Clean Energy Transition Guidance

Lord Oates Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

As I said, the guidance document was very tightly worded and there is a set of tightly defined criteria that must be met before any support for unabated gas power is approved. This judgment as to whether the criteria are met will be based on all available evidence sought from the relevant project sponsor, the financing institution, the partner Government and the advice of experts in the relevant department or departments. Based on this evidence, and in borderline cases with the approval of relevant Ministers, proposals will be judged either to meet the tightly defined criteria and approved or not. I am afraid I have no knowledge of the intention to introduce a traffic light system.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

Will the Government use the opportunity of the G7 meeting later this week and COP 26 at the end of the year to seek international support for reform of the capital requirement and Solvency II regulations, so that risk weightings relating to the funding of fossil fuel exploration and exploitation adequately reflect the macroprudential risk that such activities pose to the international financial system and the global economy as a whole, not to mention the future of the planet?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question and might write to him on some of the detail. I can say that the UK is a leader in ambitious climate action, both domestically, with the most ambitious emissions-reduction target in the group, and internationally, doubling our international climate finance to £11.6 billion from 2021 to 2025. This policy decision and its swift implementation demonstrate our commitment and, over the coming months, we will work closely with like-minded partners to see similar principles adopted elsewhere. When the Prime Minister launched the UK’s presidency of COP 26 in February last year, he pledged our ambition for COP 26 to be the point where the world comes together,

“with the courage and the technological ambition to solve man-made climate change”.

We want to see our policy act as a catalyst for others, while still providing finance for the right projects in countries that desperately need power.