Climate Change Committee Progress Report 2021

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd]

That is another important point. I think the Minister will accept my saying: I have been a Minister; never trust a Minister—partly because one day they will not be, and it will be someone else in the seat. Government should set the standards, but the delivery of that sort of information must be seen to be independent and to have sound validity for those involved.

When we look at delivery, one thing that is often missing from the conversation is the fact that central Government cannot deliver on many of these things. Central Government has to work through other agencies. That can be the private sector, but we need the strategic planning to take place at local, and sometimes sub-local, level. If we are going to not simply change attitudes but introduce the necessary infrastructure—the infrastructure of skilled training for the capacity to make the changes that we need—we must deliver locally. That does mean a much stronger partnership. Again, that is a recommendation in the report between central Government and local government. I say to the Minister that if that partnership does not include the proper transfer of funding so that local government can do this job, then we will be gifting the ambition but not delivering the tools with which to achieve it.

This is a very important report. Once again I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. He is trying to deliver a balanced judgment. He is probably a little more optimistic than I, but he did emphasise that the crisis is not looming; it is with us. This is a call now to move beyond planning. Words can be good in setting ambition, but it has got to be now about serious delivery on the ground. We have had so many wake-up calls. This call says, “Now is the time for action.”

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

This is a very interesting debate. There is a parallel debate taking place in the main Chamber, where there is a three-minute time limit on speeches, I suspect. Before calling the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate, if anybody in the main Chamber is following what is going on in Westminster Hall, I am happy to accept additional Back-Bench speeches if Members show up, notwithstanding the fact that they were not here at the beginning for the initial remarks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and clearly I agree with him. It is great that he has recognised the work that is going on to restore peat bogs in Scotland. As he said, the UK Government’s tree-planting target is welcome, but I am sceptical that they have a plan in place to meet that target. They have never met any target for tree planting to date, so the idea that they can scale up massively in a couple of years is beyond belief. I was going to mention tree planting in Scotland later on, but in 2019, 85% of trees planted in the UK were planted in Scotland via the Scottish Government’s scheme. The Scottish Government have aggressively pursued tree planting—they have led the way on it—while the UK Government have not yet put plans in place to meet their ambitions.

There are too many policy gaps to mention, even though we have a lot more time today than we expected. We need to see an impact from the net zero aviation strategy, for example. I am not convinced by the plans that are in place. As the hon. Member for Leeds North West said, there is a transport decarbonisation plan in place, but when it comes to hydrogen and conversion of HGVs, we have heard the hon. Member for Bristol East say that not enough zero-emission buses are being produced. We really need to move quickly on these matters.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire complimented the work that is being done on decarbonising the electricity system. That work is truly welcome, but there is still not a proper plan for ending unabated gas-fired electricity generation by 2035, nor a proper structured plan for the decarbonisation of the electricity grid to meet the 2035 target set by the Government. If they are going to meet the target of a net zero electricity grid by 2030, there are some things that I suggest the Minister needs to be cognisant of. The Government need to review the grid charging system, which will end the farce of Scotland having the highest grid charges in Europe. That system disincentivises the construction of renewable energy production in Scotland—puts it at a disadvantage compared with projects in England—but it does not help the UK to meet its net zero target, either. We need to make net zero a statutory consideration for Ofgem, and the Government need to review the capacity market to address its reliance on fossil fuels, and allow storage that is co-located with renewable energy to be able to bid into the capacity market. Bizarrely, that is blocked at the moment.

As I touched on earlier, the Government need to end their nuclear obsession. Instead of spending another £20 billion on a new station at Sizewell, not to mention the billions they want to invest in small modular reactors and the mythical advanced nuclear reactors, they should be investing that money in renewable energy—in green hydrogen production and storage. The UK has now fallen behind France, the Netherlands and Germany in terms of hydrogen production proposals, so an urgent rethink of policy development is required. The 5 GW hydrogen target is not ambitious enough. The Scottish Government have a 5 GW hydrogen production target, so surely the UK Government need to up their game.

The UK Government should be investing in pumped storage hydropower—a proven technology that allows dispatchable energy to be added to the grid when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. This is something that can progress quickly. SSE is ready to progress with the Coire Glas scheme, and Drax is advancing plans to double output from the existing Cruachan dam pumped storage hydro plant. What is needed is a pricing mechanism to be agreed with the Government, like a carbon floor mechanism. I raised this with the previous Minister. Will the current Minister look at a pricing mechanism to allow pumped storage hydro to progress? It is a good use of renewable energy.

Wave and tidal turbine power—technology Scotland literally leads the world in— needs help to get to the next phase of scaling up. The industry requested a ringfenced sum of money in part 2 of the contracts for difference—round 4 is coming up shortly. Ringfencing money in part 2 has been done for floating offshore wind; all that the wave and tidal industry are asking for is the same ringfencing to allow them to compete and get a slice of the pie. It is believed that the Treasury blocked this ringfencing, which is ridiculous, considering that it would not have cost the Government any money. There is a risk that this technology will lose out and move abroad, and as happened with onshore wind, we will lose the opportunity to have the manufacturing set up in the UK and lose the export opportunities and growth that comes with that. Hopefully the Minister will listen the arguments. I would be more than happy to meet and discuss it, and he would be very welcome to meet industry representatives. Small changes could be made that will not cost the Government money, but could generate fantastic growth opportunities.

In Scotland’s commitments to the Paris climate change targets and net zero, we are genuinely leading the way. We were the first Government to set a net zero target with a date of 2045, the first to declare a climate emergency, and we have set up the Just Transition commission. Admittedly, we also did not meet our emissions target of a 55% reduction by 2020, a 51.5% reduction is still fantastic progress. In Europe, Scotland is second only to Sweden in terms of the scale of reduction achieved. Interestingly, one of the reasons Scotland missed its latest target is that the process under way of rewetting peatlands necessitates the removal of some trees. As the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) pointed out, Scotland is doing fantastically with peat bog and wetland restoration, as well as having a fantastic tree-planting operation.

When it comes to energy production, Scotland has led the way in decarbonisation; last year, 97% of equivalent electricity demand was produced by renewable energy—this is absolutely tremendous. We have ambitious plans and we are making them happen; they cannot nor should not be blocked by decisions made in Westminster. I appreciate the UK Government does have ambitious targets, but as the report from the CCC shows, more policy and further intervention from Government are required—and they are required sooner rather than later.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Dr Alan Whitehead, I think you need to limit your remarks to 45 minutes.