Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 24 April (HL7121), what assessment they have made of the emission of (1) greenhouse gasses, and (2) other pollutants, as a result of fires and explosions caused by lithium-ion batteries.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Environment Agency regulates larger industrial installations in England and are not aware of any assessment being made of the emissions from fires of caused by lithium-ion batteries for their regulatory, permitting or incident functions. Currently, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) are not considered an ‘Installation’ under the ‘Regulatory Guidance Note No. 2 Understanding the meaning of regulated facility’. Therefore, BESS do not require a permit, Risk Management Strategy, or Plan. The Environment Agency is in discussions with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the issue.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to (1) reduce risk, and (2) mitigate the impact of lithium-ion battery fires in waste processing plants.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Sites storing and processing waste are required to have a fire prevention plan (FPP) to mitigate and manage the fire risk on site. A critical part of the FPP is to have robust waste acceptance procedures in place to ensure that lithium-ion batteries and other ignition sources are separated, stored and treated appropriately to prevent fires occurring. Defra is reviewing the existing UK Batteries Regulations with a view to consulting by end 2023. As part of this review, work is ongoing to understand the potential safety risks of lithium-ion batteries.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the withdrawal of waste or recycling services as a result of lithium-ion batteries fires in waste processing plants.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Defra has not made an assessment of the withdrawal of waste or recycling services as a result of lithium-ion batteries in waste processing plants. Waste diversion to other authorised facilities routinely happens when a plant is down for maintenance, refurbishment or closed.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 24 April (HL7121), what assessment they have made of the cost of fires in waste processing plants resulting from lithium-ion batteries.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Defra has not made an assessment of the costs of fires arising in waste processing plants. Research conducted by Eunomia and the Environmental Services Association which was published in 2021 estimated the annual cost of lithium-ion battery fires to be £158 million. A copy is attached to this answer.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of fires in waste processing plants resulting from lithium-ion batteries.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Through desk-based research and conversations with the Fire Service, Waste Industry Safety and Health Forum and other members of the Steering Group, the Environment Agency has been able to acquire data and gain an understanding of the number of waste fires and costs that can be attributed to waste fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in the UK.
The Environment Agency estimates that around 48% of waste fires can be attributed to lithium-ion batteries; this equates to approximately 201 waste fires in the UK each year.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their Tree health resilience strategy, published on 25 May 2018, what progress they have made in each year since 2018 in respect of the goals they identified to improve the (1) extent, (2) connectivity, (3) diversity, and (4) condition, of trees, woods and forests in England.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Forestry Commission publish annual statistical reports on Key Performance Indicators. Since 2020, these reports have included data on the extent and net change in woodland area, the connectivity of woodland, and the ecological condition (including the age and species diversity) of woodlands in England.
The latest available report (published June 2022) shows a marginal increase in woodland area, an improvement in net change and little change in connectivity for the last five years of published data. The condition and diversity indicators do not yet have a time series covering five years.
Through the England Trees Action Plan, we committed to treble tree planting rates in England by the end of this Parliament. This commitment, supported by the £640m Nature for Climate Fund, is helping the sector to deliver more resilient trees, woods and forests. The Countryside Stewardship scheme and the tree health pilot scheme also provide financial support for removal of diseased trees and restocking of trees.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken in response to the report by the Office for National Statistics Habitat extent and condition, natural capital, UK: 2022, published on 3 May 2022; in particular, what steps they are taking in respect of the changes in the number of protected sites on semi-natural grassland (1) in favourable condition from 2020–22, (2) in unfavourable condition from 2020–22, and (3) in recovering condition from 2020–22.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Biodiversity policy is devolved. The Office for National Statistics report indicates that most of the England grassland priority habitats both in lowland and upland protected sites were broadly maintained in either favourable or recovering condition between 2018 and May 2022. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions, including lowland neutral grassland and upland calcareous grassland, showing significant change to unfavourable declining condition. In Natural England’s view, this is due to a range of factors including the reluctance of some land managers to renew or take up Agri-Environment Schemes during the period of transition to new schemes. In addition, the halting of site condition reporting during the Covid lockdown may have impact these figures.
Natural England is taking several steps to address this, including working with land managers to maximise the take up of existing and new land management schemes including Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier and Higher Tier management options.
In the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 the Government has set an interim target that by 2028 all Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) will have an up-to-date condition assessment and that 50% of SSSIs will have actions on-track to bring them into favourable condition.
Since 2018, 13 new SSSIs have been designated where grassland and those species dependent on grassland habitats is the main interest feature Natural England’s SSSI pipeline includes 7 more grassland sites for notification.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Office for Environmental Protection's Progress in improving the natural environment in England: 2021 to 2022, published on 19 January, which concluded on the 25 Year Improvement Plan that "of 23 environmental targets assessed, none were found where Government’s progress was demonstrably on track", what steps they are taking to improve progress against those targets.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
On 31st January 2023 we completed our first statutory review of the 25 Year Environment Plan and published the revised Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23). EIP23 sets out a delivery plan for how we will deliver our goals and targets to achieve our long-term ambition to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.
To monitor the delivery of EIP23, the Government will report annually on implementation. To do this, we will continue to publish an Annual Progress Report setting out the progress we have made towards the targets and wider commitments, over the previous 12 months.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of raw sewage discharged into rivers (1) annually between 2010 and 2022, and (2) annually up to and including 2030.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) provides information on when and for how long sewage discharges have occurred. All EDM data is published online. More information on EDM is available here (copy attached to this answer). The Environment Agency will be publishing the annual EDM dataset for 2022 in March 2023.
We have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 5% in 2016 to almost 90% now monitored, and we will reach 100% cover by end of this year. Therefore, it is not an accurate reflection to compare the number of discharges across 2010 to 2021 given monitoring was not installed at all sites at the same point in time.
Asked by: Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their target in their Environmental Impact Plan to "restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat", whether they have considered the advice of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) that "habitat destruction and degradation could therefore continue in other areas, with negligible positive change overall"; and if so, what estimate they have made of the amount of destruction and degradation that may occur in other areas.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Due to data limitations, we are not currently able to fully account for habitat lost and so we have not been able to set a target for net habitat restoration and creation. In order to ensure as far as possible that new habitat counted under our target is additional, we will only use reporting from live agri-environment scheme agreements, not count ‘compensatory habitat’ such as new habitat created to replace lost habitat as part of Biodiversity Net Gain, and only count ‘wildlife-rich’ habitats. Furthermore, as the target states that we will create ‘in excess of’ 500,000 hectares, this figure does not limit our ambition for action.
To address the data limitations, we are developing an indicator for quantity, quality and connectivity of habitats as part of the Outcome Indicator Framework under the 25 Year Environment Plan. Work to finalise the methodology to allow the assessment of change in habitat quantity over time, at a national scale, is in development.
The Environmental Improvement Plan set out the actions we are taking that will allow us to meet this ambitious target: we are investing more than £750 million in the environment through our Nature for Climate Fund, we have announced a new Species Survival Fund and we have set a target to raise at least £500 million in private finance to support nature’s recovery every year by 2027, rising to more than £1 billion by 2030.