Climate Change: COP 26

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I associate myself fully with the words of congratulation and thanks to my noble friend Lady Young, to Alok Sharma and to the Minister.

I have made no secret of my admiration for the work of UK Fires, a five-year research programme, involving academics from six universities and a growing industrial consortium, focusing on resource efficiency as the key means of reducing emissions. They have done a simple, compelling analysis of the COP 26 agreed solutions for delivering zero emissions by 2050 and have come to the devastating conclusion that they cannot and will not be delivered while the mechanisms required to deliver a safe climate continue to be overlooked. They say that, as a result, the mechanisms of policy and finance have been activated in pursuit of an unrealisable solution. Unless this changes, billions of people living near the equator face the probability that they will starve this century. Their countries cannot provide sufficient food, nor purchase it, while the rich nations will be plunged into an entirely unnecessary energy austerity.

The argument behind this is very simple. I shall attempt to summarise it, but the expanded version is available online for anyone who wishes to read it in detail. If the incumbent companies of today’s high-emitting sectors and their political supporters are to deliver climate mitigation as assumed at COP 26, their non-emitting technology substitution can rely on only three fundamental resources: non-emitting electricity, carbon capture and storage, and biomass. The necessary total demand for these resources will vastly exceed future supply. Averaged over the world, we have 4 kilowatt hours per day of clean electricity per person, growing at 0.1 kilowatt hours per day annually. However, the COP 26 plan requires 32 kilowatt hours per day. We have 6 kilograms per year of carbon capture and storage per person, growing at 0.1 kilograms per year. The COP 26 plan requires 3,600 kilograms per year. We eat 100 kilograms of plant-based food per person each year, but producing enough biokerosene to fly at today’s levels requires 200 kilograms of additional harvest. “Don’t worry—we will just expand the supply faster,” say the authors of this technology fiction. It is too late. It takes time to plan and deliver large energy infrastructures. For example, Hinkley Point C will have taken at least 22 years from political commitment to commissioning. Hornsea 2 wind farm will take 16 years.

We already know the maximum possible capacity of non-emitting electricity generation that we will have in the UK by 2030. We are not on course to maintain even the linear growth rate of the past decade. We have no carbon capture and storage operating in the UK. We cannot expand—indeed we should stop—the use of biomass because it harms other peoples and ecosystems. It is a painful truth that the incumbent high-emitting sectors cannot deliver a zero emissions future in the time available. Rather than facing this, COP 26 perpetuated the fiction.

There is a credible, socially acceptable path to a safe zero emissions future, based solely on a realistic continued expansion of our non-emitting electricity generation. This requires electrification of all energy uses, while reducing the total demand for electricity by around 50% and closing anything which unavoidably releases emissions, particularly in land use and specific agricultural and industrial processes. Temporary restraint, lasting for a few decades, is an essential and unavoidable component of delivering real zero emissions in developed countries. Pretending this is not the case and not talking about it does not take away the reality.

On 20 October, when Boris Johnson launched the net zero strategy, he pledged that Britain would meet its ambitious net zero targets

“without so much as a hair shirt in sight.”

He said that by 2050 we would

“still be driving cars, flying planes and heating our homes, but our cars will be electric … planes will be zero emission … and our homes will be heated by cheap, reliable power”.

I ask the Minister to put that behind him, engage with reality, outline the physically achievable pathways to zero emissions, both in the UK and globally, and that our Government begin the essential discussion with the public about the real path to a safe future climate—one that does not come at the cost of the mass starvation of the poorest.