UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC490-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE
ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE
BUDGET 2004
Tuesday 30 March 2004
PROFESSOR SIR DAVID KING and MS CLAIRE DURKIN
Evidence heard in Public Questions 94-175
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee
on Tuesday 30 March 2004
Members present
Mr Peter Ainsworth, in the Chair
Mr Colin Challen
Mr David Chaytor
Mrs Helen Clark
Sue Doughty
Paul Flynn
David Wright
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Witnesses: Professor or Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government and Head of Office of Science and Technology, and Ms Claire Durkin, Director, Head of Energy Innovation and Business Unit, Department of Trade and Industry, examined.
Q94 Chairman: Good morning, Sir David.
Professor Sir David King: Good morning, Chairman.
Q95 Chairman: Thank you very much for joining us. Could you introduce your colleague?
Professor Sir David King: Yes, I have brought Claire Durkin along, who is Director and Head of the Energy Innovation and Business Unit in the DTI.
Q96 Chairman: You are both welcome. We want to look today at the whole question of climate change and your approach to that, and also touch on energy policy as well. I will, if I may, open up by asking a question which I am sure you are expecting and have probably answered before, which is whether or not you stand by the remarks that you made in your article for Science magazine where you said that you believe climate change was a more serious threat than terrorism?
Professor Sir David King: And to add in the word that was included there, "even". I say that because I cover all of science in government and this, of course, includes our post-9/11 activities - setting up a working group to examine our resilience to post-9/11 type activities - and this became formalised as the Science Advisory Panel for Emergency Response, which I chair. So I work very hard on that front. Nothing I said was intended to underplay the importance of that agenda. My direct answer to you is no, I do not withdraw any of those comments, nor have I been asked to. At the same time, what I was trying to draw attention to was the severity of the warnings from climate change scientists at the moment. I will not spend too much time on this, but if we look back in time for the globe we probably have to go back 55 million years before we find carbon dioxide levels as high as we are now at, and, of course, our carbon dioxide levels are still rising. Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals, because it was the coolest place, and the rest of the earth was rather inhabitable because it was so hot. It is estimated that it was roughly 1,000 parts per million then, and the important thing is that if we carry on business as usual we will hit 1,000 parts per million around the end of this century. So it seems to me that it is clear on a global and geological scale that climate change is the most serious problem we are faced with this century. The science is telling us about it. We are beginning to put together what we have to do to meet the problem, and it is now a question of policy makers getting together internationally and dealing with it.
Q97 Chairman: You are absolutely clear that the cause of this lies with mankind's activities and not with some natural phenomenon?
Professor Sir David King: Yes. This is an extremely complex problem and there are at least 1,000 scientists who have, over the last 200 years, contributed to our understanding of the earth's climate system, but there is a very, very strong consensus that the .6 to .7oC global temperature rise that we have seen over the last 100 years is largely attributable to anthropogenic effects; it is attributable, largely, to increased production of carbon dioxide, methane, NOx, SOx, and CFCs - all of these larger molecules which are greenhouse gases.
Q98 Chairman: Going back to the comparison you made with terrorism, which I think has been criticised as an unhelpful comparison by government sources, what precisely prompted you to draw that particular comparison? Were you thinking in terms of the number of people who have already died as a result of global warming and rising water levels, or the potential number of people who may be affected in the future? Were you drawing a numerical comparison in terms of a scale of tragedy?
Professor Sir David King: Let me first of all respond by saying I join in the criticism of the response to that sentence, in the sense that it is not fruitful to discuss whether terrorism is a more difficult problem than climate change; I think we have to get on and deal with each of these major challenges. At the same time, I think I have just spelt out why I think that the climate change issue is such a tremendous challenge to all of our societies. Yes, 31,000 excess fatalities in Europe during last summer's heat wave. We have extreme events that we always have had and always will, but the frequency of these extreme events is going to increase with time, and is already increasing with time. So we can look at these events and say these are climate-change related events. Equally, the flooding that we had two years previously. Climate change scientists have made it quite clear that linkages between severe flooding and severe hot summers are climate-change anticipated effects.
Q99 Chairman: It was reported after your article appeared that No 10 attempted to gag you or to stifle your remarks - shut you up in some way. Were you aware of that?
Professor Sir David King: I certainly read about it in the papers but there was ----
Q100 Chairman: Did you experience it as well as read about it?
Professor Sir David King: You will not be surprised to know that I am sometimes amazed at how the media report things as compared with how I actually experience them. For example, my trip to the United States was arranged through the Government, through the Foreign Office, through the Embassy in Washington more than one year in advance of that trip. The preparation included my article in Science, which is the official magazine of the AAAS (American Association of the Advancement of Science). That was a trailer to my presentation, and whole thing was deliberate and planned from the centre. I thought that we had a good plan in operation. I gave media briefings and I was quoted quite widely in the American press verbatim on what I said at those briefings. So to say that I was gagged is a misunderstanding. However, there was a leak of a particular document. I have to say my response to that is that everyone in my position, or minister in government, receives a briefing and advice on every appearance, such as I have for this appearance. I take it as useful back-up information to go through, but at the same time no more; it is not instructions but very useful to have professional advice, for example, from press offices.
Q101 Chairman: You were not discouraged from doing any interviews?
Professor Sir David King: In terms of the strategy of getting our message across, there was a clear piece of advice about whom I should speak to, in terms of the media. My focus was on the American media.
Q102 Chairman: I heard reports, for example, that the National Environmental Trust of America tried to get you to do some interviews and was told by government officials that you were not available.
Professor Sir David King: That really is the first I have heard of that. I find it very difficult to understand, in view of what I have just said. I gave three media briefings in Seattle and I took a team of UK and American scientists with me on that trip. One of the media reports was that not since the Beatles have the British had such an invasion of the United States. That was the headline on one of the newspaper reports. So to suggest that we were dong this under cover is rather contrary to what actually happened.
Q103 Chairman: Do you accept there may be a conflict between diplomacy, on the one hand, and driving home the very important powerful message that you had for the American Government?
Professor Sir David King: I do accept that. If we are working to achieve an aim, whether this is done in the public domain or not in the public domain is a critical question of strategy. Yes, your point is a very good one.
Q104 Chairman: Do you think in order to drive the message home, because it does not appear that the American Administration have quite bought it, that you will be going to America again and using further media opportunities to spread the word?
Professor Sir David King: Yes, I am going to America again to discuss issues with the American Government and since January have been back again. I understand the thrust of your question, and in response I would say that my meetings did not indicate from the American Government side that the comments I had made had deterred them in their discussions. I would say far from it; the understanding of the importance of this issue is developing in the United States.
Q105 Chairman: So you think your visit there was a success; that you made some progress in converting hearts and minds?
Professor Sir David King: The presentation in Seattle was rather a surprise to me in the sense that it was made in one of these political arenas that they have in the United States. There must have been more than 1,000 seats in the congress hall, every seat was full and I was given an ovation at the end. I was speaking to movers and shakers in the United States, so the effort to trail what I was doing paid off, I think, very handsomely.
Q106 Mr Challen: Is that because, perhaps, they wanted to hear from you, an official representative of our government, something they are not hearing from their own government?
Professor Sir David King: I did not take the applause as a personal accolade to myself, so your question is quite right. I think it was an accolade for the British Government in taking a leading role in dealing with climate change. The fact that I was able to announce that the British Government is intent on reducing CO2 emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 and that we are not waiting for other countries to come with us, we are moving ahead on that programme, I think went down well. Interestingly, American comment from the scientific and technological community was "We mustn't let Britain get ahead on this game", meaning that if we start carbon trading we are going to get ahead on that and economic benefits will flow to us. If we start reducing emissions then carbon trading will necessarily benefit us but, also, the technologies that will emerge from our R&D programme.
Q107 Mr Challen: Was that a reaction from fellow scientists and environmentalists, perhaps, in that audience, or were there Administration officials who also felt that way? There seems to be plenty of evidence to the contrary; if you look at Dick Cheney's Energy Taskforce they stand to be willing (?) to contemplate following our lead.
Professor Sir David King: Yes, and there are two forces at work, pulling in opposite directions, I believe. If we look at the Department of Energy in the United States they now have an enormous budget to work on their hydrogen economy and to work on carbon dioxide sequestration. The research budget to develop the technologies that are required is in place, and if, for example, the Department of Energy was then given an instruction from the top to join the British, I think they would have everything in place to do it.
Q108 Chairman: It is a question of political will, is it not?
Professor Sir David King: Absolutely.
Q109 Chairman: Do you, having had some success in persuading the Americans of the seriousness of the threat, believe that the British Government is fully seized and has the political will to take what may be very difficult decisions in order to address the problem?
Professor Sir David King: I am quite sure of that, yes.
Q110 Chairman: I only ask because when I asked the Prime Minister about your Science article at the Liaison Select Committee back in February he did not seem entirely on top of it.
Professor Sir David King: That comment rather surprises me, Chairman. I am not questioning your observation but, nevertheless, when I took this job I very quickly made it clear to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet that I saw this as the biggest issue facing us and, on the question of research and development in energy, I very quickly set up a working group to report back to the Government on the state of energy research in the UK and what was required, and the Prime Minister was fully aware of all of my thinking and programming on that.
Chairman: We will come on in a minute to the extent to which we are either meeting or failing to meet some of the targets which have been set.
Q111 Mr Challen: The latest IPCC research has suggested that the impact of climate change might actually be worse than previously thought. Has there been more recent research in terms of that?
Professor Sir David King: What I was asked by the Chairman was: "What is the scientific consensus on the issue of global warming and its relationship to anthropogenic effects?" There is an enormous effort still to understand in detail the earth's climate system. We need to understand it so that we can project forward with greater certainty than we can now so that we can prepare for the irreversible effects that are in place already. Adapting to the effects of climate change is going to be crucial as we move ahead. I do think that considerably more research effort is gong to be required to achieve that. Britain is in lead in that process. The Hadley Centre and the Tyndall Centre together form a very powerful combination and the Americans, for example, at the Kennedy Centre (their leading centre), would acknowledge that our two centres are in the lead. I managed to sign an agreement with the Japanese that our Hadley Centre could work on the Earth Simulator, which is the world's biggest computer set up by the Japanese, and so we are moving to climate change modelling which is currently on a 275 x 275 kilometre pixel scale to a much smaller scale, bringing it down to 70 x 70, so that we can begin to make predictions on a local level to give governments of different countries advice on how best to act. Have I fully answered your question?
Q112 Mr Challen: Let us see if we can take it a bit further. Most lay people - and I think politicians always have lay people in mind when they are preparing their policies - think that climate change will be a gradual process, with a very long and shallow curve upwards. However, recent articles and reports have suggested that this might not be the case; there could be some very steep trajectories, if you like, with, perhaps, methane hydrates being released into the atmosphere, which have a far greater warming effect than carbon. How much effort is being made to look at those kinds of things and communicate the message to politicians, to governments, that that is a real threat?
Professor Sir David King: This was one of the issues that we raised on my trip to the States in January. What we know is that there are a number of effects that I will describe as non-linear, if I may, with large feedbacks going in the wrong direction. One such effect is that the melting of ice which contains no salt and the effect of melting the ice on the Polar caps (and, for example, the South Pole is now 40 per cent as thick as it used to be, so we are losing a lot of that ice) is that fresh water going into the saline water around it could affect the thermohaline current - our Gulf Stream. If it turned off the Gulf Stream we would paradoxically go into a mini-Ice Age in Europe, so our temperatures would drop by around 5 to 10oC. That is an effect that could happen quite suddenly. These non-linear feedback terms, instead of just allowing a curve to continue on an exponential growth (which is what our predictions are now), will suddenly lead to a rapid change. The Indian monsoon is another effect which could quite suddenly be switched off. So we are faced with sudden climate change events. We do not know, though, theoretically, how to handle the predictions on these; they are extremely complex calculations and the modelling of them is very complicated. What I would say is it is best not to test the system. For example, we feel that if we could keep our carbon dioxide levels at or below 500 parts per million it is unlikely that we will go quickly into these sudden events, but they are real. Another one - and perhaps the easiest to understand - is the loss of the tropical forests. There could be a point, and it is quite likely, where temperatures rise too much for the forest to continue to survive, so they go from being net absorbers of carbon dioxide to net emitters as the wood decomposes. So this, of course, would give a very sharp take-off to carbon dioxide levels. There has been much discussion about what happened 55 million years ago, and it is now relevant for us to understand that. There are two theses: one is that it was methane clathrates - these methane deposits at the bottom of the sea - that were heated up by the initial warming of the sea through climate change which suddenly bubbled up and gave rise to this hottest period in the globe's history back 200 million years, or it could have been the slow burning of peat forests around the globe, the simple burning of wood material, that produced masses of carbon dioxide. That second event is what we are in danger of reproducing now.
Q113 Chairman: When you use words like "sudden" and "rapid" in this context, what do you mean? Are we talking decades, centuries?
Professor Sir David King: Of course, in geological time centuries is quite sudden, so when we talk about temperatures rising to the point where the Greenland ice sheet will melt - the Greenland ice sheet has a large heat capacity which means that the process has a lot of inertia in it, so it will take some time. The ice on the Antarctic landmass is considerably bigger and would probably take about 1,000 years. The ice on the Greenland ice sheet is a more difficult one; it may take 50 to 200 years - we do not know. If the Greenland ice sheet melted, we are talking about a sea level rise of about 6 to 7 metres, so we would be withdrawing from London. The point is, it is not as if this is going to suddenly happen in 50 years' time; it is all happening now and it is all a process that has already begun.
Q114 Mr Challen: So it is very difficult to say how soon it might happen, but it could happen suddenly, which is leaving us, perhaps, in a very perplexing situation, not quite knowing how to deal with it.
Professor Sir David King: If I could interrupt, the best way of dealing with it is avoid testing it - do not go there. So keep carbon dioxide levels down to a reasonable level.
Q115 Mr Challen: If we are to limit global temperature rise to 2 per cent we obviously are assuming that we are going to reduce our emissions to a certain level. When must global emissions begin to fall in order to achieve that level?
Professor Sir David King: I think that as time passes our ability to contain the carbon dioxide levels is passing, so this is, at the moment, a moving target. The political necessity for action across the globe on this issue is, I think, the slow point. The technological necessity to produce alternatives to fossil fuel burning is a secondary point. I think the first is probably more difficult than the second - the social and political problem of getting international agreement on such a tough issue.
Q116 Mr Challen: Do you think we have got the balance right? In most government documents and European Union documents you will hear discussion about sustainable development, trying to get the balance between economic growth and the issues we are talking about this morning. Do you think we have the correct balance in those documents?
Professor Sir David King: I think that the European Union is absolutely on target. I hope that we hold to the targets. I hope that there is not a weakening at the knees as we move forward. In other words, I think, for example, the critical thing is we go into carbon trading with the European Union next year. Prodi is very keen to see that we do that and I hope he does manage to sustain it. The European Union is ahead of the game. We need to take the United States on board and Australia and Canada, and we need to take China and India in the long term. As a mater of fact, I am in discussions with members of all of those governments.
Q117 David Wright: Sir David, what is your perspective of the view in the developing world on these issues? Clearly there may be governments in the developing world who think we are pulling the ladder up in relation to technology; that we use high-polluting technology to advance our economies over hundreds of years and now we are turning round to the developing world and saying "Actually, guys, you can't join the club".
Professor Sir David King: I think I would turn your comment on its head, if I may. I was in India two weeks ago and I had a meeting with the Chinese here in London yesterday, and my intention in all those discussions was to say that we need North/South science and technology capacity-building in which we engage in knowledge transfer so that those countries can leapfrog into modern technologies and do not go through the development process that we went through. I think we have to understand that simply preaching to developing countries "you must cut back your emissions" is never going to work; we are simply going to get hackles up and rising, for understandable reasons. The West, as they call us, is responsible for most of the carbon dioxide emissions today; the United States is responsible for one quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. At the same time, in China their emission per person (if I take the tonnes of carbon dioxide produced in China, divided by the number of people) comes to about 2 tonnes per person; the UK is at about 9 tonnes per person and the United States is 21 tonnes per person. Therefore, you can see some justification in the Chinese saying to me "Why should we tackle the problem?" They themselves yesterday were saying that "However, we recognise we have a multiplier of 1.2 billion times that tonnage per person, and this is a very big number and our economy is growing fast. We need your technologies to leapfrog across." I think this is one issue that is driving this very strongly. Of course, the other issue, across the world - and the Chinese were talking to us about it yesterday - is the issue of security of supply. All countries are looking to gas supplies around the world. All countries recognise that oil supplies are actually finite and we are using them up at a rapid rate. So looking for alternative energy sources is not only driven in these countries by the climate change issue, however important that is, but also because they need energy for their economy to grow. If we can provide alternative energy sources, such as fusion power, then we have a means of going forward. I mention fusion power ----
Chairman: We are coming to this later.
Q118 Mr Challen: You said in your January article that you were setting up a team to look at how the UK could mitigate its carbon emissions. I wonder if you could give us a progress report on that. In particular, whether you have had a chance to look at the cost to the UK of doing so, and whether indeed in its remit you might be asking it to look at the principle of contraction and convergence to see if that is a workable proposal?
Professor Sir David King: Can I take the second question first? Contraction and convergence has definite attractions, but there, again, we are talking on a global scale and we are talking about an alternative to the Kyoto process with carbon emission trading. Contraction and convergence is a permit system where you can exchange permits between countries. In essence it is a trading system but it does look at developing countries, so they can be brought on board by allowing them to build up their CO2 emissions while developed countries reduce, but they should peak at a certain level. I can see the attraction in the whole process, but I have to emphasise that the only game signed up to internationally is Kyoto, and until we have those absent from the signatories coming forward and saying "We would rather discuss contraction and convergence", I think we have to work within the Kyoto agreement. That is the process that we are set on.
Q119 Chairman: If Kyoto does not make progress because of the reluctance of some countries (and we know who they are and where they live) to participate, contraction and convergence must be a viable alternative.
Professor Sir David King: I think it is a very interesting alternative, but as I say I think the key thing is that if those countries that are not satisfied that Kyoto is the way forward come to us at the negotiating table, I am happy for us to negotiate on that, and I believe our government is - as long as it is not seen to be a delaying tactic, because I think this is a matter of some urgency. The first part of your question I ducked, and this is really why I brought Claire Durkin with me. Would you like to take that?
Ms Durkin: You asked about the working group on climate change. We have set up, as a consequence of the White Paper, a cross-Whitehall group and a cross-Whitehall ministerial group, and as well as that an advisory group, which is looking the whole agenda of energy within climate change. It is specifically looking at energy - both, from my perspective, renewable energy, from Defra's perspective energy efficiency and, from the transport perspective, in terms of cleaner transport. So we have set up those groups and they are working well. In my experience it is the most effective joined-up working in terms of policy, but there is no question that it is a very long-term agenda and we have got a long way to go.
Q120 Mr Challen: Is there any point at which climate change, do you think, is going to become irreversible? If that is the case, how far off are we? Is it already, really, irreversible?
Professor Sir David King: It is already irreversible. Once you have got carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, again, the inertia of the system is such that it will stay up there. If we were to stop producing carbon dioxide net emissions worldwide, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere would not go down for many hundreds of years. So once it is up there it is very difficult to pull it down again.
Q121 Mr Challen: So, really, we should be doing a lot more than we already are. You might say that we are the leaders of the pack in Europe but even that is not enough. Would it not be better if we reacted, perhaps, as Roosevelt did? Professor Brown has written a book called Plan B (I do not know if you have come across it) referring to the way Roosevelt responded after Pearl Harbour, transforming the American economy to deal with a very clear threat, and that was achieved in 12 months. Why are we not doing that kind of thing ourselves if we are now facing an irreversible threat?
Professor Sir David King: I think your point is a good one, but it does require us to take the rest of the world with us. The UK, producing 2-3 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide, is a mere small player in the whole carbon dioxide emissions scenario. What is critically important is that we take all the players on to the stage with us.
Q122 Mr Challen: We cannot wait for the slowest person to get on to the boat. So we are all holding ourselves back because, on the other hand, businesses will say that we are making ourselves uncompetitive, and that I think has a more powerful voice in government than what we are talking about this morning. I do not know if you would agree with that statement.
Professor Sir David King: I think the analysis that Claire's group produced was to indicate that actually the financial disadvantage to the UK was likely to be relatively small. Of course, what we have to build on is the financial advantage of being first on the stage, which is that we do the RD&D that is required to get us there. We are not quite first; the Danes got there first and they are busy selling wind turbines around the world. I believe their turnover is about £2 billion a year. However, if we look, for example, at tidal and wave energy, I think we are world leaders already in that area, and there is plenty of tidal energy around.
Q123 Chairman: Before we congratulate ourselves too enthusiastically ----
Professor Sir David King: I did not mean to be.
Q124 Chairman: ---- it is worth remembering that CO2 emissions in the UK went up by 3 per cent last year. So we are not doing that brilliantly.
Professor Sir David King: As we move forward, I do not think any of us felt that we would be on a straight line down in carbon dioxide emissions. It is likely to be a very bumpy ride. Certainly the fact of emissions going up last year is not a good omen, but at the same time we are really in the first year of a process; it is only after the next five to ten years that we are really going to be able to see the outcomes properly.
Q125 Chairman: Are you confident that we will hit a downward trend?
Professor Sir David King: We will get a downward trend; we have already seen the downward trend. If we go back to 1990, which is the Kyoto starting point, we are 12 per cent down on greenhouse gases. We have already achieved our Kyoto objectives. As it gets further down the road it is going to get tougher. It is a very challenging scenario we have set ourselves.
Q126 Paul Flynn: You mentioned tidal power. Speaking from a constituency with the second-highest rise and fall in tide in the world in the Bristol Channel, it does seem to me we have neglected these renewables when there is enormous capacity for a whole range of ways of exploiting tidal power - not necessarily in big barrage things but also the lagoons and the mills (?) and the wave power machines, and so on - and, also, eventually getting pulses of electricity around the coast at different times which will form a base load of electricity. This tidal power does not figure even now, as far as I can see, in the Government's planning. Do you think this is an area where there is a great deal more that could be done?
Professor Sir David King: We are doing as much as I think we could do at this early stage of tidal power development. There are three or four companies which have now spun out of the various research activities and are into demonstration phases. You mentioned the barrages, which we all saw models of before. Wind turbines are coming in for a lot of criticism because of what they are doing to the environment, but the tidal barrages came in for the same sort of criticism. The latest developments are all under water so you do not see a thing. These are all turbines that are placed under water with all of the power being driven on land beside the river- or the waterbed. The main advantage of tidal is not only the enormous amount of energy carried up and down the Bristol Channel, for example, every day, but the moon is rather reliable, so we know exactly how much energy we are going to get in a given 24-hour period from each of these turbines. With wind energy, Chairman, it is not quite so reliable, it is intermittent. So it is a very, very important source of energy. The problem is we are still in the early phase of development, but it would be very good if we could see tidal turbines - incidentally, the most interesting of tidal turbines with no moving parts under water, just big funnels that narrow down and produce a large stream of water which drives the turbine above the ground with, therefore, low maintenance costs. I think there are a lot of exciting things happening. For example, the Canadian Government Minister of Science came to discuss our developments in relation to their potential use of tidal energy. It may be five or ten years before we see the first commercial turbines. It is going to be a long development process.
Q127 Mrs Clark: Do you actually think that the majority of people outside, the public - people who are not in the Palace of Westminster and in this Committee and having this discussion - understand or even believe the likely impact of climate change? I would contend that to them it is just a phrase. I have been in here for seven years and I have never had it mentioned by a single constituent, and not even Friends of the Earth in the constituency have mentioned it.
Professor Sir David King: What you have mentioned there is the biggest challenge in relation to the climate change issue. Because it is happening on a rapid geological scale but a very slow scale in terms of our lifetime, we all adapt year-on-year to the effects and so it is not a major effect. If you contrast, for example, CFCs and the depletion of the ozone layer, there was an immediate understanding of the potential severity of the problem, and the solution was also very clear. In this case we have politically a much more difficult problem.
Q128 Mrs Clark: Whose responsibility actually is it? Is it the Government's, individual Members of Parliament, science, the media?
Professor Sir David King: All of us.
Q129 Mrs Clark: Are we not all passing the buck?
Professor Sir David King: I suppose the weight of the responsibility lies on my shoulders.
Q130 Mrs Clark: So it is all down to the Government, in that case.
Professor Sir David King: If I may say so, Mrs Clark, it is yours as well.
Q131 Mrs Clark: Would you like to develop your own role in promoting understanding for us?
Professor Sir David King: I have a wonderful job in government, but it does cover all aspects of science, engineering, medicine and technology in all government departments and, in addition, the science and engineering base - the research council funding. As much as I would like to take this on, I would need to be cloned in order to put the amount of effort into it that I think is required. At the same time ---
Q132 Mrs Clark: Surely you have got to move out from the realms of, perhaps, rather obscure lectures and scientific journals, which the vast majority of people never see. I certainly do not see them.
Professor Sir David King: Of course you do not.
Q133 Chairman: Of course, it is not helped by the fact that quite a number of national newspaper editors do not believe it is happening at all. Whilst there is an opportunity for confusion, people will always take the easy course and treat the confusion amongst scientists as an opportunity to do nothing.
Professor Sir David King: Chairman, I was stunned by the response of The Daily Mail to my article in Science, where they had a two or three-page article - it was a very long article - in which they questioned my integrity and my ability to understand the science but, above all, stated that carbon dioxide is such a small constituent of our atmosphere how could it possibly have this effect on climate? That was very difficult to take.
Q134 Mrs Clark: Do you not also think that the general public are very, very turned off by constant messages of doom and gloom and soothsaying? How do we combat that?
Professor Sir David King: My own response to that is that I am not a doom-and-gloom person. I think this is an issue where the science is clearly telling us what is happening - there is a global consensus on that - but it is also very clearly telling us what we need to do to combat the problem. So let us be optimistic about it.
Q135 Mrs Clark: So it is a balance then?
Professor Sir David King: Yes. To say "Yes, there is a threat but we know what to do about it".
Q136 Mrs Clark: How consistent is the world of science on these issues? Is everybody speaking with one voice and singing from the same hymn sheet on climate change across the world? Are some countries and regions feeling that their interests are being damaged?
Professor Sir David King: It is very interesting that, for example, John Browne, the chief executive of BP Amoco clearly recognises climate change as the big issue that it is, and has announced that BP now stands for "Beyond Petroleum".
Q137 Mrs Clark: So everybody is being consistent, you would say?
Professor Sir David King: BP is now one of the biggest solar energy producers in the world. So they are moving ahead on this. I mention BP Amoco because not all oil companies are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Q138 Mrs Clark: What about Shell, for example?
Professor Sir David King: Shell has just set up Shell Hydrogen; they are fully on board, but there is an American based company which is, I think, paying consultants to question the science.
Q139 Chairman: This is Exon, is it?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
Q140 Mrs Clark: How counterproductive do you think that is?
Professor Sir David King: I think the scientists, in response to those consultants, in the United States have been making their voice heard much more clearly. Also, Chairman, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced a census (?) report in 2002 which is the best current statement on the state of play of the science of climate change, and that really does represent 1,000 scientists. I think the world community of scientists has converged totally. The international inter-academies (that is the Royal Society in our case, the American academies and so on), which is the representative body of all the academies around the world, came out with a very clear statement about climate change to try and overcome those few lone voices who are saying it is not a problem.
Q141 Chairman: Just coming back to your own role, if I may, you appear to duck - for reasons of workload, which may be perfectly understandable - taking personal responsibility for selling the message to the public, although it is one of the responsibilities of the Office of Science and Technology to improve engagement between science and the rest of society. It is one of your core duties, in fact. If you are not going to do it, who is? I hesitate to make the suggestion but do we need a climate change tsar?
Professor Sir David King: Thank you for your question because I have clearly misled you by my previous answer. I do take the responsibility myself, and the Office of Science and Technology has now formed a Science in Society Directorate. This is a new directorate and part of the function of the directorate is to get this message across but, also, messages on the importance of science and technology to modern society generally. We have a problem in relation to younger people coming through our school system into university degrees, particularly in the physical sciences and engineering, where the need is greatest, and we have problems where not only The Daily Mail questions how important science is for our future development. So the Science in Society Directorate is critically important, we feel. We also have reformed the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, which I now chair with a co-chairman. That council is going to play a very important role along the same direction.
Q142 Mr Challen: Are there any national science academies that are not fully on board, in respect of what you said to the previous question?
Professor Sir David King: The only academies that did not sign up to the original inter-academy statement were the American academies, but they subsequently came up with their own statement which fully backed the census report of the IPCC. So the answer is no, at this time there are none.
Q143 Sue Doughty: As a Committee we have spent quite a lot of time looking at the aviation industry and the environmental impact of the aviation industry. When we have been looking at that, radiative forcing has been one of the key issues we have had to look at. Now the industry is saying that the science underpinning this is complex, it is insufficiently understood and we should not base policies on it. We have got this problem here between the precautionary principles and the Government's insistence on evidence-based policies. How do we resolve this conflict? You were talking before about not doing unnecessary experiments, yet we have got this problem writ large in our skies.
Professor Sir David King: The issue of aviation, I think, is a very important one. Of course it is complicated but I think you are right; I do not think because an issue is complicated we should avoid the consequences. Aviation around the world is a continually growing industry. Aviation depends critically on fossil fuel burning, so without going into the details we can see that there is a net negative effect in terms of global warming. There are complex factors arising from water vapour production at different levels. If we just look at carbon dioxide emission, that in itself is a major contributory factor to our net emissions problem. When we look at the census report of the IPCC (since I have mentioned that) that does refer to the importance of the aviation industry in the global picture of emissions. Once again, I think, Chairman, we are talking about a complex issue because no single country can resolve this problem. For example, if an aviation fuel tax were introduced in one country 'planes would simply fly off to another to fill up. So it is another complex international issue. I am afraid as soon as I see a complex international issue we are against buffers and longer timescales.
Ms Durkin: If I might just add - though I do not want to pretend that anything I say will remotely be a panacea for everything that Sir David has said - we are attempting to explore the technologies in aviation as well as in all other transports in the DTI by brigading our aerospace research with our other environmental research, so that there is a concentration on cleaner aviation technologies. We are hoping, in that way, to solve some of the problems suggested in terms of businesses and how businesses react by trying to exploit the innovation opportunities nationally and internationally. So I hope we can make small pieces of progress.
Sue Doughty: I am rather worried about the whole direction of this. We have got this problem that we have had a lot of opposition from the aviation industry in accepting the size of the problem, and all our discussions previously in this Committee today have been about: do we believe there is a problem, and if we do believe it should we not be taking more radical steps? I understand what you are saying about technological solutions and, also, the problems about imposing a solution that covers boundaries, where we have got a problem, but in some ways I am still worried that the Government may be placing over-reliance on technological solutions when, in fact, the aviation industry seems not to want to accept the gravity of the risk which it, in itself, is posing.
Q144 Chairman: That sounds like a "yes".
Professor Sir David King: I think that was a nod in agreement. It is, perhaps, not unusual that the industry itself would like to continue in a relatively unregulated fashion.
Q145 Sue Doughty: It would, but is not the growth of aviation simply unsustainable, in what is happening in climate change terms?
Professor Sir David King: I think it is an issue of enormous concern, in terms of climate change, yes.
Q146 Chairman: Before you move on, this reliance on technological innovation seems to be a bit threadbare as well. We have had evidence to suggest that there is not much technological innovation going on, at the moment, which is actually going to have a meaningful impact on reducing the impact of aviation on the environment. Is it not a bit of a red herring?
Professor Sir David King: I think you are quite right to raise this. The issue of, for example, surface transport - cars - is already a very live technological issue with the potential of hydrogen fuel cells taking over from petrol-driven engines. I think it is a very real potential and I think we can say that in 10 or 15 years' time we will see massive penetration in the market. When it comes to aviation, you have a much more difficult problem. Quite simply, the power thrust required is considerably greater. Chairman, we are talking rocket science here, and rockets are often driven by non-fossil fuel engines. So there are alternatives available but they are technologically more challenging. This is not to say that it is not a science and technology agenda - it is.
Q147 Chairman: I just worry that politicians talk around the precautionary principle, and it sounds very comforting. We hear a lot from the Department for Transport about how they have built balance into the way they are approaching aviation when, quite plainly, they have not. I was wondering if you could think of a single example of the use of the precautionary principle which has not been based on evidence - that is genuinely based on taking a precautionary view about something which may happen?
Professor Sir David King: I suppose my one example may lead me into a collision with this Committee and that would be the approach the Government has taken on GM maize.
Q148 Chairman: I am tempted to say "Let's not go there"! This is far too stimulating already.
Professor Sir David King: I believe that that is a very good example of the precautionary approach in practice, and follows very, very precisely the detailed evidence that the Science Review Panel took, which I chaired with 26 scientists on board, and I chaired it over a period of 108 hours. It is the most detailed review of the science addressing all of the questions raised by the public on that issue. Our advice was followed to the letter on that issue.
Chairman: If we go much further down this route we will part company very rapidly.
Q149 Sue Doughty: You were talking a moment ago about the increasing use of hydrogen-based technologies, and this is very exciting. However, there was an article last year in The New Scientist which suggested that hydrogen itself posed a threat in terms of global warming. How seriously do you take this risk?
Professor Sir David King: What is, I think, referred to here is that the hydrogen economy may rely on fossil fuels for the derivation of hydrogen. It seems to me that that is to miss the whole point of the hydrogen fuel economy. What we need and what we are promoting is research into hydrogen production with no fossil fuel involved. Hydrogen storage and hydrogen transport are the key factors in addition to research into the development of the fuel cell, with lower platinum loading so as to reduce its cost. If it is referring to the use of hydrogen fuel cells in aviation, it is referring to the fact that water vapour itself is a greenhouse gas, and if we eject a lot of water vapour we may raise the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. I believe that is incorrect; the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined by average sea temperatures. It is an equation called the clauses per parallel equation (?) that determines water vapour pressure, and I do not believe that this would have much penetration. We need to look at the hydro-generation processes that avoid the use of fossil fuels to make that economy work.
Q150 Sue Doughty: Going on to the water vapour issue (just because I am not a scientist I would like to have it clear in my mind), we have been looking at your Zuckerman lecture and you referred to the environmental benefits of hydrogen fuel, but you added this caveat: "Provided that atmospheric water vapour pressure is unaffected". So, with that caveat, were there particular concerns when you actually made that statement?
Professor Sir David King: I have just dealt with that question.
Q151 Sue Doughty: Moving on, you have also touched on carbon sequestration as an area which needs research. Would you like to expand on what the possibilities are for carbon sequestration, and are there any associated risks?
Professor Sir David King: There is a massive drive for producing good sequestration technologies precisely because this is the way in which we can keep coal burning going as a source of energy and, at the same time, deal with the environmental problems. However, at this point in time the technology has not been developed and I certainly would not put my eggs in that basket alone. In other words, I think it is worth investing in sequestration technologies but I would not wish to raise hopes that this is going to produce results; it is an open-ended investigation. We can economically use carbon dioxide sequestration in oil wells that have become depleted - so there is a nice irony here that to improve the production of oil we can pump carbon dioxide into those wells. The value of the oil offsets the cost of the sequestration process. Whether we can seal the carbon dioxide into those wells is something that has yet to be tested, and that is one of the issues that I am referring to. A much more satisfactory sequestration process would be a cheap way of converting the carbon dioxide into solid materials such as calcium carbonate. These are technologies that have still to be developed.
Ms Durkin: It is, nevertheless, very important as we predict energy progressing up to 2050, particularly looking at China, and some of the other very big co-producers. China is actively engaged jointly with us and other European communities in looking at carbon sequestration to see if that is one effective way of then multiplying the use of coal but effectively reducing CO². They were talking yesterday at the seminar of 2015, 2020, 2025 in terms of the time scale, certainly in DTI we are progressing as modestly as we are allowed but actively because of the impact it has globally.
Q152 Sue Doughty: That was very interesting. One of the reasons I am saying that is I think several of the answers we have had are all happier tomorrows but we have this problem here today. You went on about nuclear fusion at some length in the Zuckerman lecture and made some very interesting points, which I will not read out at length, the whole issue about nuclear fusion is going to take some time, and although it is going to have an attractive number of points it is going to take some time while you are looking at replacing some of the nuclear efficient plants with more modern technology. Do you see that is going to help with the Energy White Paper certificate-only solution we have within the context of energy products in the shorter term rather than the longer term, given we are still waiting for some of the technology, for example tide technology and nuclear fusion?
Professor Sir David King: I think our agenda is the right answer. If I can give a very general answer to your question and then Claire may come in as well. I chair a high level R&D Energy Committee, by high level I mean I bring together all of the publicly funded bodies involved in that area. I think it is a very important aspect of our work that we are working on future technologies which can be put into the market place. We are not saying we know which of these technologies will come through and deliver but we have to deliver a broad based menu so that we can approach the problem and perhaps one or two of these technologies, or more or them, will begin to deliver at different periods of time, over the next five, ten to 35 years, for example going on to fusion. My own belief is that it is quite right we develop this very broad based approach. Trying to second-guess which technologies are going to be the winners in the market place of the future is a very difficult game to play and probably wrong. I apologise for defocusing your question but I do think there is a very strong defence of investment in research and development across the broad base of potential technologies, fusion is one of them, and given we are talking about a long-term issue of carbon dioxide emissions 35 years on that time scale is not hopeless but we need to start now.
Q153 Sue Doughty: Thank you. This is a thing which is not unwelcome to our Committee to hear because it is a criticism we have regularly made of Government about backing winners. If you are saying, "let us identify more about possibilities" that is very good news. The good news about fusion is the opportunities are there but it is going to take a while and we have a consortium there. Is there any way we can bring that forward by throwing more resources at the problem, would it then bring that information forward for us or is it a matter of it is all going to take time for other reasons?
Professor Sir David King: There are ways of shortening that time scale. The best way to shorten it is to put more money into the programme. The European Union asked me to chair a committee a couple of years ago looking at the future of the fusion programme and my report is often called "fast-track to power stations", because that is what we really focused on, how do we bring the time scale down now between where we are now in fusion research and the fusion power station. That fast-track report has been accepted in the European Union and gathered momentum in other countries, which is why we now have six partners in the international programme, including China, Korea and the United States coming in to join the original partners of the European Union, Japan and Russia. How we can shorten it is to investigate not only the fusioning process - the Joint European Group is the world leader in that process - we also need to develop the materials which will sustain the power station over a 20 year lifetime. I am proposing that we need to put the money in now to begin developing and testing those materials that will be used when the final power stations are developed. If we do these things in series it will take considerably longer but if we can do them in parallel it would be better. This is currently under discussion in the international programme.
Q154 Sue Doughty: How optimistic are you about making that case so that they get on and start to do parallel research?
Professor Sir David King: My ambition is this programme to produce fusion power should be seen rather like the programme of landing a man on the moon was seen in the United States. I would like it to capture the international imagination as a key way forward to dealing with our energy requirements and at the same time in a sustainable environment. If we could achieve that then I think we could get on with this programme considerably more quickly. Are we likely to? I do feel optimistic but for pessimistic reasons. I think the effects of climate change are going to come through to populations round the world and are already in some areas. As that impact grows I think the need for change will come. In 1953 in London we had a terrible smog, scientists understood the cause of the smog before that happened but it took roughly 10,000 premature fatalities in London in that smog period for government action to be taken to stop coal fires, it was incomplete combustion of carbon that was leading to that. We stopped but it took a massive disaster to do that. I am rather hoping we do not have to go through that process to invest in fusion power.
Q155 Sue Doughty: You were talking about lots of exciting technologies to start addressing this issue of climate change or slowing it down, as I was saying sometimes technology can work out unexpectedly as well, we are still learning about the environmental impact. Would it be a precautionary principle that we should start looking at our behaviour as well as putting our hope in these technologies?
Professor Sir David King: Your question is a very important one, we have been focusing on hard science, physical sciences in particular in this discussion today but extending out to our understanding of social and economic science is critically important in actually bringing these things through. What I have been very keen on in my time as Chief Scientific Adviser is not to draw too close a circle round what we mean by science. We have to extend out and understand society. When I came here I came from our latest foresight programme on brain science drugs and addiction and we are bringing together in that programme the scientists who understand at a molecular level how drugs currently work in the brain with social scientists and economists to see if we can bring forward advice for governmental action. I think it is absolutely important that we take that on board.
Sue Doughty: Thank you very much for that.
Q156 Chairman: Can I come back to something you said which was the reference to the 1953 smog, you seem to be implying it will take a disaster for much of what we have been talking about today to be considered seriously by politicians and by those who fund government programmes. It is very familiar to all of us because we know that you cannot get a road safety measure in until there is a body count, it is no good saying, "it is a dangerous road let us put in a barrier up" in the absence of any evidence of it causing fatalities. It goes back to the point I was trying to get to earlier about whether we ever really act on the precautionary principle or wait for the disaster to happen and then try to make good later on. You seem to be implying we are going to approach the whole issue of climate change in the latter way.
Professor Sir David King: The first person to understand what is currently happening to our climate was Araneus, he was picking up on the French mathematician Fourier - Fourier was the person who understood the greenhouse effect first, 1820 - and Araneus, the Swedish theoretical chemist in 1896 said, "if our carbon dioxide levels were to grow because of our propensity to burn fossil fuel the temperature would rise", and he calculated doubling the carbon dioxide level which would lead to a five degree centigrade temperature rise round the globe. It was a brilliant piece of work. We have understood this process for a very long time and getting the message through, past all the resistance we have referred, for example from oil companies, is tough going. I am afraid, Chairman, that we are being realistic when we say, yes, it does seem to require disasters for it to be brought to people's attention. Am I going too far?
Ms Durkin: I wonder if I might offer an example of where at least it is a question of stepping in to opportunities in that our change in energy portfolio is fairly dramatic and we cannot ignore that and therefore because we cannot ignore it and because we are moving from the happy position of net exporter to the fairly comfortable position of net importer we have to do something. It was in those circumstances the Government produced the first ever Green White Paper on Energy, so rather than facing disaster at least it was exploiting opportunities.
Q157 Chairman: It is very interesting that you should raise the question of the Energy White Paper in this context. It would appear, Sir David, that you have issued implied criticisms of some recommendations in the Zuckerman lecture. You said, "it is very difficult to see how we can continue to reduce fossil fuel consumption if we do not replace our ageing nuclear power stations, we are talking about efficient plants with more modern plants now available". That is not a recommendation in the White Paper.
Professor Sir David King: Let me say at once, I contributed quite considerably to that White Paper, you might even find some of material reflects the Zuckerman lecture that you are quoting from. I take some pride in the contribution I made to the White Paper. At the same time, to deal with your very specific point, I think it is quite right that we should be focusing at this point in time on energy efficiency gains which are a win, win and on renewable development. At the same time in the White Paper I believe there is a critically important statement which refers to keeping the nuclear option open. I think we must actively keep the nuclear option open so that when we evaluate how we are proceeding in achieving our 60% reduction by 2050 target at any point in time that is still an option that will be available to us.
Q158 Chairman: You do understand that actively keeping options open - whatever that may mean - is a deterrent to the investment alternative type of technologies we are seeking to encourage. Nuclear is always lurking, nonetheless it is a factor in the decisions that are being taken about investment and it is going to be an impediment towards investing in new technologies.
Professor Sir David King: I think you are appearing to criticise what I think was the wisdom of the White Paper words and I would defend them. I think faced with the size of the environmental problem I have described to you it would be wholly wrong to simply say, "we are going to cast aside a potential means of providing energy without adding carbon dioxide, even though we understand the problems associated with radio-active waste production from that source". I simply think it would have been irresponsible. May I just refer to one fact, something like 70 per cent of our energy resource goes into buildings and power houses. The way in which we construct new buildings is a massive means of reducing energy usage. That must be a more important programme at the moment than many of the others we might think of.
Q159 Chairman: I think the Committee would agree strongly with you on that. Just so that we are absolutely clear, you were not saying in the Zuckerman lecture that you do not see any alternative to investing in a new generation of nuclear power stations?
Professor Sir David King: If we move forward in time, at the moment we have something like 27 per cent of our energy on the grid from nuclear power; 24 per cent from our own power stations and three per cent we import from France. As we move ahead if we close down nuclear power stations as they go out of commission we will reach a point round 2020 where this figure has dropped to seven per cent. That is a big gap and it makes the renewable and energy efficiency targets very, very tough to meet. It was that gap I was referring to in that article.
Q160 Chairman: You actually believe that it will be necessary to invest in new generation nuclear plant?
Professor Sir David King: You are trying to press me to say something I do not wish to say.
Q161 Chairman: I am trying to press you to get clarity.
Professor Sir David King: I am now in fear of repeating myself and I take pride in my clarity, Chairman. I am saying that at this point in time it is right to focus attention on energy efficiency gains and on renewable. Therefore I think it is counter-productive for us to dwell on this discussion for the very reason you gave, we need to give confidence to the renewables industry, in fact it has been stretched out in terms of wind power to 2015. I do not know if Claire would like to say something on that, precisely for that reason.
Ms Durkin: It is a renewables obligation. If I can pick up on the investment point, unless the Government can give a very coherent, very strong and very simple message they are confident in the development of the renewables market we will not get the investment that is necessary for these very challenging targets. The renewables obligation would appear so far to have had a very big impact on that. There has been more activity in wind this year than there has been in the last ten, it would appear from the industries that are already in the market place, Centrica and Powergen, and the small innovative industries, particularly in wave and tidal, that industry does see there is sufficient encouragement from government to make sense of the renewable market. We did put the renewables obligation commitment up to 2015 in December just so that offshore wind would have the confidence that they would have their pay back by 2012. It was a signal from Government that was very well taken. This city and banks are talking to us far more enthusiastically than they were a year ago and I am very pleased to say that big investment from the States and big companies, such as GE, are talking to us very enthusiastically about the renewables market in the United Kingdom. Currently the signals for financial incentives are such that we are confident that we can reach the targets in renewable generation. I think Sir David is right in terms of looking beyond sequential, the White Paper did a number of scenarios up to 2050, some of them included nuclear, some included carbon capture and storage, which was mentioned earlier, we do not want to shut off any of those options for 2050 and beyond. I am comfortable for 2010 and 2020 we have mechanisms in place that mean that we can reach those targets, but they are very challenging
Chairman: Thank you.
Q162 Mr Chaytor: Without prolonging this point can I ask one specific question. I think the essence of the Chairman's line of questioning is that we know that the White Paper set out a series of alternative scenarios, Sir David in your Zuckerman lecture when you described the reduction in the share of electricity output from nuclear going down from 27 per cent to 7 per cent you then go on to say, "The alternative scenario is to build a new generation nuclear power station". Is there not a significant shift from the White Paper's position for a number of alternative scenarios to your assumption here that there is only one alternative. In the lecture you do not seem to mention energy efficiency at all.
Professor Sir David King: The Zuckerman lecture is a few years old and it certainly pre-dated the White Paper.
Q163 Mr Chaytor: You subsequently made a statement after the White Paper.
Professor Sir David King: I believe the Zuckerman lecture has quite an influence on the White Paper, in particular setting that target for CO² reduction. My own position has moved to what I have just stated in response to the Chairman's question. I do think it is critically important that we push renewables and energy efficiency gains as hard as we can but I equally think we must keep the nuclear option open.
Q164 Mr Chaytor: Okay. Are you saying your own position has shifted over the years?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
Q165 Mr Chaytor: You seem to imply you are more interested in the renewable and energy efficiency option or is it the capacity to deliver?
Professor Sir David King: I understand much more clearly than I did then the economic imperative of getting the renewable development moving and the energy efficiency moving by taking the pedal off the nuclear alternative.
Q166 Mr Chaytor: The conversion gradually along the road to Damascus, if not a particular point on the road to Damascus.
Professor Sir David King: I believe I can respond to evidence when presented to me.
Q167 Mr Chaytor: Have the events of 9/11 had any influence on your thinking, the implication being that those aircraft could have flown in to a nuclear power station, has that affected your thinking?
Professor Sir David King: Yes, it has. I have been involved in giving advice to the Government on those vulnerabilities and many others.
Q168 Mr Chaytor: Thank you. Can I bring us back to the question of the advisory structures that we have to drive forward energy policy and climate change policy, you referred in your Science article to a team that you established that would report early in 2004. I cannot recall whether in your answer to Colin Challen you said if this team has reported yet?
Professor Sir David King: Can you read that out to remind me?
Q169 Mr Chaytor: "I have commissioned a new team to consider ways the United Kingdom can attempt to mitigate this threat and they are due to report early in 2004". My question is, who is the team and have they reported? If so, what have they said and how does that relate to the DTI Renewable Innovation Review or is it the same?
Professor Sir David King: Are we not talking about the flood and coastal defences team? Yes, sorry, you came at me with left field, I am with you, the threat we are talking about here is from increased flooding and increased coastal attack over the next 80 years. The team is a foresight team and we have completed that work. I will be reporting to the Prime Minister on that in the coming months and it ought to be published on April 22. I apologise for that
Q170 Mr Chaytor: It may be my confusion in quoting selectively. In addition to the forthcoming report on the impact of coastal erosion we had the report from the DTI Renewable Innovation Review recently which identified the issue of incentives and funding gaps. I am also looking at a quote here which refers to the need for consistency in the policy as well as strategic spending, and my question is, where are the most obvious current inconsistencies in policy? In respect of strategic spending what kind of bids are being submitted to this year's Spending Review? What is the balance between research on fusion and research on energy efficiency and research on renewables?
Ms Durkin: The Renewable Innovation Report was mine so I will answer that, what was very useful in the research was looking back over the last ten years there had been a tendency to try and pick winners - that would be an over-statement - trying to pick likely contenders in the renewables world. With the renewables obligation we stepped back and hoped that the market could develop most economically and effectively. The Report showed quite clearly that as well as the obligation we would need research and development and that research and development needed to be more strategic. Interestingly it also showed that the biggest impact that the Government would make would be in policy, it would be in fixing the grid, in helping in terms of planning and in the classic DTI way in terms of business relations and making connections with businesses nationally and internationally and speaking consistently in policy terms. We have taken that forward and indeed in my patch we have realigned our activities so that we are concentrating more on where we can make the greatest impact.
Q171 Mr Chaytor: Are there any inconsistencies in policy which you have identified because this does imply that there are?
Ms Durkin: There are weaknesses. If one looks at the development of biomass, Defra has been developing work in terms of the farming community, we have been developing work in terms of generators and yet we were not making the connections that were needed nor were we making the connections regionally that we ought to. For the development of biomass we still have a long way to go and I think we need to tackle it in a different way and we need to tackle it regionally. That is a good example of what came out. What also came out was we were treating similarly energies that are going to have a very different impact, for instance photovoltaics are not going to have a significant impact on the electricity supply, certainly in 2010 and probably 2020. They are of a different order such as marine and wind and they ought to be treated differently. The review challenged us in our thinking and challenged us to treat the differently technologies more appropriately and to think outside the box of just R&D. I cannot possibly comment on the Spending Round.
Q172 Mr Chaytor: Without commenting on the Spending Round what do you feel should be a prioritisation in future research and development given that in the Chancellor's Budget two or three weeks ago he focused on science as one of his key themes in the budget?
Ms Durkin: We have to used the Innovation Review that it referred to as the basis of our discussion with Treasury and I do think it points in certain directions at where we might put emphasis. What I was very pleased to hear that was the Government was committed to science and innovation. There is nothing in that report that is not fundamentally science and innovation. I happen to think of science and innovation in a fairly economically fundamental area because without energy innovation we are not going to have a particularly strong economy in those terms. I think that the Report has indicated in our discussions with Treasury that we need to have certain support beyond relying on the renewable obligations for the whole array of renewable technologies but they need to be timed. The Report showed that onshore wind is economically viable now, offshore wind ought to be reducing costs dramatically by 2010, marine is still very much in the demonstration phase and we may need considerably more government support in three to five years' time than we do now. I think it both amount of supporting and timing that was influenced by that.
Professor Sir David King: Can I just add one comment, in terms of our preparation for the Spending Review 2004 in this area my High Level Energy Group is involved in pulling together all government departments on this issue. We do have a cross departmental approach to the Spending Review Round in terms of energy R&D, and that is quite a big breakthrough.
Q173 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask generally about the DTI approach to the climate change problem which sees market solutions combining with research in new technologies as the chief means of dealing with the threat of climate change, are you both still convinced that the market alone with a modest amount of Government intervention can deliver the solutions we are searching for? What is the role of fiscal measures in alleviating the threat of climate change and in changing human behaviour?
Ms Durkin: From the energy industries I would observe that it is not a question of the market alone in any sense, it is a fairly regulated market. All the influence that Ofgem has in terms of how the market develops will make a difference and Government policy makes a big difference so it is not a laissez faire approach to the market. In terms of the market responding to the challenges set by the Ofgem structures and Government policy I have been very surprised in the last two years at just how rapidly the market has been able to respond and with what enthusiasm it has responded. I think currently as long as we get the policies right and get the incentives right I am confident that the market response in the energy field will be positive in the next 10 to 15 years.
Professor Sir David King: I have always argued that in terms of our energy research - again this corresponds with the answer I gave earlier on a different question - we need to be looking at research and development across the whole board, including fiscal policy, to drive the right behaviour.
Q174 Mr Chaytor: Have we got the right fiscal framework now or does that need further refinement?
Professor Sir David King: I think that when I say we need more research in that area the implication is that we can always do better. Yes, I think it could yet be improved. We have to see, for example, when the Carbon Trading comes on board in Europe how that impacts on our own development.
Q175 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Sir David, indeed both of you, this has been a fascinating session. We may have a few more questions, if we may we will put them in writing to you. Thank you very much it has been fascinating, as ever, with these issues. It seems that the problem, indeed possible catastrophic problems have been identified and the solutions are painfully slow in coming forward, it is not entirely reassuring but it has been very interesting.
Professor Sir David King: Chairman, thank you. I hope that your comments do not mean that. You have not taken on board that Britain is taking the world leading position on this issue.
