Energy White Paper

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes some very good points. I cannot give her the specific reassurances she wants; I understand her ambition for this sector, but the process of legislation is subject to parliamentary time, agreement with the business managers, et cetera. I have noted her points, and we will bear those comments in mind when planning the legislative programme.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury [V]]

My Lords, I very much welcome the energy White Paper. One thing we have learned during this pandemic is the importance of the local. What assessment have the Government made of the further potential of local solar, wind and micro hydro energy schemes and of what finance might be needed to facilitate their collectively enormous potential? Given the comments in the other place about the lack of rural infrastructure for energy, might the Minister find it helpful to consider the possibility of churches being places for siting bidirectional charging points for electric vehicles?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his support. It is an interesting suggestion; I think I am correct in saying that the grant system for the production of charging points is available to churches, but if it is not I will certainly write to him on that. He is right that we need to transform the energy delivery system from one that was designed for large nodes in a fossil fuel world to a much more diversified system of national and local energy production. His comments are well made.

Climate Change

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Whether time will be allowed is of course not a matter for me, but I will pass that on to the Chief Whip. Strategies, or elements of them, are being published today in the energy White Paper. A hydrogen strategy and a heat and building decarbonisation strategy are to come, so we are conscious of our responsibilities in this regard.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury [V]]

My Lords, the Government have made a number of statements, which, with the 10-point plan and the upping of the nationally defined contributions to the Paris Agreement, are very welcome. The Government’s manifesto commits to planting 30,000 hectares of trees per year. That is a really key target to aim for in relation to the climate change committee’s report, but it is one that we have missed by 71% in the last year and consistently over previous years. I much admire the Prime Minister’s ambition, but how are the Government to ensure that performance exceeds or matches that ambition?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is of course correct to point out that meeting these commitments will be a difficult, long-term task. It will require commitment from government and also from Parliament, local government and other stakeholders, but it is a challenge that we are rising to.

Fossil Fuels: Business

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the report by the Transition Pathway Initiative Management Quality and Carbon Performance of Energy Companies: September 2020, published on 7 October, what steps they plan to take to encourage fossil fuel intensive businesses to accelerate their move to net zero carbon emissions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have schemes worth nearly £2 billion operating or in development to support our vital energy-intensive industries to decarbonise. These schemes include the industrial energy transformation fund to help companies to reduce their fuel bills and transition to low-carbon technologies, and the industrial decarbonisation challenge to support industry with the development of low-carbon technologies in industrial clusters.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. There have been some welcome and notable commitments, particularly by European oil and gas companies, but overall, the sector is not moving fast enough to align with the Paris agreement. How does the Minister see the Government supporting companies to move faster and have consistent standards for reporting all emissions from scopes 1, 2 and 3 so companies demonstrate alignment clearly in their reporting? I commend to the Minister the work of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change working with TPI to establish a net-zero standard. It would be marvellous if the Government supported these endeavours in the context of their presidency of COP.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

First, we welcome commitments from any company setting out its net-zero plans. We note the important and notable commitments from the oil and gas sector from the likes of Shell and BP. I endorse the right reverend Prelate’s comments about COP and the other matter he mentioned.

COP 26

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes a very good point. I struggle to understand some of the labels myself, and have to look up the table to find out what has to go where—so his point is well made.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, Ban Ki-moon, then General Secretary of the UN, said that the Paris climate change talks were the largest and most complex talks he had ever been part of. Some 12,000 people were in the discussions, with another nearly 50,000 gathered around them. What steps are the Government taking to ratchet up the engagement of the faith communities and other NGOs around the climate change talks that will take place in Glasgow, and what steps are they taking to strengthen the diplomatic efforts to make the talks more successful?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There is a huge diplomatic effort ongoing with all parts of the world to try to ensure the maximum success of those talks. I am sure that we will be very keen to involve faith communities and others in the run-up to the summit.

Canada-UK Trade Deal

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his comments and for what he said about my department. My officials have worked extraordinarily hard in difficult circumstances during Covid. They are doing a marvellous job. I am sure we will see this progress continue.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, early this morning, I had breakfast on Zoom, hosted by my colleague the Bishop of Sherborne, along with people from the Dorset churches and community. A farmer and local businessman said that his greatest fear for the future was uncertainty. How will this uncertainty be ended so that he will not be left just watching this space but will know what opportunities there are? How will the House assess these both in relation to the economy and to the environment?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes a good point. I assure him that these matters are at the front of our mind. Uncertainty is being progressively eliminated. I am looking forward to the time when there is no uncertainty whatever.

World Energy Outlook 2020

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. We are investing record sums in helping vulnerable consumers. He will be aware of the new green homes grant that will provide grants of £5,000, and indeed £10,000 for those on low incomes, to help them insulate their home and make it more energy efficient and, more importantly, get their bills down.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury [V]]

My Lords, the report from the IEA focuses on the impact of the pandemic on macro energy generation and distribution, and it emphasises the vulnerability of the national grid. The pandemic has emphasised the importance of the local, so how does the Minister see the Government’s role in encouraging the rapid development of local micro energy generation?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate makes a very good point. Local micro energy schemes will play a key role in our decarbonisation efforts but, of course, fundamental changes are required in the grid to enable us to move to a much more diversified model, away from key energy nodes, and considerable investment is taking place to allow that to happen.

Renewable Energy

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, this debate has already become something of a no-brainer. Quite a lot of what I wanted to say has been said, so there is no point in repeating it, but I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for asking the Question which has generated the debate.

The context is one in which we see a climate emergency, an increasing number of councils across the country responding to it and the other place in Parliament recognising that. Whatever we think of Extinction Rebellion, it has raised the public profile and urgency of the climate change debate and the environmental awareness of what is required of us as legislators. It cannot be business as usual. We need new thinking and new ways of doing things to meet the challenge of being carbon neutral or carbon zero by 2050 or sooner.

For obvious reasons, this country is a great maritime nation. We have been reminded of this today, with the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in which many of our fathers would have taken part. Earlier today, I was at the annual service for Trinity House. It was founded in the early 16th century as a guild of mariners to bring good order where there were inexperienced and unregulated seamen endangering life and cargo. It was probably also a good move for defence and profitability.

Sometimes, people behave badly and need good governance. It is increasingly clear that our continuing dependence on fossil fuels is people behaving badly. Good law and good governance also encourage good behaviour, and in this case we need to encourage new thinking and a change in behaviour. We know the rich resources that are around the UK; they have already been rehearsed. The task for government is to create a stable and predictable framework for investment, and to move from experimental to developmental to commercial, so that the UK can make the most of its innovative marine technologies and grow opportunity and business in a global market.

Christiana Figueres, who chaired the Paris climate change talks, said at the conference in San Francisco in September that we are moving faster than we could have predicted, and what is making the difference is climate leadership, market forces and digital technology. However, this is not just a technical problem, whether scientific, economic or political. We need to make space and opportunity for the best minds, the biggest hearts and the greatest souls to exercise leadership. That is partly about vision and spirit, but also about regulation and investment. There is growing concern about our slipping back and accepting a rather modest pace of change in relation to renewable energy. It is an area that needs investment—private and public partnership—which will pay dividends in jobs and the economy, and realise the potential of energy that will be renewable and is sustainable.

The question for Her Majesty’s Government, asked by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is a no-brainer. The response needs to be substantial, determined and transformative.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, the context of this debate has changed radically over the past few months. Whatever you think of the tactics of Extinction Rebellion, what has been created by its disruption has put the environment on the agenda in a new way and with greater urgency. The debate in the other place yesterday on a climate emergency was Parliament catching up with more than 40 councils in the UK that have decided to act in response to this climate emergency, including Wiltshire declaring that it will be carbon neutral by 2030. Two-thirds of Britons are now said to agree that the planet is in a climate emergency.

I welcome the publication of the climate change committee’s report. This is a creative opportunity and not only a moment of anxiety. We are in an industrial revolution. I was taken by Greta Thunberg’s comment:

“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling”.


The Committee on Climate Change has set out the direction and detail of what it will do to respond to that challenge.

Net zero is possible and affordable. The cost of climate inaction will be more than that of achieving net zero. The business opportunities are considerable and we need to get on with it. This is urgent in the short term. The transition to net zero needs to be socially just and the costs fairly distributed. We should not use international offsets. The UK needs to continue to make firm commitments to developing countries to provide financial, technological and capacity-building support for their low-carbon development and resilience building. While 2050 is ambitious, 2045 could well be possible. A virtuous circle to spur greater action can be created by good policy.

In the faith communities of the United Kingdom there is a strong recognition of the need to change lifestyles and behaviours. We welcome the benefits that will follow, including cleaner air and warmer homes. We have already begun to embrace these changes, with thousands of places of worship powered by renewable energy and families committing to live simply and sustainably.

We need the greatest minds, hearts and souls committed to this task, with individuals, communities, businesses and government working together. I share the criticisms of others about some of the things the Government have or have not done, but the Government deserve to be encouraged for what they are doing in the right direction. The UK is giving significant leadership and has done so with a degree of cross-party consensus. That is important and I strongly support the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about the need to build on and strengthen that if we are to face the greater urgency of the current challenge. There is so much more to be done.

Could we agree a legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2045? Such a target would require a cross-party approach. In the context of the climate emergency, some of the Government’s decisions are hard to comprehend. We need a much more coherent approach to energy. The continued subsidy of fossil fuels is now absurd and needs to end. The stimulus of renewable energy and greater efficiency is a priority. The inability to tax aviation fuel or to find a way to limit air travel is just plain stupid.

I recently asked the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, a Question about Woodhouse Colliery in Cumbria. He replied that the Government continue to be committed to the Paris agreement and referred to a request for advice from the Committee on Climate Change, which was published today. He went on:

“Cumbria County Council took the decision to grant planning permission”,


and that it was its,

“responsibility to consider this application in its role as minerals planning authority, and the Council would have considered all relevant material considerations, including environmental impacts”.

That is odd when local decisions about fracking can be called in by the Government and resolved centrally. We need joined-up thinking and action, and we need policy formation that provides a framework in which individuals make good choices.

On the eve of the Extinction Rebellion protest, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, said that it is as if we have forgotten who we are and we need to rediscover our relationship with one another, God and the creation. To live in a revolution is hugely demanding. It will need the commitment of parliamentarians to engage strongly with our communities and establish creative policy frameworks that get the best out of people, not just because of anxiety but for the love of this wonderful creation. In this, the faith communities are a resource for prayer, thought and action.

Carbon Budget Order 2016

Lord Bishop of Salisbury Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Energy, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on her appointment as Minister for Energy. I realise that she is so early in her job that she is not a great authority on the issue, but bearing in mind how well she has performed in her previous role, I am sure that it will not be long before she is very well-versed. She will come to realise that the speech she made introducing this debate, which was obviously written for her by her officials, contained numerous blatant, glaring errors of fact. I shall refer to only one.

She mentioned, in particular, flooding. I draw her attention and the attention of the House to the latest issue of Science in Parliament. It includes an article from Professor Paul Bates of the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol, entitled “Flooding: What is Normal?”. He finishes:

“In conclusion, in terms of national scale annual losses we can see that, contrary to the standard media narrative, flooding during winter 2015/6 was, by recent experience, entirely normal”.

All the myths that are trotted out have been demonstrated to be false by experts such as Professor Roger Pielke of the United States, who is not a climate sceptic but has shown clearly that there has been no increase in extreme weather events.

I am not going to take too much of the House’s time because, as my noble friend Lord Ridley pointed out, the Climate Change Act, of which these orders are a derivative, is an Act of manifest, acute self-harm, very particularly for the poorest among us and for much of British industry. It does no good to anybody. I do not want to repeat his points, but I hope that when she winds up my noble friend will refer to all the points that he made because they are very important. There is no case for this. It is bizarre that we are doing this.

At this point, I warmly welcome my right honourable friend Theresa May, the new Prime Minister. At the start of her time as Prime Minister, she has made an excellent beginning with the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change. That will not transform everything overnight, but it is clearly an important step in the right direction and signals her recognition that what matters is getting affordable and reliable energy, which is what the people of this country want—the people she said she cares about most in her opening statement of her position. That is what they are calling for: affordable and reliable energy.

The Minister also said something about the reduction we have achieved in carbon emissions in this country. What I think she may not yet be aware of is that the main reason we have achieved it is that energy-intensive industry has gone abroad. This has become particularly topical in the case of the steel industry. There has been no reduction in global emissions; it is just that the emissions are coming from China, India or wherever, and not from the United Kingdom. This boasting about the United Kingdom’s reduction in global emissions is completely meaningless.

I encourage my noble friend, for whom I have a very high regard, not to be caught up in any of this nonsense and to look at the thing afresh in a rational way, as she is well able to do, looking at the effect of this legislation on the poor and on British business and industry; and I encourage her department to do a lot of things in a lot of policy areas which need to be reviewed in the light of Brexit. My noble friend Lord Ridley drew attention to energy policy, and I hope the Minister will instruct her department to have a complete review of the United Kingdom’s energy policy in the light of Brexit. It is perfectly true that European Union legislation, although harmful, is not nearly as harmful as our indigenous Climate Change Act; nevertheless, an overall review is clearly called for, and I hope she will undertake one as soon as possible and realise that the signal she should be responding to is the abolition of DECC. That should be the end of a miserable chapter.

[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, I welcome both orders and welcome the Minister in her new role with its important responsibilities to further our progress in the care of our common home. I particularly welcome her as somebody who lives in the diocese of Salisbury, and I look forward to working with her in this new context.

The Committee on Climate Change’s Meeting Carbon Budgets—2016 Progress Report to Parliament says that it,

“comes at a critical point in the development of climate policy in the UK … against the backdrop of the Paris Agreement in December last year”.

The political circumstances could not be more significant. I was grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, for his eloquent speech in favour of international agreements, which gave me a sense of urgency in relation to the implementation of the Paris agreement. I have taken on a preaching engagement in the autumn, about which I have been feeling some trepidation. It is to preach at the annual service for the Worshipful Company of Fuellers. I am now looking forward to that event and to trying to engage with that group of people on these issues.

In 2015, carbon emissions in the UK fell by 3%, mostly in the power sector, where the development of renewable energy has been a big success. It is now much reduced by changes in the regulatory framework. It will therefore be even more necessary to make progress in other sectors, and I hope the Minister’s business background will help innovate in relation to the major areas of buildings, industry, transport, agriculture and land use, and in waste management, where there is much as yet unrealised potential.

I draw the attention of the House to point 7.4 in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Carbon Budget Order that:

“Emissions from international aviation and shipping are not included in the targets and budgets set out in the Act. In December 2012 the UK Government met its obligation”,

by stating that,

‘“we are deferring a firm decision on whether to include international aviation and shipping emissions within the net carbon account at this time”’.

I can see why, particularly after the speeches from the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, and the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. It is a very difficult problem needing international agreement if we are not to disadvantage UK industry but, given the significance of aviation fuel to our total carbon emissions, it is odd that it is exempt from fuel duty and is zero-rated for VAT, alongside children’s clothing and disability aids. The lack of tax amounts to an effective subsidy of £11.4 billion per year. The Committee on Climate Change noted that total domestic and international aviation emissions remained broadly the same in 2014 as in 2013. Domestic emissions decreased by 7%. International emissions increased by 0.7%, but international aviation represents 95% of total aviation emissions. There are some energy efficiencies that have resulted in a 4.4% increase in passengers. The report represents greater efficiency, but it ought to be possible to get greater reductions without compromising business efficiency.