Lord Lilley
Main Page: Lord Lilley (Conservative - Life peer)
Mr Davey
I probably will not answer the last part of that question, because the Foreign and Commonwealth Office might want to have a word with me. On the first part of my hon. Friend’s question, Austria has reportedly been considering taking the European Commission to court, to judicially review its state aid decision. We are confident that that decision was taken in a robust way and we were very supportive of it.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Given that Germany obtains a higher proportion of its energy from renewables than we do, why is it that it has higher emissions per head and that those emissions are rising as it replaces nuclear with lignite-burning coal-fired power stations?
Mr Davey
A number of final investment decisions were taken around 2007, before the 2020 agreement, and they are now resulting in some coal power stations coming online. Since then, however, almost all of the proposals for new coal power stations in Germany have been turned down. My right hon. Friend is right to say that there is an effect, but in the long term I am clear, from talking to German Ministers, that they will get their carbon emissions on a downward trajectory.