COP26

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con) [V]]

I am delighted to participate in this debate on estimates for COP26. Two years ago, as interim energy Minister, I helped to secure for the United Kingdom and Italy their joint bid to host COP26. I am delighted to see the progress that has already been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma). I want to put on record my admiration for him personally. Having worked extremely hard to climb the ladder of ministerial office to become a Secretary of State, he has decided to relinquish that office to become solely COP26 President. That demonstrates his commitment to the necessary values and the outcome that is needed from COP—he is not merely a simple politician but has put himself in the place of a true statesman.

If this COP is to be a success, as was the COP in Paris five years ago, it is absolutely right that we need to be driven by values and outcomes. It is quite clear that net zero by 2050 will slowly—perhaps more quickly—become the goal that comes out of COP26. I was the Minister who signed the net zero target into law on 27 June 2019, having led the debate in Parliament. It is easy to say that net zero should be legislated for, but since then I have seen the demonstration of the UK’s potential to lead this debate and to enact change. We have seen France, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and, hopefully, the United States sign up to net zero by 2050, with China potentially signing up to net zero by 2060. We emit 1% of the world’s global emissions, yet this is where the UK can achieve and succeed in demonstrating that, as the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) mentioned, we can lead by example.

To achieve net zero, we need to ensure that COP26 is not just a high-level summit with similarly high-level lofty ambitions just from Government. If it is to deliver change, it needs to be about a whole-of-society approach, which means taking a long-term strategic position, not merely talking about what is happening in 2021. To put it into context, just 4% of the UK population even know what net zero means. That demonstrates the scale of the challenge we face in reaching net zero. We need a vision that can embrace the need for human behavioural change. This is where climate change policy 2.0 needs to be carved out. I shall come on to talk about the technological and energy supply changes that we have seen when it comes to climate change policy, but we now need to embrace the human dimension—we need not only to embrace humans’ hopes for change but understand their fears and how those fears can be tackled in future.

The UK has led on emission reductions in the G7: we have reduced emissions by 40% since 1990, despite growing our overall economy by 70%. That demonstrates that we can ensure growth regardless of the need for change. Between 2008 and 2018, we reduced emissions by 28%, yet we have now we set a target of reducing emissions by 68% by 2030. That is a huge escalation in ambition, which is welcome but still a challenge. Of the 28% reduction between 2008 and 2018, 56% of the decrease was in energy supply. Make no mistake: that was the low-hanging fruit.

We now need to reach far higher to get to far more difficult-to-reach sectors such as transport. Power and energy supply made up 66 million tonnes of the 496 million tonnes that we emitted in 2018; transport made up 115 million tonnes of that, yet its reduction between 2008 and 2018 was just 3%. To achieve the reductions that we are going to need, we will have to embrace systems-wide policy making that embraces operational research and does not rely just on announcements and speeches, which will not deliver policy change and will not allow for successful policy implementation.

First, we require a systems-wide change to Government delivery. The COP President currently sits within the Cabinet Office, which is right, but post COP we need a net zero Department that unites all Departments across Whitehall. We also need to embrace partnership working. COP26 will not be a success just through the efforts of the Cabinet Office and my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West, no matter how phenomenal a job I believe he is doing. I follow his Twitter feed every morning, noon and night and it is amazing what he is achieving, but he is one man. We can do so much more by embracing other institutions, such as universities, local authorities and devolved mayoralties. We should also focus on how we can create net zero regions, as I know we are doing, to drive systems change for the future. Universities stand ready—as a former Minister for Universities and chair of the all-party group on universities, I know that there is group of universities for COP26—and they will be at the forefront of delivering on research when it comes to achieving net zero.

On research and how we reach the scale that we need to achieve for the future, we need to take a mission-based approach, in respect of not only societal adaptation and change but new science and innovation structures to deliver net zero. The Prime Minister has spoken of “moonshots”, and we can frame COP26 and net zero by using the moonshot approach. The Government’s 10-point plan has set out ambitions for what we can achieve in the next 10 years; 600,000 heat pumps by 2028 is a great target, but we need to focus on wider ambitions, including expanding hydrogen supply. We need to be setting sector-wide approaches that are ambitious, but can be realised and delivered through structures—even legislation. That would enable these ambitions to be driven in a really tough way, rather than just being policy announcements.

Finally, we need dedicated climate change research and technological funds that are internationally based for COP26. We are hosting the G7 this year, and we have huge international ambitions for the United Kingdom. Why not place our faith in science, innovation and research by creating new funds that the UK can lead to get other countries behind us and deliver on net zero for the future?