Net-zero Carbon Emissions: Behaviour Change

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and I totally agree with her that we must have a sense of urgency in taking action now. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, for introducing this debate and bringing it to us. It is so important, and I was very impressed with the way she introduced it.

It is self-evident that we will all have to start doing things differently if we are to stand any chance of keeping warming within the aspirant 1.5 degree target agreed at Paris. The Climate Change Committee’s report to Parliament in June this year said that profound changes in behaviour and high-impact action from consumers, workers, households, businesses and citizens are needed to reach the target. However, there is one other crucial sector that has to step up to the plate and change its behaviour if we are to have any success whatever in asking others to change theirs. I am speaking, of course, of Governments.

My remarks will concentrate on the importance of the Government leading by example. Time and again, they have demonstrated that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. All too often, they seem to be engaged in a tug of war. Government departments are pulling in opposite directions. They seem to be acting in a contradictory manner and sending mixed signals to all the other sectors.

Let me take policy on fossil fuels as a glaring example. In its sixth assessment report, published last month, the IPCC makes it crystal clear that fossil fuels must stay in the ground if we are to stay within the 1.5 degree warming limit. The International Energy Agency states in its report Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector that the necessary wide-scale transformation of the sector dictates that reliance on fossil fuels must cease almost completely by 2050.

The IPCC and the IEA are agencies whose reports are underpinned by rigorous scientific evidence, yet the Government appear to be in hock to the fossil fuel lobby. How else does one explain their willingness to toy with giving the go-ahead to the new Cumbrian coal mine and the expansion of the Cambo oilfield to the west of the Shetlands? How else does one explain the report in the Guardian six days ago that:

“Ministers, including the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, held only seven private meetings with renewable energy generators between July 2019 and March 2020 compared with 63 with fossil fuel producers”,


among them controversial biomass interests? When will the Government make it clear that the era of fossil fuels is over in the UK? When will we finally draw a line under the anachronistic MER policy, which says that the UK Government must maximise economic recovery of oil and gas in the North Sea?

Surely tidying up our policy on the extraction of fossil fuels will send a message to countries such as China and India that we mean what we say about being a world leader on climate action. What a fillip it would give to COP 26, which is just a few weeks away, if we were to signal our intent to phase out fossil fuels. The industrial economy based on fossil fuels started here. Let us end it here too.

I am going to give other examples of where behaviour change on the part of the Government is necessary, and where questionable policy changes that they have made ought to be reversed. Why is it that sectors that pollute receive far greater subsidies than sectors that do not pollute as much—for example, road tax and fuel duty freezes versus train and bus fare increases; subsidies that airlines receive on fuel versus train fares; and keeping gas prices low at the expense of cleaner electricity?

Subsidy reform would be a great tool, as a carrot and a stick, to push forward behaviour change. Businesses and consumers will change their behaviour when they see that the Government are also getting their house in order. Indeed, government actions signalling policy certainty are a prerequisite for business to change.

My noble friend Lady Randerson also impressed on us the importance of tackling transport emissions, and I shall end with a few words about a simple, proven, popular and cheap measure that the Government could take which would signal their willingness to encourage the behaviour change needed to get more people out of their cars and walking or cycling instead. Introducing 20 mph speed limits on roads where people live and work has been shown to do just that. Introducing such a limit in one fell swoop would reduce the number of vehicles on our roads, reduce fine particulate matter from brake and tyre wear, reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured and reduce demand on the national grid. Surely this is a measure that is a compelling candidate for encouraging people to embrace behaviour change.