Queen’s Speech

Earl of Leicester Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

My Lords, by my calculations I was due to speak in five minutes, so we have all done incredibly well to keep to time, or indeed to make five minutes up. I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular farming and renewable energy production.

Renewables are a passion of mine, and as a country we are heading in the right direction. The Government are leading the way in decarbonising the economy, and the biggest win is the national energy infrastructure, which has cut CO₂ emissions by 76% in the last 10 years.

The Prime Minister said that the sale of petrol and diesel cars should be banned by 2030. That led, of course, to the sale of electric vehicles outstripping the sale of conventional cars in the last two to three months. That is very laudable, but I refer to the example of Covid vaccines. When Covid came in in March 2020, or probably even a little later, we were told that we would not get vaccines for three years. Thanks to the ingenuity of the human race, we got them in nine months. I wonder whether it would not have been wiser for the Prime Minister to say to the automotive industry, “If by 2030 you cannot not produce a car that does 250 miles per gallon on a petrol engine”—your Lordships might say 300—“it will be banned.” The industry would have achieved it, and then we would have had a balance of electric, clean petrol, and, I hope, hydrogen cars too.

We will still need oil; we still have oil. You will remember from science lessons the refractory tower. At the top of it comes aviation fuel—avgas. I cannot see commercial jet aeroplanes flying on batteries for the next 40 to 50 years. At the bottom of that tower, tar comes off, which we need for making bitumen to build new—and indeed repair—roads.

We need a balance of energies in our national energy system. Mercifully, renewable energies are indeed now the cheapest source—especially wind and solar, but also biomass and ground and air source heat pumps. But until we have built up reliable battery storage—with technology and ingenuity we will get there—we will need gas for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. The great advantage of gas with regard to national energy is that you can switch it on in minutes and ensure that everybody still has electricity. We will need oil, nuclear and maybe even one or two coal-fired power stations—one in Cumbria springs to mind. I say this as someone who is passionate about renewables and the environment.

Some may say that we do not have time; the clock is ticking. What if I am wrong? Well, I say the safety net is regenerative agriculture. We cannot legislate to make all farmers regenerative, but the volatility of energy prices and the sky-high prices now of artificial nitrogen caused by the war in Ukraine are making more and more farmers consider how they farm. Groundswell, the regenerative farming show, now outstrips Cereals as one of the most popular farming shows to go to. The Oxford Real Farming Conference now sells more tickets than the traditional Oxford Farming Conference.

Regenerative agriculture respects mother nature and uses fewer expensive chemical inputs. Soil fertility, natural nitrogen and water retention all build up, as does, crucially, biodiversity. If all the farmers of the world converted to a regenerative system—I appreciate that it is a fairly big ask, but in third-world countries many systems are regenerative because they have not been lured over by artificial nitrogen—we would sequester carbon at scale and solve the problem of climate change in two to three years.