Paris Climate Change Conference

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement today. He is quite right to celebrate the agreement’s achievement and the role that all recent UK Governments have played to bring this about.

All Governments have agreed to the common goal to decarbonise their economies within one generation, to limit increases in global temperatures to below 2 degrees and to target 1.5 degrees. All Governments have agreed to achieve net zero emissions before 2050 and the end of the century to cut pollution and curb carbon emissions. All Governments have agreed to review progress and raise ambitions every five years to make sure that the job gets done. Developed nations have agreed to help fund the developing nations’ transition to clean energy with a flow of $100 billion a year beyond 2020.

The commitment achieved by consensus is immense. The Paris conference witnessed the greatest get-together of world leaders, with 50,000 people in attendance and the dedications of scientists, campaign groups and interest organisations in mobilising public support to insist on an agreement being achieved. This historic achievement was won in a forum of one country, one voice; unlike other intergovernment forums dominated by richer countries, as in the G7, G20, OECD and OPEC. China, the US, the EU and India are responsible for 61% of global emissions but other nations have an equal voice at the UNFCCC. The French must be congratulated for facilitating the conference, working tirelessly to resolve disputes.

The Minister is right to highlight the role played by successive UK Governments and the British Parliament. Now that this Government are the first Conservative Government for 18 years, this is not the time to abandon that consensus. It must be recognised that scientists still point to the dangers that even a rise of 2 degrees will bring and the trajectory that the world is on.

This agreement needs to be followed up by outcomes. In this respect, I congratulate the Government on the decision to phase out coal-powered generation by 2025. Last week, the Minister stated that domestic policies do not resonate on an international stage. His Government cannot think that fine words need not be matched by deeds.

In the Energy Bill 2013, the Government refused to set a 2030 decarbonisation target. There has followed a litany of reversals to important schemes designed to put the UK on track to a low-carbon economy. The UK’s commitment to reach renewable energy targets of 15% by 2020 is in jeopardy. PWC estimates that if the renewables contributions from heat and transport remain at their present levels, the UK will need to generate 52% of electricity from renewables to meet that target.

The Government have attacked the cheapest options for achieving these targets, such as onshore wind, meaning that energy bills will increase by more than they need to. The Green Deal efficiency measures have been abandoned. Carbon capture and storage projects in Yorkshire and Scotland have been axed. Polluting diesel generators have been rewarded with 15-year contracts totalling more than £150 million in the latest capacity auctions.

The UK still requires significant investment in low-carbon technologies. Investor confidence is now undermined by continual sharp policy shifts such as are proposed in the latest Energy Bill. Friends of the Earth states:

“It will be outstanding hypocrisy for the government to trumpet the new climate change agreement unless it does a U-turn on energy policy”.

Will these green policy reversals now be reviewed in the context of the commitments given at Paris? Will the Minister ask the independent Committee on Climate Change to review the progress towards and likely achievement of the UK’s renewable generation target, and whether there should be further policy initiatives to get the UK back to achieving 15% of energy from renewables by 2020?

In Paris, the global ambition has been set to reduce temperature rises from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees. What further measures does the Minister’s department now consider are necessary?

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, what a great result for all sides of this House, for the nation and for the international community. I do not think that we can say more strongly than has the Minister how great this result is. After the pessimism—the omnishambles, we could say—of Copenhagen in 2009, this is truly a good and remarkable result. We should certainly congratulate the French Government, and Laurent Fabius in particular, on their stewardship and their achievement at this conference.

The great thing is that those of us who believe that climate change really is one of the greatest issues facing this planet can be positive again, since for the past six years we have been rather on the defensive and pessimistic about outcomes. What we have here is an agreement not just between 196 nations but an agreement particularly that China, the United States, India and Europe have agreed to. That is quite something and it would have been unbelievable just a few years ago.

We also have something else to celebrate. In 2014, the globe’s emissions were roughly the same—they levelled out for the first time during a period when there was global economic growth—and, this year, we hope that there will be something like a 1% reduction in carbon emissions. So we can move forward with confidence that we are achieving something and perhaps prove wrong the pessimists or disbelievers among us, not just through the science but by showing that real-world Governments, including in the developing world, are taking notice that this is a problem that needs to be solved.

I welcome particularly in this agreement the integration between developed and developing nations—there is not the big divide that there was under Kyoto and China’s emissions this year are falling by some 3% to 4%. I welcome, too, that we will have a proper review programme every five years, starting in 2018—we are not waiting for five years until we start that process—and that we realise that, for those island states in the Pacific and elsewhere, the real challenge should be 1.5 degrees and not 2 degrees, difficult though that will be. Those are great achievements and I welcome the Secretary of State’s Statement, and in particular her thanks to previous Secretaries of State—I think of my former right honourable colleague Ed Davey in that regard.

But we have a problem here: we need those nations to move forward on those agendas, and that includes the United Kingdom. While I agree with the Minister entirely that we have had a positive reaction in ridding ourselves of coal emissions within the next 10 years and increased investment in technology around the green agenda, so far this year we have had a reversal of a number of policies that are really important for driving our commitments forward in this area. The House does not have to believe me because the chief executives of companies such as Panasonic, BT, M&S, Tesco, Vodafone, Ikea and many others have written to the Government saying that this policy change has been in the wrong direction and needs to change. Those are real challenges.

We will come to the fifth carbon budget and I hope that the Government will move forward positively when it comes to decisions, unlike with the difficulties that there were— particularly from the Treasury—when we looked at the fourth carbon budget in the past.

On behalf of my Benches, I welcome this agreement. As the Minister said, it is not the end but it is the beginning of reaching a solution to climate change on this planet. It is the most important way of going forward. Of all the policies that are most important for implementing this agreement, perhaps the cheapest and most effective is the one of energy efficiency. The Government’s move away from zero-carbon homes for 2016 and commercial buildings for 2019 was one of the most negative policies that they could have implemented. My challenge to the Minister is to ask the Secretary of State to reverse at least that one policy so that we can start on the road to fulfilling this agreement.