Oral Answers to Questions
Carla Denyer Excerpts(3 days, 21 hours ago)
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Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We were talking about this issue in the Tea Room only this morning, and I will meet the ceramics sector and him first thing in the new year to talk about some of the challenges it faces. We are absolutely committed to supporting the sector.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Thirteen oil and gas fields have been licensed for new drilling of dangerous fossil fuels but are still awaiting final approval. The Government paused those decisions while doing a consultation, but the consultation will not change the science: if we are to meet our climate targets, those fossil fuels must stay in the ground. Will the Secretary of State do the right thing by the poorest in our country, who are always at the sharpest end of climate action, and ensure that those licences will not be granted?
Ed Miliband
This is a Government with a world-leading position when it comes to oil and gas, and we will do the right thing for the environment and climate change and the right thing to ensure that there is a just transition in the North sea.
COP29
Carla Denyer Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is right: although we have party political disagreements on some issues, this country has avoided a fraying and splitting of this consensus, as has happened in other countries. The consensus on climate action is so important precisely because of what he has set out: the fate of his grandchildren and all future generations, and the impact on them. I want to work with people across parties on this issue, because the more of a consensus we have, the better it is for the country.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Low-income countries were extremely disappointed by the finance agreements at COP—$300 billion does not come anywhere near the level of need. Critically, there was no clarity on how much of it would be grants, as opposed to loans, which would plunge global south countries further into debt. Does the Secretary of State share my concern about the potential dominance of loans and an overreliance on the private sector, and does he agree that considerable public finance could and should be raised through taxes on the most polluting companies?
Ed Miliband
I understand why the hon. Lady expresses that disappointment—indeed, a number of developing countries expressed that disappointment. However, I think that this is a considerable scaling-up of resources. That is to state the obvious, because $100 billion was the previous commitment. It is the provision and mobilisation of resources. She is right about the balance between grants and loans, and about the funds that are required for adaptation, but the truth is that public finance on its own will never meet the need. That is why the agreement on carbon markets that was part of this COP is important, and why the mobilisation of private finance, and working on a road map to that mobilisation, which is also part of the agreement, is so important.
Oral Answers to Questions
Carla Denyer Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Kerry McCarthy
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There is a direct link between taking action to protect the British people at home and leading on climate action abroad. If we want to protect our country from future energy shocks and the runaway cost of climate chaos, we must work with other countries to protect our planet. We now have the credibility to do that because of the action we have taken since entering government, as was apparent when I attended pre-COP meetings in Baku last month and as the Prime Minister will demonstrate in Baku today.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
I warmly welcome the new Government target to cut carbon emissions, and I know the Secretary of State and the Minister thoroughly understand the importance of joined-up action on climate justice. Can she tell us whether every single Government policy across every Government Department will now be assessed to check whether it is compatible with 1.5°? What steps are the Government taking to ensure the global south is properly compensated for climate loss and damage?
Kerry McCarthy
On the second point first, at this COP we want to ensure that we fully operationalise the loss and damage fund, so we then start getting money into it and channelling money to developing countries. We also want to do that through the new collective quantified goal, which we hope will be ambitious and multi-layered.
On the question of looking at our policies across the piece, that is very much my job. We will be responding soon to the Committee on Climate Change’s report, which the hon. Lady will know was quite critical of the previous Government’s action. We will be setting out our plan to implement the NDC and looking at the next carbon budget. All those things require effort share across Departments to ensure we actually meet them. It is about not just setting ambitious targets, but making sure that, unlike the previous Government, we have a strategy to get us there.
Oral Answers to Questions
Carla Denyer Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Miatta Fahnbulleh
We are really clear that as we develop our plans we absolutely need to get on with the job of upgrading homes. We have announced our warm homes local grant and our warm homes social housing fund, which are targeted at low-income families, because we know there is a job of work to do. We are committed to an additional £6.6 billion to invest in our warm homes plan over the course of this Parliament.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Sarah Jones)
We are committed to accelerating the just transition for workers in Britain to boost our energy security and ensure good, long-term jobs, especially in North sea communities. We will work with them and other industrial regions to develop a plan, ensuring those workers are the people who decarbonise our country.
Carla Denyer
I thank the Minister for her response. Unfortunately, the unjust transitions we are seeing in Grangemouth and Port Talbot are a damning indictment of the lack of a proactive approach to a just transition over the last few years. Tomorrow at the Treasury, over 50 major unions and climate groups will be calling for a new approach to the energy transition where, instead of just de-risking private profit, there is a governmental ringfenced funding package for North sea oil and gas workers, including help with skills and job creation. Will the Secretary of State or Ministers please meet the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ensure that those ringfenced funds are secure, so that we can stop betting on the industry to do the right thing?
Sarah Jones
Last week was the historic week when 142 years of coal-fired electricity generation came to an end, and this week we have announced the new era of carbon capture and storage. We will work in a different way from the last Government, adopting a proactive approach to ensure that the transition works for people and that we create new jobs as well. At Grangemouth we provided a package of support for workers, and at Port Talbot we managed to negotiate a better deal than the last Government. We will use all the levers that we have—Great British Energy, the national wealth fund, the British jobs bonus and the office of green energy jobs that we have set up—to ensure that we get the transition right.
COP29: UK Priorities
Carla Denyer Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Thank you, Dr Huq, for reminding me of process and having patience with me during my first Westminster Hall debate. Thank you, too, to the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for facilitating this debate.
At the end of a year of record-shattering temperatures and climate extremes, COP29 will prove a test of our collective willingness to respond to the climate crisis with the urgency and resolve it demands. We know that there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure if we are to have any chance of staying within safe climate limits. That is a scientific fact—one that the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and countless experts have made clear.
Historic progress was made at COP28, when the UK joined nearly 200 countries in agreeing to transition away from fossil fuels, marking a major breakthrough for international climate action. One year on, COP29 has the vital task of locking in momentum towards that promise. Yet despite the science and the consensus reached in Dubai, Governments around the world plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with just a 50% chance of limiting warming to the Paris agreement goal of 1.5°.
About half of all planned oil and gas developments between now and 2050 will be sanctioned by five wealthy Governments who position themselves as climate leaders, one of which is the UK. With the COP29 summit being hosted in a country with plans to increase its fossil fuel production by a third over the next decade, there is an urgent need for other big polluters, such as the UK, to show better leadership. Unless the promise made in Dubai is seen as a clear instruction to quit fossil fuels, last year’s hard-won consensus is destined to fall apart. Rhetoric must be met with action.
In that context, the Government’s intention to consult on ending licences for the exploration of new oil and gas fields is a welcome relief from the previous Government’s dangerous obsession with maxing out fossil fuels. It marks a small step towards ending years of climate hypocrisy, which have undermined our position in international negotiations. However, it is only the bare minimum of ambition. To do what is necessary for both the climate and the UK’s credibility in international fora, the Government must move quickly to lock in their no new licensing position, and take the urgent next step of stopping development consents for all new oil and gas fields. That must be done alongside bringing forward a coherent plan to transition oil and gas workers into the clean energy jobs of the future, so that we can show other countries that that transition can and will be done in a fair and just way.
Let us take the example of Rosebank. Bringing that oilfield online would be catastrophic for our climate and our international reputation. Burning the oil and gas from that huge field would produce over 200 million tonnes of CO2—more than the 28 lowest-income countries combined produce in a year. The emissions created just by extracting the oil from Rosebank would see the UK’s oil and gas industry blow past its emissions reduction target.
Aside from being a climate crime, the new field would go against what is needed to strengthen the UK’s energy security—lower bills and a just transition. I welcome the Government doing the sensible thing and deciding not to defend in court the previous Government’s approval of new oil drilling at Rosebank, which makes it even more likely that the legal challenge against the field will be successful. If Equinor then seeks approval for the field again, the Government will have the opportunity to make a fresh start and a fresh decision on Rosebank. If presented with that opportunity, will the Government make the right choice, reject the field and mark the end of the road for climate-wrecking oil and gas projects in UK waters? Only then can we begin to rebuild our credibility on the global stage and reasonably look other countries in the eye at the negotiating table as we ask them to keep their own oil and gas reserves in the ground.
As a country with broad shoulders and historic responsibility for accelerating climate chaos, the UK not only has a duty to deliver the transition away from fossil fuels here at home, but must play a leading role in supporting those countries that are least responsible for, but worst impacted by, climate breakdown. Baku’s big test, therefore, will be the delivery of the new collective quantified goal on climate finance. This is a crucial opportunity for richer countries to contribute their fair share, following years of broken promises and failure to deliver the $100 billion on time.
At this COP, we must ensure that past mistakes are not repeated. That means agreeing a new goal that is not just a political deal but a real number, based on the needs of people in the global south and of vulnerable populations on the frontline of climate impacts. A black-box headline figure without clarity on how it will be delivered will not do. We must ensure that the goal results in funds that are genuinely new and additional, not double-counted from existing aid budgets—a reprehensible practice that has played a huge role in allowing the climate finance gap to widen over the past decade. Indeed, in February, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact found that under the previous Government the Foreign Office reclassified around £1.7 billion of existing UK aid as international climate finance. The UK has one of the largest gaps between its fair share and the climate finance it has delivered. We are letting the world down—it is right there in black and white—so will the Government ensure that UK negotiators show up to COP29 with a mandate to champion an ambitious new climate finance goal, and will they unlock the necessary public finance in addition to private finance?
There is much more the UK could be doing, from tackling tax abuse and evasion by the extremely wealthy and corporations, removing subsidies for fossil fuels and looking at undertaxed sectors such as aviation, where the “polluter pays” principle is simply not being upheld. Justice requires that the nations most responsible for the climate crisis step up. That is our cue.
Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower
Carla Denyer Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. The Department is reviewing the NAO report at the moment. This area will need investment, but we also need a concerted effort to understand what some of the barriers are. It is very clear that carbon capture and storage will be a critical part of the North sea infrastructure in the future, so we are taking those issues very seriously.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
I very much welcome much of what the Minister has said in this announcement, including on the need for a just transition for those working in the oil and gas sector. However, before the election, the Government made a commitment to end new oil and gas licences, although they are still planning to allow the new Rosebank oil field to open, despite it being connected to a level of carbon emissions that we simply cannot allow in this country. I have two questions about the future of oil and gas. First, will the Minister confirm how and when the ending of new oil and gas licences will happen? Secondly, will the Government reconsider the opening of the disastrous Rosebank oil and gas field?
Michael Shanks
I was hopeful that that was going to be a very positive question, but then we got to a “however”. I thank the hon. Lady for her support of what I have said so far. North sea licensing is an important issue. We were clear throughout the election that we do not intend to issue any further licences in the North sea. We are looking at how exactly that will come into force, and a lot of detailed work is going on because we want to give assurances to the industry.
On the question of Rosebank and some of those other fields, we have said that we will not bring to an end any of the licences that are currently in place. I cannot speak on some of the particular issues, because there are, of course, cases before the courts, but we will come back to the House in due course to set out the detail. What is important is that we have said that we do not want any new licences in the North sea and we stand by that commitment. We now want to work out a detailed plan, so that that just transition, to which the hon. Lady rightly referred, can come into effect.
I wish to finish on the warm homes plan, which the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) mentioned earlier and is so committed to supporting, and we are grateful to her for that. It will invest £13.2 billion in clean heat and energy efficiency over the lifetime of this Parliament, doubling the previously planned investment to upgrade 5 million homes, with grants and low-interest loans to support investment in insulation, low-carbon heating and other home improvements.
The latest Government figures show that 3 million households in England are in fuel poverty. In the private rented sector, the figure is one in four. Shamefully, the last Government abandoned their commitment to get those homes up to decent standards of energy efficiency, but we will not abandon tenants. We will ensure that homes in the private rented sector meet minimum energy standards by 2030, saving renters hundreds of pounds a year.
Michael Shanks
I will make some progress, because I have only four minutes. If I have time, I will come back to the hon. Lady.
The hon. Gentleman has repeated the point about food insecurity, despite me just saying what the National Farmers Union—which I think is an expert on this topic—has said about it. He has also made a point about the amount of infrastructure in one given area, which is why it is really important that we co-ordinate that infrastructure much better than we do at the moment. That is why the spatial energy plan is so important; the previous Government commenced that work, and we will continue it, because we need a holistic view of all this energy infrastructure so that individual communities do not become saturated with one particular type of infrastructure.
However, I say gently to all hon. Members that at some point we have to accept that some of that infrastructure is nationally important and will have to be sited somewhere. Even if we have offshore cables, that infrastructure, by its very nature, has to come onshore at some point. There will have to be a recognition of the need for infrastructure in communities, but I take the point about the importance of it being well planned.
Michael Shanks
I will first give way briefly to the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer).
Carla Denyer
The hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) raised a concern about solar threatening our ability to grow our own food in this country. I respectfully suggest that he checks out the recent research by Exeter University, which shows that we could increase the amount of renewable energy we generate in this country 13 times over using, I believe, less than 3% of the UK’s land, and none of the highest-grade agricultural land—
Clean Energy Superpower Mission
Carla Denyer Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Edward Miliband
I welcome my hon. Friend back to the House. It is fantastic to see her back in her place—I congratulate her. She knows much about this subject through working for RenewableUK when she was outside the House, and she makes an important point. The shadow Secretary of State drew attention to our generation of offshore wind, which we have done well, but it is commonly accepted that we have not done nearly so well in generating the jobs that should come with that. Part of what I will be doing with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business and Trade is developing a proper green industrial strategy, including in the supply chain. That will provide clarity about the plan to ensure that we have not just energy generation, but job generation too.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his role, and welcome the Government’s recognition that public investment must play a substantial role in decarbonising power. I have seen that from my previous career in offshore wind. However, this public investment must not be only about de-risking private sector investment, though some of his colleagues have implied that that would be the principal role of Great British Energy. Will the Secretary of State confirm that Great British Energy will invest in fully publicly owned, or at least majority publicly owned, renewable generation projects, and will not confine itself to taking minority stakes in private sector-led projects that would give it very little control?
Edward Miliband
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. I can confirm that GB Energy will play a role in all kinds of ways, and that we are certainly not restricting it in the way that she suggests. Furthermore, in the constructive spirit of these exchanges, I would ask that the Green party thinks about its commitment to tackling the climate crisis, which we all share, and then thinks about this question of infrastructure. If it wants to tackle the climate crisis, it should know that that simply will not happen if its leading members say no to new energy infrastructure.