Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness Blake of Leeds

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, in her two Amendments 130A and 130B and stress that the measurement, monitoring and verification of UK removals is vital. I declare an interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust. I have just been involved in the bowels of the woodland carbon code. It is quite staggering to think that many of these verified units of removal will not achieve full verification for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years and are then required to persist for 100 years. We have to find a way of inventing a system that will keep an eye on a plethora of landowners and land interests who are planting trees to sequester carbon and have that effective supervision, light-touch as it may be, for 100 years.

This will be quite a challenge. It is something I would appreciate the Minister responding to. We are now in the middle of implementing the peat carbon code, which will have similar difficulties, but perhaps the most important one has not yet been developed: the soils carbon code. That is of far more potential than either the peatland or woodland carbon codes in sequestering carbon. It will be a very widespread code because soils exist everywhere, though not all of them will be potentially good at sequestering carbon. I urge the Minister to accept these two amendments and give us a feel, as it were, of those 100 years and how the complexity of the carbon codes can be relied upon.

Before I finish, I make a similar apology to that of my noble friend Lord Whitty, as I was not here to speak to my Amendment 119. I did not miscalculate the pace at which the Bill would go; I was miscalculating the pace at which a snowed-in train would move. Since the Minister is appearing before the Environment and Climate Change Committee on Wednesday, I can ask him the question then anyway.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

This has become a very rich debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for putting her amendments forward to enable us to have these broader discussions. We have said from the start that the difficulty with this Bill is the things that are not in it; this is one area we can all learn from and hopefully move forward on.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for the explanation of her Amendments 130A and 130B. I am sure that we would all welcome more clarity in these areas, and indeed a strategy so that we can bring confidence and certainty to the sector in the way that she described.

I will focus most on Amendment 124A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, in my comments and, in particular, the notion of adding local carbon transport schemes to the section on low-carbon heat schemes—indeed, to run alongside them.

As many will know, this was last looked at under the last Labour Government, with the 2009 report Low Carbon Transport: A Greener Future, which, interestingly, was published by the DfT. It made recommendations on supporting a shift to new technologies and fuels, promoting lower-carbon choices, and using market mechanisms to encourage a shift to lower-carbon transport. Of course we have moved on in many ways, but these principles should not be overlooked and we should continue to put in our full effort.

Specifically on hydrogen vehicles, we believe there is merit in looking at potential in the HGV sector. The discussions about shipping were interesting as well, but we feel that so much more focus needs to be put on alternatives, certainly in the short-term. Electric is obviously being looked at.

It is important to debate this at this point because, with the global situation regarding gas supplies, we are focusing our attention on domestic energy in particular, for obvious reasons—the cost of living crisis, security issues and all that goes with it—but we have to bear in mind that transport is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions in the UK. In 2019, it accounted for 34% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Its emissions have remained largely unchanged since the 1990s, which we cannot say about the energy supply generally. We have to ask why transport is such a poor performer.

We need to be concerned about where we get the electricity from if we continue with our ambition. If we are to reach our target of net-zero emissions by 2050, the decision to ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 will help, but there are so many other areas that we should focus on: alternative modes of transport, cycling and walking, and shared travel options. From my point of view, we have this enormous disconnect between transport policy and the policy we are discussing. We need to pick it up and take it seriously.

I speak with my experience of being a member of Transport for the North. All the schemes we tried to bring in through the integrated rail plan to deliver not only for the travelling public but for the impact on the climate seem to have been left behind. We have discussed this before. We have had Questions in the Chamber about the lack of joined-up thinking from the Government, which needs seriously to be addressed. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, referred to it as a lack of leadership and vagueness in the plan, but why are we not cross-referencing within the Bill to the work that needs to be done?

Speaking with my local government hat on, on building new homes, why can we not look at the schemes in Scandinavia in particular, where every new home has solar panels and the excess electricity generated is taken off and fed into personal electric charging points for vehicles? There are so many examples that we should look at.

The amendment has generated an opportunity to discuss this. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, but in particular to her explanation as to why there is such a lack of joined-up thinking in these areas, where the potential could be enormous.