Climate Change

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My noble friend makes a serious point in relation to Europe in general. With regard to the United Kingdom, we are on target for decarbonising and are decarbonising at the expected rate. It is true to say that obviously we need to keep a watch on external factors, but it remains the case that unabated coal is scheduled to represent 1% of electricity generation by 2025. That is the goal and we are very much on target for that.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is the case that the Conservative manifesto said that the Government would simply continue adhering to the Climate Change Act. However, does the Minister agree that that should now be the starting point, not the destination, and that we will need to go further—to meet a binding target to decarbonise Britain by 2050? Would he also agree that a practical step to assist in that would be to greatly expand the remit and breadth of the Green Investment Bank, a really pioneering development of the previous Administration based in Edinburgh?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The noble Lord is right in that we do need ambition in this regard. We are encouraging more ambitious targets through Europe. Of course we are working with Europe on a reduction of at least 40% by 2030 based on a 1990 baseline—that remains the case. But, yes, we do need to take account of the fact that there is a massive challenge to keep inside the 2 degrees increase in temperatures over the period that we are looking at.