Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

But that industry should be decarbonised. Whatever the noble Lord says, it goes exactly against what we as a nation have said about the future of coal. That brings disrespect, I am sad to say, on not just this Government but this country. That is why I believe this amendment is an important one to go forward.

If the Government cannot agree to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, on the name of the Oil and Gas Authority then there is absolutely no hope for the Bill. I also very much support the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I remind the Committee that the International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said at the end of last year:

“If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now—from this year.”

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 224 and 230 standing in my name. Before I do so, I shall make a supportive remark about Amendment 226 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley.

I remind the Committee, since it is such a long time since Second Reading back in July, that the context in which it was introduced was one of a very serious energy crisis. Whether or not we have a climate crisis is highly debateable, and many of us do not accept that alarmist language. However, that we undoubtedly had an energy crisis in the course of last year is absolutely manifest in the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary people living in this country. Although we have been assisted by the weather in having a very moderate winter and therefore less demand for domestic energy, none the less that energy crisis has not abated; prices remain extremely high and energy is in short supply. We all know the reprehensible reasons lying behind that and we condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine, but none the less there is no likelihood of it ending very soon, as far as anyone can see, and we have a very serious crisis. That is the background to the amendments that I am speaking to. It is remarkable that in the same group there are a number of other amendments that seek to cut off—radically, permanently and, by statute, for ever—access to energy supplies that we have available to us.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, was somewhat surprised that I should talk in Amendment 224—which I will speak to in more detail in moment—about increasing gas supply to reduce foreign dependency. The noble Baroness seems to think that we have a target of zero carbon emissions set in law in this country. We do not; we have a net-zero target and there is nothing that I am aware of in government policy that says that the use of some amounts of carbon, including gas, in our energy mix over the long term is not both foreseeable and acceptable, provided that it meets a net-zero target.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am grateful for that clarification. If the noble Lord is saying that the time has gone, that, it seems to me, is essentially a commercial and practical judgment. It may be right—I do not run a fracking company; I know very little in practice about fracking. It is possible that the time has gone in commercial terms, and that it might not be a sensible thing to do in current circumstances. None of that is grounds for ruling it out as a matter of statute and prohibiting it. It is complete nonsense to suggest doing that. We will leave fracking to one side for the moment.

I turn to Amendment 230, a much narrower and more technical probing amendment which relates to the composition of the domestic gas supply. It takes me back to my boyhood and the childhoods of a number of people in this Room, though not all, who might remember what life was like before we had North Sea gas pumped into our homes. We had town gas, which was produced from coal. Its content was a mixture of gases, including CH₄, CO, CO₂, H₂, higher-order hydrocarbons and phenols. The composition was adjusted according to the calorific value.

When we switched over to North Sea gas, the composition of the gas that we used became over-whelmingly methane, with a small amount of higher-order hydrocarbons. The switchover to using methane allowed the calorific value to be higher. Those of us with very long memories will recall that it was marketed as “high-speed gas”, which meant “hot”—it had a high calorific value, so you could cook that much faster. Moreover, we then put that composition into legislation, which I am grateful to the Library for finding for me: the Gas Safety (Management) Regulations 1996, which are referred to in my Amendment 230.

The result is that, today, a significant amount of gas that we could extract from the North Sea is not being extracted because it cannot be used in our domestic supply by law. In effect, a lot is going to waste. The proposal in this probing amendment is to ask the Government to reflect on this and consider whether, given the energy crisis we have been facing, it might not be sensible and possible to amend those regulations so that we could make use of many of these gases that are currently going to waste but could, none the less, be fed into our domestic system. It could mean that the calorific value would be a little lower in our cookers, so it might take a little longer to bake a cake—a number of television programmes might be affected by this in detail; the outcomes might change—but in terms of efficiency, at a time when we desperately need energy, it is certainly worth looking at.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I have listened to the noble Lord with some interest, but those of us with long memories remember the dangers inherent in the gas that was used before the date he was talking about and the number of suicides that took place. Does he think there is a health and safety issue to consider before going back to those days and that sort of gas?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

The name of the regulations that I am suggesting we review is the Gas Safety (Management) Regulations, so I fully acknowledge that this is a question of safety, but it is not necessarily the case that these regulations, passed in 1996, that we are still adhering to could not be looked at to see whether, precisely as I say in my amendment, they could be

“safely amended to allow more efficient use of extracted … gas.”

It may be that they cannot but, nearly 30 years on, it would be helpful if the Government could look more closely at this.

My principal point in raising these amendments relates to Amendment 224. A bit like the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, earlier, I want to know whether the Government have a strategy for resilience. Do they contemplate the dependence on foreign supplies going on endlessly in very large measure, and what would they like to do about it? I think that an awful lot of people in this country were shocked to discover our level of dependency on imports and would like to hear that we are becoming more self-sufficient.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, may I address some of the noble Lord’s responses to my comments earlier? It is clear to me that we have a fundamental difference of opinion on the science behind climate change. I believe that climate change is real, as is shown by the change we are experiencing. What evidence can the noble Lord point to that climate change is not real? There is substantial evidence of it, including the unprecedented levels of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as verified by ice core samples from the Antarctic and tree rings over millennia. The changes in carbon dioxide correlate precisely to the changes in climate that we have seen in historic times. That is the basis on which my amendments have been tabled, and they are clearly designed to meet the Government’s legal duties under the Climate Change Act and their need to reduce oil and gas consumption to meet net zero by 2050. The noble Lord’s amendment talks about a strategy for increasing domestic gas production. That cannot be compatible with meeting climate change targets—the Government have a legal duty to do that. Will the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, please accept that?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am grateful for those points, which I will try to answer briefly since they were put to me directly.

First, I hope that nothing in what I said suggested, implied or stated that I do not accept that climate change is happening. I am also perfectly happy to accept that there is a man-made contribution to that. What I reject is the language of climate alarmism and climate crisis. The questions around the consequence, in practice, of climate change and the best means for dealing with it remain absolutely open. Over the last 20 years, we have seen wild, extravagant and unjustified claims about how large parts of the world are going to sink under water and we are all going to scorch; in fact, we see very little of that, but we see a few weather events being played up as if they are great catastrophes. Even if that were happening, the question that arises is what you do about it.

Many of us would rather put the emphasis on mitigation and adaptation rather than what we are doing at the moment, which is absolutely damaging our economy, in order that we should try to avoid those emissions. The cost of that damage to our economy has been estimated by the Climate Change Committee as at least 1% of GDP per annum—most people recognise, I think fairly, that it is closer to 4% or 5%. There are those who would say that that that cost is both necessary and justified, but it is none the less a damage to our economy, and not all of us accept that it is necessary and justified—we think that there are other methods of dealing with it.

I have not rejected climate change. I accept that net zero is a statutory target—I said nothing contrary to that. If I may repeat myself—this is my fault entirely; it is the problem with having an amateur such as myself drafting amendments—I apologised when I spoke for using the word “increase”, which I can change if we come back to this on Report. That was not quite what I meant; I meant increase relative to imports, such that I explained that my amendment would be applicable even if our consumption of gas was falling.

There is not that much in the substance of the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, made about my remarks. None the less, we have a profound disagreement—less about the science and more about what to do about it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, rising to speak after the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his representation of an extremely minority view, I will restrain myself and simply say that there will be no jobs on a dead planet. I will leave it there.