Climate Change and Flooding

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I entirely agree. The renewables sector needs certainty and it has had the rug whisked away from underneath it. There is some incredibly innovative work being done. I visited Ecotricity in Stroud yesterday, to hear about Dale Vince’s proposals not just for building on his excellent work in the renewables sector but for going far beyond that. We must encourage the sector. This is where the high-tech, high-skilled, well-paid jobs of the future are and the Government ought to be doing more to encourage them.

We must acknowledge that the individual pledges made at Paris do not add up to a commitment to keep temperature rises below 2°. We must keep asking what more we can do by way of mitigation and consider what further adaptation to climate change is needed. Domestically, it is clear that the UK is not doing enough. Contributing to the global climate fund does not mean the UK can absolve itself of all responsibility, or pass the buck to developing nations.

While the international community is moving forward, the UK has gone backwards. The Government have axed the carbon capture and storage fund, worth billions of pounds. They have blocked new wind farms and cut energy efficiency programmes drastically by 80% and they propose cutting support for solar power by 90%. They are also selling off the UK Green Investment Bank without protecting its green mandate. They are increasing taxes on our more efficient cars and they are scrapping the zero-carbon standard for new homes. Their preoccupation with fossil fuels and fracking, as I mentioned, means they have threatened the future of our renewable energy industry and we have lost thousands of green jobs.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The hon. Lady says that the UK is not doing enough. Can she tell the House of one other OECD country that has reduced its carbon emissions by as much as the UK since 1990—just one other OECD country that has done that?

[Kerry McCarthy]

As the hon. Gentleman says, the UK has a proud record on tackling climate change, not least due to the leadership shown by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) with the groundbreaking Climate Change Act 2008. However, we are now coasting on that historical record and we need to do much more. We are not on course to meet our targets, so we need to do more.

The chairman of the Committee on Climate Change had no alternative but to conclude last month that the Government’s existing energy policy was clearly failing, and the CBI has said that British businesses need clarity. Businesses need to know that the Government are serious about climate change and will not make superficial claims about being green, only to U-turn on key environmental policies.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I do not have a direct constituency interest in this subject, but I want to talk about Paris. It is a pleasure to follow the last two Labour speakers, the right hon. Members for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). Much as I commend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for the work she has done, I am afraid that my analysis of Paris is not quite so sanguine as the opinions we have so far heard.

It is not true that the INDCs add up to a 2.7 °C limit. That analysis is somewhat dishonest because it is based only on contributions continuing further on a basis to which countries have not committed themselves. The right hon. Member for Don Valley called Paris a “universally binding” agreement, but it is not binding on anybody. That does not mean it is not a good start, and we have to start somewhere, but the fundamental point is that if the world had adopted the Climate Change Act in the way the shadow Secretary of State said, we would be on track for a rise of 1.5 °C. The United Nations framework convention on climate change says that to get to the limit of a 1.5 °C rise the world must reduce carbon emissions by between 75% and 90%, while the Climate Change Act states 80%. A fair challenge would be that developing countries find it much harder to do than developed countries. I accept that China, India and such countries need more slack, so the implication is that we perhaps need to go further, which is where some of the right hon. Lady’s numbers come from.

I want to spend the minutes available to me in analysing the performance of the developed countries at Paris, and particularly of the EU. One of the most startling factors about the INDCs that were put into the mix in Paris is that the EU submission for a 40% reduction over 40 years—1% a year, as it were—is 33% slower than the reduction demanded by the Climate Change Act and its resulting budgets. That is not all, however, because if we take out the UK bit of that EU INDC, the implication is that the rate of reduction will be between 40% and 45% slower than that for the UK. That is odd: what do other EU countries find so difficult about reducing emissions that we apparently do not find difficult? Parts of the EU are developing, relatively speaking, because they are catching up in terms of GDP. It might be reasonable for countries such as Poland and Romania to be given more slack. However, the truth is that countries such as Romania have made the most rapid reductions, so that is not the issue. Romania has made big reductions, because the 1990 baseline coincided with a period when its industry needed to be sorted out.

The issue is in the developed countries such as Austria, which has increased its emissions by 20% since 1990, and Ireland, Holland, Spain and Portugal, none of which have reduced their emissions since 1990. The House has criticised the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for a lack of ambition, yet we are part of an EU submission to a global conference that puts up with that kind of thing. I ask her to address why that can happen and what sanctions there are on those countries within the EU aegis that can stop it happening.

There are reasons why it is happening. Some countries have banned nuclear power. Some have banned carbon capture and storage. It is not that they have just not invested in it—it is illegal in some countries. CCS is illegal in Germany and it is building brand new unabated coal power stations. Its emissions are a third higher than ours per capita and per unit of GDP.

[Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[David Mowat]

Yes, thank you.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I wonder whether he could expand further on the points he is making, because I am finding them most interesting.

[David Mowat]

My hon. Friend is always a team player. The extra minute will be put to great use.

The EU, taken collectively and not including us, failed abysmally to put forward at Paris anything close to what the right hon. Member for Doncaster North said, probably rightly, would need to be delivered to achieve 1.5°. We have to understand what the sanctions are for that, but the reasons are many and varied.

The EU got completely bogged down, as Members of this House sometimes do, in a fixation with renewables and renewables targets, rather than thinking about a carbon reduction target. Countries have put in place considerable renewables, but continue to burn coal at scale. The truth is that if we replaced coal with gas globally, it would be equivalent to increasing the renewables in the world by a factor of five. There are many points like that.

The fundamental point, which the Secretary of State will have to address in her high ambition coalition, which presumably does not contain Austria, is that we must ensure some fairness. Otherwise, places such as Redcar and Motherwell will have to get used to what has happened to those places, and that really is not right.