Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Main Page: Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Labour - Life peer)Energy: Climate Change
Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to debate government policies about the critical issues of the UK’s future energy supplies and use in relation to climate change. The Statement set out by Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State, is very helpful. Without urgent action, the supply of reliable and economic electrical energy is in some doubt, although we have been hearing that perhaps with extra fossil fuels the doubt is postponed more into the future. But what is in doubt is the UK’s commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as part of the general international programme in this direction. I declare an interest as emeritus professor at University College London and chairman of an environmental consulting company.
As other noble Lords have emphasised, energy and climate mitigation policies are linked to other equally important policies—health, economic growth and equity, the preservation of the environment, biodiversity, and safety against natural disasters and accidents. Joined-up policies are not just an aspiration with economic incentives, subsidies and endless interdepartmental committees. A systematic approach showing transparently how the critical issues are connected together with uncertainties and timelines is required.
As many noble Lords will remember, the effectiveness of such an approach was first demonstrated in the United States engineering programmes in submarine building and space of the 1950s and 1960s. But in 1964, the House of Lords caught up and sadly noted that the Trend report on the future of UK science, which has not been looked at again in that depth, recommended the synthesis of cybernetics, model systems and computer methods. The Lords noted that they were not given very high priority. Lord Shackleton noted that the degree of co-ordination in science—and, he could have added, government policies—was completely lacking.
Since then, however, the value of these methods of dealing with complex and wide policies has been used extensively by large companies. Now, research is being pushed by the European Community and, finally, the UK research council, the EPSRC. This new aspect, which is being considered in project co-ordination at UCL, is not just about how to construct a monstrous computer programme that includes everything, but about how to construct model systems that are designed to help decision-making on particular policies and how to make use of all the relevant science and technology. I was impressed, for example, by the methodology in the recent report by the climate change Adaptation Sub-Committee, which used the idea of a ladder of measures in its critical examination of the threats to the UK of climate change, such as flooding, heat waves, sea-level rise and changes to the natural environment.
But the most important development in the politics of UK energy has been the acceptance by the Liberal Democrats of the need for nuclear energy as part of the mix of energy supplies. I am sure that EDF Energy—I sat on its advisory committee—and other major suppliers will now be able to build power stations on time and on budget, as EDF is doing in Normandy, provided that all the regulatory arrangements are agreed and provided that they do not change during construction. That was the reason for the delays in the Finnish power station. In the past year or two, when I have addressed meetings in the UK, the United States and Japan, there has been a growing understanding of the need for nuclear power and it has grown in popularity.
The Government should now mount a campaign to explain their policies and how they have a long-term vision of how nuclear policies and science and technology will evolve. A hesitant start will not encourage the best engineers and scientists to specialise in nuclear technology and science. As one sees in France, exciting connections are made between this area of science and technology and solid state physics, applied mathematics and environmental science.
In the old days in the House of Lords, Lord Marshall, former head of the Atomic Energy Authority, and Lord Hinton, former head of the CEGB, were great champions of every aspect of nuclear science and technology. I suggest to the Minister that DECC should encourage its leading civil servants and the chief scientist, Professor MacKay, to have this role again both within the UK and internationally. The only really strong international spokesman is Mr Sokolov, the deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whom I have met this year. The UK should be much more prominent in the scientific and technical meetings of the IAEA, perhaps holding one of its conferences in London and not leaving it all to France—a reference to this afternoon.
With 20 to 30 new countries about to launch into nuclear energy, there is a real opportunity for the UK nuclear industry, which I understand from DECC has some promising niche areas. One hopes that Sheffield Forgemasters will still be viable to participate in this, despite the damaging withdrawal of the government ban soon after they came to power.
There are two main concerns about nuclear power that the Government should understand. It is essential that the monitoring of nuclear radiation and its effects on human health, even if it is very small, must be open and trusted. The UK had the world-respected, quasi-independent National Radiological Protection Board, which then became the Health Protection Agency, first led by the former chief scientist, Bill Stewart. This was an excellent example of hiving off the policy of dealing with government through semi-independent bodies, endorsed by the Wilson Government and carried forward by the Thatcher Government.
Will the Minister explain how the Government’s decision to merge the Health Protection Agency into the Ministry of Health will not lead to some loss of confidence in the reliability and independence of radiological data and prediction? Professionals are not at all happy about this situation. One asks why, if it is necessary to have a semi-independent body for monitoring economic data and forecasts, and for the effectiveness of clinical treatment, as we heard yesterday, the same does not apply to the activities of the Health Protection Agency. A clear statement is necessary for reassuring the public on this controversial aspect of the environment.
The second issue emphasised by the Government’s Statement is the long-term storage of nuclear waste, which, as is currently planned, will be buried in underground storage. So far there are no explicit plans to ensure that this waste will be able to be retrieved when the technology develops to reprocess the waste. A lot of people will have a different view of nuclear energy if there is some commitment to use technology for this purpose.
Large teams in China are working on combined fusion and fission technology, which could use lower-grade nuclear materials, such as thorium, but could also process existing wastes. It could also be more flexible than pure fission in order to combine with other kinds of renewable energy. I am glad to say that there is now a growing interest in this in the UK. I declare an interest as a member of an advisory committee of Tokamak Solutions, which is aiming to develop this technology.
This and the previous Government’s low-carbon energy policy is to encourage a wide range of methods and to ensure where possible that they are complementary to each other. In the development of offshore wind energy, the UK’s area of international excellence lies in the economic engineering and planning by leading consultancies, and in the great testing facility in the north-east where there is considerable concern that this facility, which is being copied in Japan, is in danger because it was largely funded by the regional development agency. Will the Minister comment on this?
However, there are many other areas, especially manufacturing, where Germany and Denmark are more in the lead. Surely, the rational policy for Europe, just as we heard this afternoon, is to have a network of top-class energy centres that collaborate in pre-competitive research. We have a number in the UK, as do Denmark, the Netherlands and so on. These centres could contribute to better progress in energy efficiency, low-carbon technologies for carbon sequestration, electric cars, large electric batteries for communities and so on. This would not be new. Europe has established extensive collaboration between world-class centres in aeronautical engineering that underpin the great success of Airbus and its adventurous plans for the future. I helped to set up ERCOFTAC, which was one of the European communities supported by industry and universities. We should have the same for energy.
The use of biomass, bioreactors and afforestation, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, are all equally important contributors, particularly at a local level, but connections to these policies are proving very difficult and different parts of Whitehall deal with them. For example, will DfID contribute to the poor communities and local governments worldwide that are preserving their forests, as one sees in the Amazon? We also have to think of our poorer communities in the UK, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, mentioned, in the low-carbon energy policy.
Much UK housing has very poor insulation, which is much worse than in social housing in Germany. I was a city councillor and I visited German council housing. German representatives came to Cambridge and were really shocked at our poor council house insulation, which has not got a great deal better. It is clear that significant progress will be made as a result of recent measures, but will the Minister tell us what will happen when insulation and better heating are installed, and if rents increase? Will this lead to families in houses at the upper limit of housing benefit being moved, which would be a very serious matter?
I return to human-induced climate change, which only economists seem incapable of understanding, although the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is a notable exception. Its increase and its impacts on the poorest communities in India and Africa can be reduced most effectively by limiting emissions, albeit over many decades. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, wants to allow emissions to increase unchecked, and therefore I assume ultimately to spend funds on saving these communities from the most damaging effects of climate change. That could be very expensive indeed. The only country that is really following this is the Netherlands, which published a report a couple of years ago. It expects its dykes to rise to six metres, but it has a coastline and an economy that makes it feel that it can afford that. In other parts of the world, areas will simply be abandoned.
The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, was not correct to imply that China is doing nothing. In fact its forest coverage is increasing, it is developing many new areas of technology and it has five or six carbon trading centres to push its industries to greater efficiency. China does not want to follow the rules, as it were, or international agreements, but it is certainly making progress.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and their wide-ranging energy policy. I hope that the Minister will emphasise the importance of greater European collaboration in energy technology, again building on what we have heard this afternoon. At the Cancun climate conference, will the Government emphasise the importance of all types of low-carbon energy—including nuclear energy, which was overtly omitted from Copenhagen—and will they also emphasise the importance of integrating energy mitigation and adaptation policies with those of afforestation and the preservation of biodiversity?
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I should declare an interest in that I was employed by the Central Electricity Generating Board for 19 years in a power station and I enjoy, if I may put it that way, a very small pension administered by British Energy.
It was welcome to hear the Minister say that he was going to listen to the debate. I hope that he takes heed of what is said and that his Secretary of State will do likewise. The Minister made one of the shortest speeches that I have heard from the Front Bench, which proves that he wanted time for other people to say what they felt about the Government’s policy.
I and many other people are getting fed up—sick and tired—of being described as climate change deniers. That term has a serious connotation and we do not like it. It is associated with Nazism and the Holocaust and I hope that others, including my ex-noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will cease to use that insulting term.
The people who are described as climate change deniers do not deny climate change at all. That would of course be absurd, because there has been climate change for the past 4.8 billion years. Indeed, without climate change, we would not be sitting here, nor would there be many mammals about—if any other life on earth at all. No one is denying that there is climate change. What we say is that, although there will be climate change and some of it may well be manmade, in our view it is not exclusively caused by CO2 emissions. This is the problem that ought to be discussed.
The noble Lord, Lord Smith, said that he disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, who made a magnificent speech, and criticised him for saying that there were some benefits from global warming. Of course there are benefits; after all, since the ice age, the global temperature has increased by 16 degrees Fahrenheit. If that had not happened, we would not be sitting here; we would be way down at the equator, because this country was uninhabitable.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
Perhaps I may comment. The Met Office in its computer modelling has certainly studied what would happen if no CO2 was produced by industry. When you take the CO2 out of industry, you find none of the climate change observed over the past 150 years. People have considered the noble Lord’s point seriously; they have looked at it in great detail and that is their conclusion.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
Yes, I understand that perfectly and I accept that scientists are serious and knowledgeable people. However, they can be wrong and they have been wrong. In 1970, the same sorts of scientists were saying that we were going to have a new ice age. Suppose that we had then pumped lots of CO2 into the atmosphere so that we did not have an ice age. What then? The same scientists were predicting that glaciers in the Himalayas would disappear within 50 years. They had to revise that prediction to 250 years. Not all that scientists say can be taken as gospel. That is why there should always be people who study these things and are able to challenge them. Therefore, I hope that the term “climate change deniers” will be dropped from the vocabulary on this question.
The Government have tried to get to grips with the problems that we face, but whether they are dealing with them correctly I do not know. I believe that there is far too much concentration on wind power, for example, because wind is the least viable option on practically every test. As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, pointed out, wind power will be expensive for electricity consumers—very expensive indeed. Wind turbines, offshore and onshore, are environmentally destructive. Do not make any mistake: the disturbance to the marine environment from building these monsters out at sea is serious. They affect fish life and the environment of various species and may well affect the industry. I do not know what will happen when the first oil tanker crashes into a wind turbine. I hope that it will not happen, but it may do so.
We have already heard that there is intermittent supply from wind turbines and that they do not usually supply energy when we most need it—when it is cold and in the winter. As regards maintenance at sea, especially in winter and the gale season, it will be difficult to get out there to maintain them when they break down, as they surely will. What is more, we also have to duplicate the power from the wind turbines, because we cannot guarantee that they will meet maximum demand. This happens in January or February, so that when we need them most, they are not available. The savings in CO2 must be balanced against the costs of their construction and of the construction of the backing power that must be provided.
Finally, wind turbines have a short working life. A power station such as Sizewell B provides the same output as 600 wind turbines. It provides a 92 per cent load factor and it has a working life of 60 years. I am glad to say that the Government are embarking on a nuclear programme, but it must be speeded up because, if we are not careful, we will find that by 2016 to 2020 we will be very short of power. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, we need to have a programme beyond 2025 and we must solve the problem of the long-term storage of nuclear materials in safe sites and be prepared to meet decommissioning costs that will be very high.
I have not been greatly in favour of nuclear power. When I was a member of the Select Committee on energy, we visited Three Mile Island, and what we found was very frightening. However, times have changed and in this country the housekeeping of all our power stations, not just the nuclear ones, is very good indeed. I have revised my views and believe that, if we are going to solve our short, medium and long-term problems, we need a programme of nuclear energy.
We are contributing to experimental programmes on nuclear fusion. I wonder whether we are wasting our money. Lord Marshall always told me in our conversations that it was impossible. We might instead, as the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, pointed out, think again about fast-breeder reactors. It was unfortunate that the one at Dounreay was a failure. That was due to circumstances that could have been avoided. However, the matter needs to be looked at.
Finally, I welcome the aim of the Government to increase combined heat and power to 10,000 megawatts. That is altogether good and I hope that it comes about. However, when I was a member of the Select Committee on energy in 1983, we recommended a large increase in combined heat and power. The Government, instead of accepting what we said, set up the WS Atkins committee, which took 10 years to report. The result at the moment is that we have 3,000 megawatts of CHP. Of course, that is a very energy-saving system, which I hope the Government will proceed with quickly. We must understand that that will mean smaller power stations near the urban environment.
Overall, I welcome the Government’s statement. There are some defects in it, but I hope that they have listened to what has been said in this debate, in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson.