Fossil Fuel Extraction

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it. Although she will probably be aware that we differ on some points, it is useful even at this late hour to talk about a number of the issues she has highlighted and to respond to some of the questions she has asked.

It is important to note, and I am glad the hon. Lady did at points acknowledge this to some extent, that the transition to non-fossil forms of energy will take time. While our demand for both oil and gas is already declining as we transition to other low-carbon energy sources, UK energy demand for both those fuels will continue for quite some time. That needs to be recognised, acknowledged and understood in public policy development and implementation.

If we announced right now that, from when we come back to this place tomorrow morning, our domestic oil and gas producers should shut up shop—[Interruption.] I accept the hon. Lady did not advocate that, but if we did, it would simply make the UK more reliant on foreign imports. It would not, in fact, lead to greater decarbonisation globally. Jobs would be lost and it would weaken our security of supply. Equally, there are shades of that scenario that remain true even if the hon. Lady indicates that she does not want to do it tomorrow, but at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will make some progress, if I may. That was the inference of the speech by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion at other points.

Whether we like it or not, gas at the moment is the glue that holds our electricity system together. It provides the flexibility that has underpinned our roll-out of renewable energy. That is why we consistently see 30% or 40% of our energy on many days in 2022 provided by renewables rather than by fossil fuels. While we are using progressively less gas, it remains an important fuel during the transition.

As a mature basin, which the UK continental shelf is, where some fields are at the end of their lives, production will decline. That does not necessarily mean that there will not be continued development. It is legitimate both to accept the principle of decline and still to ensure that we develop and give the opportunity to develop where we can. Some of the things we have seen in recent months would indicate that it is sensible, in a long-term phase of reducing oil and gas production, that we seek to maximise oil and gas production in or close to the United Kingdom, rather than elsewhere.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will not give way, because I do not have a huge amount of time left.

In taking that time and accepting that time will be needed to get there, we must also have confidence in the story we have to tell as a country. We have made significant progress in the past 30 years, under Governments of all colours: emissions down 40%, the economy up by nearly 80%, renewables now making up nearly 40% of our electricity generation in 2021, up from 7%, and by far the most advanced decarbonisation of any western country.

Those are not things just to be tossed aside as if they were inconsequential. They are important indicators of the desire and intent of this Government, building on the desire and intent of previous Governments, to make progress in this important policy area. I hope they provide some indication, if not to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion and the tradition she is from, then to others who may be watching the debate, that we are serious about it and that we intend to ensure that we make good progress.

With that in mind, I turn to some of the questions the hon. Lady asked of the Government. She asked whether we would commit to any new extraction and when we would commit to a date for UK fossil fuel production finally ending. I would say gently to her that her question fundamentally misunderstands the challenges we face and what we are trying to do over the long term.

The ultimate goal is to get to a point where we are using as little fossil fuel as possible, but we are still in a transition, as the hon. Lady said, so we will need fossil fuels over the course of the 28 years she outlined. It therefore seems sensible to look at what we can extract in or near the United Kingdom. Even when we get to that 2050 date, although she did not discuss this terribly much, it is clear that we will still need fossil fuels at that point. It is a net zero; it is not an absolute zero. Even the documents that she has pointed to, such as the reports by the IEA and the Committee on Climate Change, all indicate that there will still be a requirement for oil and gas, with the relevant offsetting technologies, to be able to minimise the impact on the environment. I see the grand gestures of incredulity from those on the Opposition Benches. When the hon. Lady quotes from those documents, she should also acknowledge that within them there is a recognition that there will still be a requirement for oil and gas, and that extractive technologies to support and minimise the use of fossil fuels will mitigate their impact on the environment and on our earth over the long term.

The hon. Lady asked whether I would advocate for the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. I am afraid that I will not, because my concern, having looked at the treaty, is not with its objective—because I think most of us agree with the overall principle of where we are trying to end up, when we pull back the hyperbole, the emotion, the emoting and all the like—but with the challenges underneath it and the scrutiny that we need to place on some of these discussions, which is useful in order to understand the different approaches to this. The authors of the non-proliferation treaty, Simms and Newell, in what they wrote in 2018, are not just talking about changes and achieving this in pulling together a treaty, but saying that the treaty has underneath it a clear lowering of demand, a clear lowering of material consumption, and clear changes to people’s diets. Ultimately, there are questions of choice, individual agency and personal responsibility that the treaty is seeking to gloss over.

Ultimately, one has to choose one’s own approach. I respect and accept the hon. Lady’s approach and I am grateful for her contribution. I think we do have shared aims, but we have to agree on much of the content of this. We want to get to the same place. However, this Government are trying to put the rhetoric and the complaints aside, and to base this on the reality of how we are trying incrementally, carefully and in a sustained way to reduce our impacts on the world as a whole—to tread more lightly on the earth but also to recognise that that will take time, to acknowledge that we have great opportunities in our country to get there, and to recognise that we are in a transition rather than an extinction.

Ultimately, my concern about the hon. Lady’s speech is that it was very long on critique and very short on answers. Those who oppose have a responsibility to propose. We have a set of plans, a set of frameworks, a set of documents and a set of strategies that are seeking to get us to the end point of this and do it in a cool, calm and incremental way. I look forward to those on the Opposition Benches making such proposals some time so that we can do the same critique that has been done today, because they will not hold up to what we have been able to achieve so far, what we are doing today, and what we seek to achieve in years to come.

Question put and agreed to.