fuel sources.

Instead, we have the prospect of infinite clean energy from the sun, wind and ground, generated on domestic soil and available for domestic use rather than destined for the global trading floor and the highest bidder, as would be the case for oil and gas from UK waters, because pumping more gas out of the North Sea will do precisely nothing to ease the energy crunch and cost of living crisis in the UK. Supply from UK waters in the North Sea will make not so much as a dent in the shortage of global supply, and it is not ours anyway—we sold our assets in the North Sea decades ago. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, who I am delighted to see is taking part in this debate, will confirm this, given his background as a practitioner in the oil trade. I look forward to his contribution to this debate and hope that we will be able to find some common ground.

Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure would be a wilful act of self-harm. It shows a complete lack of imagination in analysing the science, programming in our knowledge of how the earth has moved through cycles of extreme weather over the millennia, and not taking on board that giving the finely balanced forces of nature a sharp shove risks damaging our planet irreversibly for the foreseeable future. I accept that there are uncertainties, as there always will be in science, but who can deny that the planet is creaking and who, until last year, had heard of heat domes or atmospheric rivers? If the planet cracks, there is no planet B to which we can evacuate. Common sense says that we must ensure our future.

Serendipitously, the steps that we can take are a win-win scenario. The IEA’s authoritative report lays out the wins very clearly in Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector. Its findings are quite explosive. It says that net zero by 2050 is a tall ask but that it is doable. If the world followed its road map, it would reap huge benefits—benefits which include millions of new jobs, many of them skilled, in manufacturing, construction, engineering et cetera, with the option of deployment where there is the greatest need for quality jobs. Millions more green jobs would be created than if investment was pumped into fossil fuels. Economic growth would exceed expectations, all the while ensuring clean, stable and affordable energy supplies, resilient against the vagaries of rogue regimes. What is not to like?

What must we do to get there? First, the report recommends a major worldwide push to increase energy efficiency. Would it not make sense to put a stop to the hideous waste of energy through leaky pipes, transmission lines and walls and rooves of buildings? A 2015 report from the Association for Decentralised Energy states that 54% of energy of energy produced in this country is wasted, equivalent to more than half the average UK annual electricity bill, or about £592, in 2015. The report said that the amount wasted was equivalent to the power generated by 37 nuclear plants. Maybe the situation is better now than it was in 2015. If so, can the Minister update the House? If the data are not to hand, can he write to me and place the letter in the Library?

The IEA has just published its report, The Value of Urgent Action on Energy Efficiency. The report says that by doubling the global economy’s energy efficiency from 2% to 4% each year this decade, we could avoid 30 million barrels of oil per day, about triple Russia’s 2021 production, and 650 billion cubic metres of gas per year, which is four times the amount that Europe imports annually from Russia.

Secondly, the Government must engage with the public. The Climate Change Committee’s analysis shows that 40% of the changes needed to get to net zero require some sort of behaviour change. BEIS’s own public attitudes survey shows a whopping 85% of people are concerned about climate change but lack information about how best to do their bit. Why is there no government strategy to improve climate education to encourage the behaviour change necessary to reach net zero by 2050?

Thirdly, the IEA’s analysis has shown that there is no need to build new supply infrastructure for transitional gas. We already have all that we need, and more, to tide us over until we have the renewables in place for the vast majority of our energy needs, and mitigation measures in place for the minuscule amount of gas that may still be needed by 2050. Can the Minister explain why the Government think it necessary in the British Energy Security Strategy to announce a new licensing round in the autumn for new North Sea oil and gas projects that will not deliver for many years? Why is that preferable to investing in renewables, which will generate energy much quicker and more cheaply and have zero risk of becoming stranded assets?

Why do our Government handle the oil and gas sector with kid gloves and insist on continuing support for it despite clear evidence that support for the sector is incompatible with reaching their own statutory target of net zero by 2050? This is exemplified clearly in last month’s energy profits levy. The framework includes doubling investment relief for oil and gas companies, but no such tax relief for investment in renewables or for demand-side measures has been proposed. This is Jekyll and Hyde politics. It is as if the Government were being held to ransom by hardcore climate deniers on their own Benches.