Sustainable Energy Generation: Burning Trees

Debate between Barry Gardiner and James Gray

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to join in the debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for introducing it. I feel for her: about a decade ago I was in exactly the same position as a Back Bencher trying to tell my Front Bench team that they were mistaken in going down the biomass road. I think the Government are at the point where they will listen; indeed, I hope that is the case because, if they do not, it will make a mockery of all that we are doing on not only climate change but biodiversity.

I say that in the week that COP15—the Convention on Biological Diversity—is due to meet in Montreal. That is significant because the Drax power station is consuming whole trees from primary forests in British Columbia, in Canada. The Canadian Government should look at that carefully because we are talking not just about the case—ably made by the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—for looking at what this practice is doing to increase emissions and at whether it can be sustainable in terms of the lifecycle of the trees, but about what it is doing to the wider environment and biodiversity. That is what is so terrifying.

The hon. Member for North Devon was right to speak about our inability to keep on using land in this way to feed a power station such as Drax. She spoke of an area 1.5 times the size of Wales; the figure I have is three times the size of Wales. Whatever it is, it is clear that this biomass cannot be sourced domestically, if this is to go on. More than that, it cannot be utilised because of the water resource required to produce the pellets for Drax.

The Department has been asked what the natural absorption rate of the emitted carbon would be if we replenish those lost resources—that is, if we replace those trees to absorb the emitted carbon. It gave an answer—it was, “We do not hold this information.” Well, other people have calculated it, and it is 190 years. We have seven years left until 2030, when the whole world must be on a declining pathway of emissions, and 27 years until 2050, when we have to achieve net zero. So the timescale—even accepting the principle that this is only about carbon emissions and that this is a cycle—is just too long.

The Government will no doubt talk about how CCS can be married up with BECCS. They will say that if we can capture those carbon emissions, that will make it all right. However, only 44% of emissions released at the Boundary Dam project in Canada were captured. The Government have not been prepared to say that they would hold Drax to what Ember, at least, has said should be the target—95% of emissions captured.

I want to focus on some of the key lies being told by Drax. I say that advisedly, because I have been to Drax and debated many times with its scientists. Over the years, I have tried to listen carefully to what they have said, and I have given them the benefit of the doubt on occasions. We need to transition away from biomass; I do not think we can simply stop it, and I am not saying that the contract should immediately be cut, but it is certainly not right for the Government to provide the £31 billion of additional subsidies entailed by what is now proposed over the lifetime of the project.

Drax says that its responsible sourcing policy means that it avoids damage or disturbance to primary and old-growth forest. That is not true, and the “Panorama” programme ably exposed the fact that it is not true. Drax said that many of the trees it had cut down had died and that logging would reduce the risk of wildfires, which shows just how little it knows about biodiversity, because many forests, particularly on the western seaboard of North America, require fire as a stimulant to the germination process. However, the fire spreads quickly; it does not kill the tree, but it does bring about new growth.

The trees on the entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence have now been cut down. It is simply not the case, as the company said, that the forests have been transferred to other logging licences. It said it does not hold those licences anymore. Again, that was a lie. “Panorama” checked that claim by going to the Government of British Colombia, who confirmed that Drax does still hold those licences. I understand how things progress, and I have no doubt that the company was set up to try to do good. We all thought at that stage that this was really going to be a sustainable way of tackling climate change, but Drax has got further and further into a reality that is now simply leading it to lie to the public. It is time that the Government distanced themselves from that lie.

The company says it uses some logs to make wood pellets, but it claims that it uses only ones that are small, twisted or rotten. I do not know whether Members have ever seen the process of gathering and taking logs from a forest. The idea that somebody is checking whether they are small, twisted or rotten and that only those are taken back to the power station is complete nonsense. However, when the logs get there, they can be sorted, and surveys at the pelletisation destinations show that only 11% of logs delivered to plants in the last year were classified as twisted, rotten or of the lowest quality, and could be used.

I am sorry the Government are now considering a further proposal from Drax. I really hope—not only for climate change purposes, but because of the wider biodiversity impact—that they will think very long and very hard, take notice of what the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North have said today, and just say no. We have to transition away from burning trees. It is a damaging way of using forests, and it cannot be sustained.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

We have 30 minutes until the winding-up speeches and there are six Back-Bench speakers, so taking five minutes each would be a courtesy to each other.

NHS Dentistry and Oral Health Inequalities

Debate between Barry Gardiner and James Gray

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is a student of the Old Testament, and she will know Proverbs 25, verse 19:

“Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth”.

We are certainly in a time of trouble. It is not for me to call the Prime Minister an unfaithful man—

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Certainly not. You must be brief.

[Barry Gardiner]

But the lack of support for dentistry and dental technicians has certainly resulted in a few broken teeth. What does my hon. Friend believe is the single most important thing that the Government can do to support dentistry and the oral health of the nation?

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and James Gray

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is right, but perhaps he has missed a further element of that toxic mix. That is not the role of the rating agencies, although they played their part in bundling up sub-prime mortgages. In order to securitise them into revenue streams for companies, they had looked at the historical rate of default in the sub-prime sector in 2000, when only 5% of the market was being sold to sub-prime borrowers, not in 2005, when the figure was 47%. The effect was that many companies had security streams that were not very secure. The piece of the toxic mix that we need to introduce is the way in which hedge funds brought to bear their financial might.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr James Gray)]

rose—

[Barry Gardiner]

I give way to Mr Gray.

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is not giving way to the Chair, but resuming his seat. He is giving an interesting explanation of the causes of the banking crisis. He must relate his point to amendment 9, which we are discussing, rather than dilating more generally on the subject.

[Barry Gardiner]

Of course I wish to abide by your ruling, Mr Gray. I am referring to earlier comments in the debate, which I am sure you heard, from the right hon. Member for Wokingham, who was not ruled out of order. He gave an interesting explanation of the history of what we are discussing.

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. I was not in the Chair at that time. It seems to me important that we relate the debate to what we are supposed to be debating, namely amendment 9. I am not aware of what happened previously, but I suggest that the hon. Gentleman relates his comments directly to the amendment.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am very happy to do so, Mr Gray. We are talking about a bank levy, and amendment 9 refers to

“the Government’s analysis behind the rate and threshold chosen for the bank levy”.

It seems to me that if one is to perform an analysis of the rate and threshold chosen, one has to understand how these things came about and the historical context. More importantly, one has to understand the regulatory context and what went wrong in the regulatory system. Much of the debate has been about that regulatory structure. I am seeking to address subsection (2)(a) proposed in the amendment. That is exactly the import of my remarks.

As the hedge funds brought their pressure to bear, they identified the problem of the companies’ overvaluation in the market. They saw that the structure of the bundled streams of security was not providing the security to the companies that the market believed it was providing. The hedge funds then short sold on those companies. That was an important regulatory failure. There was no uptake rule and no clear limit on the arbitrage window that was allowed for trading on such shares, so the short selling allowed the hedge funds to beat down the value of those financial institutions in such a way that there was a precipitation of the collapse of the credit that could flow through the financial institutions, which infected all the other companies in the stock exchange. That is how the situation became a global crisis.

In addressing the analysis that the amendment asks the Government to engage in, I urge them to take seriously the regulatory failings at that time. [Interruption.] The Financial Secretary says from a sedentary position that those were the mistakes of the previous Government. What I am pointing out to him is that they were not simply mistakes made by the previous Government, but mistakes that were made on a global scale. The financial crisis started in the sub-prime market in the US, and that infected the global markets. The reason that it took hold in the UK, to the detriment of this country, was that we had placed an over-reliance on the financial markets and the financial sector as opposed to manufacturing and industry.