Energy and Climate Change

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate. The international aim of limiting the impact of climate change to so-called acceptable consequences is, according to current trends, set to fail. That is notwithstanding the fact that the Energy and Climate Change Secretary told the House last Monday that the Durban climate conference

“was a clear success for international co-operation.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 569.]

The executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change saluted the countries that had made this agreement, but the executive director of Friends of the Earth called the Durban agreement

“an empty shell of a plan”

that

“leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change.”

Others were even less diplomatic.

The gulf between these different reactions reflects the gulf between the reality of the current political process and the reality of what the science tells us we need to do. Indeed, it says it a lot about people’s expectations that, after so many climate talks and empty pledges over the years, an agreement “in principle” to tackling climate change from 2020 can still be hailed as an overall success.

There has for a number of years been almost universal agreement on the need to keep climate change within a range that would limit its impact to a so-called acceptable level. That is the risk that Governments have decided they are willing to take on our behalf, and on the whole, the public have accepted this position in the belief that we will be spared from “dangerous” or “very dangerous” climate change.

The threshold between “acceptable” and “dangerous” climate change has been the famous target of limiting warming to no more than 2° C above pre-industrial levels, which, in theory at least, is the limit that international negotiations are striving not to breach. But today the fight to ensure that the planet and its people suffer only the “acceptable” consequences of a warming world faces a double threat.

First, Governments have so far failed to take the action needed to protect their current and future populations from the worst of climate change. Writing in the Royal Society’s journal earlier this year, a group of leading climate scientists explained that

“the continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions in the past decade and the delays in a comprehensive global emissions reduction agreement have made achieving this”—

2°—

“target extremely difficult, arguably impossible, raising the likelihood of global temperature rises of 3°C or 4°C within this century.”

The consequences of the latest weak and delayed agreement are laid bare by Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, who has said:

“If we do not have an international agreement, whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to”—

holding temperatures to below 2° of warming—

“will be closed forever”.

The second threat is that, as the latest science shows, even a 2° temperature rise is too much. Indeed, the evidence now points to the need to keep global temperature increases to less than 1.5° at most. So it is deeply worrying that, according to the world’s leading climate change monitoring programme, average temperatures are 1° higher than those in the 1950s. Current research released in the run-up to the Durban conference, including work from the Potsdam institute, the Met Office’s Hadley centre, the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Energy Agency, shows that on average the world is expected to warm by at least 3.5° by 2100. If that is an average, the grim reality is that some parts of the world are likely to be warming significantly more.

I raise these issues because it is crucial that we base our climate policy on the best available science. The clearest expression of the accumulation of emissions and the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases was given by the European Environment Agency. The latest data show a concentration of 399 parts per million of CO₂ equivalent. The UK’s current carbon budgets, which theoretically aim for a less than 2° temperature rise, are based on greenhouse gas concentrations stabilising at 450 parts per million of CO₂ equivalent, but even that level in no way guarantees protection. The Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report makes it clear that if global CO₂ equivalent concentrations are stabilised about 450 parts per million, the risk of exceeding a 2° warming is about 50%. In other words, that is the equivalent of getting on a plane with only a 50:50 chance of it not falling out of the sky.

It is crucial that we make sure that our policy is based on the latest science. My speech is not the usual kind of intervention where we are scoring political points and focusing on short-term tactical questions. I believe and I hope that I am doing something more important than that. I am putting on the record the fact that we face a climate crisis of extraordinary urgency, and if we are to have any hope of tackling it, we need to be working on the basis of the right data. So I have three questions for the Minister to answer. First, will he agree to examine the latest science, and, as necessary, work to change the UK’s domestic targets to ensure that they continue to respect the political and public consensus to limit climate change to “acceptable” consequences? Secondly, will he ensure that the Government take the action needed to limit our emissions in time and in line with our global responsibilities to prevent climate change reaching dangerous levels—and that means including the emissions that are embedded in imports? Thirdly, will he fight on the international stage to do everything possible to ensure that all Governments take the same approach? If we continue to fiddle while not only Rome, but the whole planet burns, we will go down in whatever history can follow us as the species that spent all its time monitoring its own extinction, rather than taking active steps to avoid it. The Government say that there is no plan B on the economy. That is debatable, but the fact that there is no planet B is not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful and measured contributions, including that wonderful description of the Planning Inspectorate’s recent decision. Many hon. Members will have some sympathy with the views expressed there.

I must confess a personal interest. I am the son of a climatologist, so I spent many of my formative years learning about the natural cycles of climate, visiting sites such as medieval vineyards around Tewkesbury and so forth as friends were heading off to Torremolinos. Today, however, our focus is on man’s impact on climate and how we respond to it.

I shall deal first with the contribution from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The hon. Lady’s case is that the 2% target—limiting the increase of global average temperatures to 2% above pre-industrial levels—is not ambitious enough and has potentially devastating consequences. I share and the Government share her absolute concern about the need to take effective and decisive action to deal with what is an enormous challenge globally, and we do not dismiss it at all.

The target of less than 2%, however, is likely to be at the very edge of what is possible in terms of the technological and economic implications. It also involves radical lifestyle changes, and dealing with that globally and in democracies is often very difficult.

Achieving the 2% target globally will itself be immensely challenging. On the current trajectory, as the hon. Lady rightly said, we are looking at a 3.5° C to 4° C rise in temperature, the consequences of which certainly would be devastating, and if anything the gap is widening.

[Caroline Lucas]

The figure is 2° C, not 2%, but does the hon. Gentleman agree with me on the key point that runaway climate change would also require radical changes in lifestyle?

[Norman Lamb]

Absolutely, I do. I accept that completely, and that is why the Government are determined to take decisive action.

The consequences, however, of a 3.5° C to 4° C rise would be devastating, including a 2 metre rise in sea levels, a massive impact on food production and so on, but to hit the 2° C target we need global emissions to peak by 2020 and, after that, to reduce by 4% annually. That target is achievable if decisive action is taken by both the developed and the developing worlds, and this Government are determined to take a lead internationally —one of the things that the hon. Lady raised specifically —in seeking to achieve it.

Developing countries on their own are likely to account for 60% of emissions by 2020 owing to rapid development, and the Government recognise that the European Union must show leadership, so we are pressing for a 30% 2020 emissions reduction target, rather than the current 20%.

To answer the hon. Lady’s specific question about whether we need to review the target level, I note that the Cancun conference agreed to a review of the science to see whether to adjust the target and whether the 2° C target is adequate to prevent the disastrous consequences of climate change. I acknowledge what she said about the outcome of the recent Durban conference, but it did make progress on the design of that review and on the steps, including negotiating a new global agreement, to get the global community back on track to achieve at least the 2° C goal. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for playing a key role in the Durban negotiations, which have taken things forward.

All that sets the context—the imperative of building a low-carbon economy—for dealing with the contributions from the hon. Members for Warrington South (David Mowat), for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies). Not only do we need to reduce carbon emissions because of the imperative of tackling climate change, but we face the massive challenge of energy security.

I shall deal first with the hon. Member for Warrington South, who criticised the focus on renewables and sought to concentrate on the optimisation of decarbonisation, arguing for the importance of nuclear and gas in the short term. We face the immediate and remarkable challenge that nearly one third of our energy supplies will be going off-grid in the next decade. That is because of decisions already taken. Nuclear cannot deliver in that time frame. There are disadvantages in relying heavily on imported gas because it makes us more vulnerable to risks with regard to security of supply, fluctuating and volatile cost, and availability of supply. To replace the lost capacity and to hit challenging emissions targets, we need a new supply quickly, and wind and other renewables are a crucial part of that. Over the longer term, the Government have no intention of favouring one form of low-carbon energy production over another. Our intention is to secure a level playing field for low-carbon technologies competing with one another. Tidal power, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, should be given its chance along with other technologies.

The Government have already issued a White Paper on electricity market reform. That is an important way to deliver the change that we need to secure proper competition between low-carbon technologies. It will mean that a level playing field is introduced by 2020, and it covers nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and renewables. The carbon plan published on 1 December, which sets out how we will meet the requirements of the fourth carbon budget—between 2022 and 2027—does not favour one form of production over another but offers different scenarios and different combinations within the whole mix. We are not looking to lock in any one form of production. The Government have stressed the importance of reducing energy demand and of improved energy conservation. That is why our green deal is so important, as is the radical step of introducing smart electricity and gas meters across every home. We do, however, stress the need for immediate and decisive action.