Extracts from Lords debate on Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions - May 2

Friday, 3 May 2019 07:23

Baroness Featherstone (LD):...Even if we manage to do everything in that report, we get to 93% by 2050. Yes, we can make it to zero carbon with that extra 7% reached by technological advancement, but we now need even more radical action. What would it take? I would say close your eyes, my Lords, but that is always a bit dangerous here. Just imagine, as the ordinary citizen leaves his or her home in the morning, the commute to work has changed radically. In large urban centres, there are...Request free trial

Baroness Featherstone (LD):...Even if we manage to do everything in that report, we get to 93% by 2050. Yes, we can make it to zero carbon with that extra 7% reached by technological advancement, but we now need even more radical action. What would it take? I would say close your eyes, my Lords, but that is always a bit dangerous here. Just imagine, as the ordinary citizen leaves his or her home in the morning, the commute to work has changed radically. In large urban centres, there are car pools of electric cars that anyone can rent, and rental, club and car-share ownership schemes have proliferated. People still occasionally own cars, but they use them far less and all cars are electric, with charging facilities available from most lampposts. Autonomous cars pick up and drop off from house to office and vice versa. Buses, tubes and trains are no longer the cattle trucks of yesteryear as people time-share slots to share familial roles, with many couples and non-couples sharing the working day. The third runway at Heathrow Airport never happened. A national anti-obesity campaign got everyone to get off their bus or Tube one stop early and walk, and separated cycle lanes are now in place on almost all major routes...

Lord Howell of Guildford (Con):...Secondly, we face a massive growth in electricity demand worldwide, not least from billions of people without any power at all. The future is electric. However successful we are with cheap renewables plus storage technology, which we must of course press ahead with, and however clever we are with conservation, electric cars, distributed energy resources, carbon capture and storage or any of the other very desirable technological improvements, the only way to meet this inevitable and huge demand will be through low-carbon nuclear power. Everyone knows that—it has been recognised throughout the world. France recognises it. It has now decided to delay the closure of its highly successful low-carbon nuclear electricity system to achieve zero emissions by 2050, in line with the aspirations of my noble friend Lord Deben. It cannot be done without keeping open part of its vast nuclear power low-carbon system. Germany is in a complete muddle. Having abandoned nuclear power, it is now seeing a higher level of coal-burning. CO₂ is rising, not falling, and it has ended up 50% dependent on Russian gas, which is highly dangerous...

Baroness Altmann (Con):...I will focus most of the rest of my remarks on the big challenge now, which is transport. Those emissions have actually been rising, partly as we are driving more but also because carmakers have not reduced emissions as quickly as they promised. Transport is now the sector with the highest level of emissions. I hope my noble friend the Minister will agree that this must change and that there is a huge opportunity for the UK to lead the world in the transition to electric vehicles. I declare an interest as a very happy driver of an all-electric car and I urge the Government to do more to promote this form of road transport and to get our market moving, as we are falling behind Europe’s leaders. Providing £1.5 billion for supporting low-emission vehicles through their Road to Zero strategy is a start. We are also investing £3.5 billion to reduce emissions from road transport but we need zero emissions, not just low emissions.

So far this year, fully electric vehicles have made up under 1% of new car sales. In Germany the figure is 1.7%, in the Netherlands it is 5% and in Norway, incredibly, 50%. This shows what can be done; there are significant benefits to the planet and to air quality for our citizens if we do so. The UK has more than 17,000 public charging points for electric vehicles, of which around 1,700 are rapid devices. This is an achievement, of course, but far more is needed. Without a better regionally spread network of charging points, we will not reach the leadership position and targets that we could achieve...

Lord Teverson (LD):...Heating, mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, is a big issue. We have got nowhere on that and we are still discussing it. I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, brought up transport. We are seeing emissions rise through use of white vans for mail order deliveries. While I have not looked at the sales, I have checked the stock of electric vehicles. What percentage of our total stock of motor transport is electric? It is 0.2%: one fifth of 1% of vehicles on our roads are electric, so we still have a huge distance to go. Sir John Armitt of the National Infrastructure Commission reminded us only last week that we absolutely must have a working infrastructure of charging points. That will give people the courage to buy electric vehicles because they will know that they can drive them anywhere. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, said, we do not have that at the moment...

Lord Grantchester (Lab):...Can the Minister map out the Government’s response? Will the Government update the Climate Change Act to incorporate the new targets from the Committee on Climate Change? Will the Government use the forthcoming environment Bill to set out new milestones and necessary action? Will the Government broaden the forthcoming White Paper on energy to set out the wide-response policy developments needed? The Minister today needs to start the answers, and the Government need to use the vehicles to answer pertinent questions such as: why are emission reductions diminishing year on year, falling by only 1.5% last year against 3.2% the year before and higher percentages in earlier years? Can the Minster explain why the UK’s emissions from industrial processes, waste management and even agriculture rose between 2016 and 2017? Can he answer how the Government will meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets? Can he explain why emissions in the transport sector are higher than they were in 2010; why electric vehicles represented only 2.7% of new car sales in the UK in 2018 against, for example, a high 31% in Norway; and does he take responsibility for the UK’s sluggish transformation of the transport sector?

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con):...As the House will be aware, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will publish an energy White Paper in the summer which will seek to address the challenges arising from the transformation of the energy system over the coming decades. That will be important, as many of my noble friends have pointed out; my noble friend Lady Altmann referred to electric cars and the strains they will put on the electricity system. The White Paper will take a long-term view of the energy requirements—up to 2050—consistent with what the Government wish to do on climate change...

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