COP 26

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes a powerful point—clearly, it will have a detrimental effect. We need to work with Ukraine to help it in the future to rebuild its nation and make sure that Putin does not succeed in his aim.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, going back to methane and the global pledge the Minister referred to, he may be aware of an article in Environmental Science & Technology on Wednesday. Stanford University researchers found using aerial data that New Mexico’s Permian Basin is leaking six times as much methane as the US Environmental Protection Agency has estimated. That global pledge was utterly focused on stopping leaks and flaring. Surely the amount of fugitive methane that fossil fuel operations create means that to keep under the 1.5 degrees warming target we have to end exploration and new production of oil and gas.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I have not seen the article to which the noble Baroness refers. It will probably come as a shock to her that I am not responsible for New Mexico; that is part of the United States’ commitment. All we can be responsible for are our own emissions and our own policies. We are striving to reduce our fossil fuel production and use in the UK, but it is a gradual phase-out. Rather than using imported LNG from the likes of the areas she mentioned, it makes more sense to use our own domestic production during that transition period.