Energy: Climate Change

Debate between Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Stoddart of Swindon

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.