Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
WEDNESDAY 8 DECEMBER 2004
PROFESSOR SIR
DAVID KING
Q20 Patrick Hall: Sir David, you
talk about two things we have to do now: one is to deal with the
immediate impact; the second one is to reduce emissions for long-term
effect. This Committee took evidence on water pricing recently
and Ofwat and others were subjected to a similar question in which
I participated. There was no denial of global warming climate
change from the water industry and from Ofwat, but what was said
was that there was insufficient evidence now to justify a step
change in investment that would be needed, for example, with the
sewerage system to be able to take the increased frequency and
intensity of heavy rain episodes. That is the view I think, I
am recalling fairly, of not only Ofwat but possibly the Environment
Agency as well and certainly the water industry. I suppose I am
putting you in a position of judging another industry; that is
not quite the intention. Would you say that there is sufficient
evidence now of the impact of climate change?
Professor Sir David King: I have
already mentioned the summer of 2003 as the kind of event that
we would not have seen happen with that severity without the underlying
climate change. If we look at the UK—and I am in danger
of repeating what I said to this Committee before—one of
the indicators of climate change is the usage of the Thames Barrier
where we see that it was first used in 1982. Its use was anticipated
to be once every two or three years. It is now used on average
six times a year. That is increasing on a growth curve that is
correlated with these climate change events. All of these are
indicators that these factors are playing through into the climate
system already. One of the important events is increased intensity
of rainfall and our drainage and sewerage systems were not designed
for these more intense rainfall systems. I set up a foresight
programme which engaged 92 scientists over 18 months. It was an
in-depth analysis of the kind that no other country has managed
to date looking at the potential impacts of climate change on
our systems for the next 80 years. That indicates very clearly
that the impacts will be severe unless we begin to invest now
in modernising and upgrading these facilities. One of the factors
that was surprising to many people about our report: they anticipated
that the biggest problems would be the coastline where you get
a double whammy from coastal attack and from fluvial flooding.
As bad as a potential increase in risk was for our major Victorian
cities because of the factor that you mentioned. We feel that
our Foresight programme does signal that increased investment
is required, but that it can be spread over many years. It does
not have to impact immediately as long as planning begins now
and can begin to be implemented. In September of this year in
London, as you probably know, it was decided after a flash flood
to spill 250,000 tonnes of sewage into the Thames. That is the
kind of event that can only be avoided by quite a big investment
in the future.
Q21 Mr Lazarowicz: Sir David, if
I could ask you a supplementary on the issue of the changes in
the ocean currents which we were discussing, changes in the ocean
currents leading to global cooling. Without going into too much
technical detail, what are the kind of signs you might expect
to see that this was indeed occurring, to what extent are we seeing
those signs now and, if we were to see those signs, what we could
do about it or would it be too late at that stage?
Professor Sir David King: Signs
of the—?
Q22 Mr Lazarowicz: Changes in the
ocean currents on the lines that you were outlining earlier to
my colleague here.
Professor Sir David King: I think
there is only one way to answer that question. It is exactly the
same answer I would give if I was asked about the Greenland ice
sheet beginning to melt irreversibly. If we start seeing it melting,
it is a bit late. I think the answer to the question is: we have
a global climate system and we can treat it experimentally but
at our own cost. We can test it by raising carbon dioxide levels
to see if it responds the way the scientists are predicting or
we could avoid doing that.
Q23 Mr Drew: If we could look at
the paper that you presented to us, which I have to say is a great
benefit and majorly concise which sums up the main issues. Understandably,
you highlight the UK Government's role as per the EU Presidency
and the G8 next year. If I can take the second of those first:
you talk about what we, as a country, intend to do by highlighting
our concern for Africa. Obviously climate change is a specific
issue with regard to Africa which you have just mentioned. It
is nice of us to highlight that, but in a way we have to be very
careful we do not patronise the Africans by telling them this
is their problem as well as our problem, when the reality is they
see the problems of conflict, certainly of underdevelopment, poverty
as being well in advance of this. What would your message be to
those African governments who have yet to see this as a specific
issue which they have to address even if we would want them to
address it?
Professor Sir David King: I will
take your question re Africa, but if I just treat the international
situation first of all. It is very important in terms of this
global problem that we bring all countries into the international
process. At the moment, the only game in town is the Kyoto Agreement.
Therefore, it is important that we engage with all countries in
that agreement. What I am keen to see is that in that discussion
we take into account, all of us, jointly, not preaching to anyone,
but take into account the local circumstances, whether economic
or in terms of local climate. The African continent situation
is that their carbon dioxide emissions per person are lowest globally
at around 1 tonne per person of carbon dioxide per annum. The
United States is at 21 tonnes per annum per person. I think that
it behoves us, therefore, in discussions with Africa not to focus
on their need to reduce carbon emissions, but rather to focus
on the need to prepare for the increased impacts that climate
change will have on their countries and for us to be offering
through North-South capacity building exercises assistance in
that process. In other words, I would bring African countries
into the discussion by indicating to them that we would be prepared
to work with them on using scientists and engineers to see what
impacts there will be for their societies from climate change,
just as we have done this for the British Isles to advise our
Government: we could offer that. We are already offering this
to other countries. We are talking to China and India about implementing
our programme to investigate what needs to be done in their countries.
I think this is a way of bringing these countries into the discussion.
Q24 Mr Drew: If we could just look
at the issue of how it could be done and we have these two terms: adaptation
and mitigation. I will be quite interested to hear what your definitions
are of those two and how this is something that has to be addressed
by looking at maybe the role of EU and what we should be doing
as part of EU.
Professor Sir David King: If we
did not have a Thames Barrier, adaptation would be to put up a
Thames Barrier. The Thames Barrier was designed for a 1 in 2,000
year event. Because of the changes in our climate system it will
probably be a 1 in 1,000 event that it would sustain by 2030.
Looking forward for the UK, adaptation means seeing what kind
of retrofitting needs to be done to the Thames Barrier to keep
it at 1 in 2,000 into the future and maintain the safety of London;
that is one way of adapting. Another way of adapting for the UK
is to declare regions of our countryside as potential flood plains
which could be used in the case of flash floods in a city for
run-off water to be taken allowing the cities to be kept free
of floods, but this means that those flood plain areas would not
be designated for building permission. That is what I would describe
as adaptation. Mitigation: quite simply reducing the basket of
greenhouse gas emissions.
Q25 Mr Drew: If we could move on
to the role of our Presidency of the EU, and clearly mitigation
and adaptation will be something that we will have to work through
with the EU. The countries that have as yet failed to sign up
to Kyoto, if my list is correct, the US, Australia, Liechtenstein
and Monaco. I was tempted to say how are we going to deal with
Liechtenstein and Monaco, but we will put that to one side for
the moment. What is the pressure that the EU brings to bear to
deal with the US and Australia, given that there could be a response
of an African regime to say: why are we bothered about this? The
main country in the world with the highest level of greenhouse
emissions is not serious about this. The reality is we know the
Americans have their own attitudes towards compliance, which is
not nearly as bad as is sometimes pointed out, but we still have
Kyoto as our main flag behind these remarks. It is pretty important
that we all march in the same direction. What would you be saying
via the Prime Minister through the EU to the way in which we should
be addressing this with the Americans in particular?
Professor Sir David King: Can
I first of all address the situation with Russia because I can
then refer to a situation you might have asked me about, but we
have seen a change there. I think it would be fair to say that
the UK, acting with its European partners, worked very hard with
Russia on ratifying the Kyoto Protocol over a long period through
this year. I was one of the players in that process; it was not
a straightforward question of persuading them at every front.
I think people realised that membership of the World Trade Organisation
was involved in the discussions, so bringing other matters into
play was significant. The net outcome is that we have Russia on
board ratifying the Protocol, so from 16 February the Protocol
comes into play and we move into global emissions trading; that
is now the new situation. As I said before, I believe the financial
centre for that new trading is going to be London. That, in itself,
is a matter that has not gone unnoticed in the United States,
the fact that the trading centre will be in London; it is a big
commodity. The United States is a country with 4% of the world's
population, 25% of the world's emissions, it could be a slightly
higher figure, but it is of that order. Quite clearly what is
required in international agreement, in bringing China and India
on board, let alone Africa, is going to be that the United States
is also an international player on that scene. As we move forward
with Kyoto coming into play, I do think that we are going to see
those three big players—China, India and the United States—talking
to each other about the actions that will be required. They are
all in very different situations, but each of them is a substantial
carbon dioxide emitter in total, not per person but in total,
and India and China are growing very rapidly, but I do think that
process will have to move together to avoid the problem that you
raise. Africa, I would say, is somewhat different because I would
focus more on the need for capacity building, the need to avoid
the major impacts of climate change.
Q26 Mr Drew: The last question is:
we heard what the Secretary of State had to say today and the
subtext to that was that we are going to become much more serious
with regard to energy efficiency. Clearly, you have been briefing
and assisting in how we take that forward. If we look at the UK's
approach within the wider international context, how can we move
towards really serious energy efficiency mechanisms and see a
much more rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels? What sort
of keynote points would you be saying, besides what the Secretary
of State has glossed over, shall we say, today?
Professor Sir David King: I think
50% of our emissions come from the built environment, 25% from
transport and 25% from industry; that is the overall breakdown.
From that you can see why the focus is on the built environment
for energy improvements. The efficiency there is the big win-win
payback. The 25% in transport is the rising figure I would say,
for the reasons we discussed earlier. That is where technological
innovation is most likely to come into play and it is going to
take some time. We have the hybrid engine coming in now. There
is the possibility of hydrogen fuel cells coming into play some
years down the road. I think that we are going to see big changes
in our transport sector. Everyone knows that the average car is
quite a long time on the road, so once again there is a time lag
in that process. There are very big potential gains to be had
in combined heat and power systems. Quite simply, if you generate
electricity at a power station you throw 60% of the energy away
in the form of heat and the rest in electricity. You then put
it back into houses and convert that into heat. If you have a
combined heat and power system you generate electricity and heat
where you need the heat; there is where a very big saving can
be made. We have roughly 5% of our energy on the grid from combined
heat and power. Best practice: Denmark, 50%; that is the sort
of aim that I think we should have.
Q27 Mr Mitchell: Are the intentions
of the UK's own climate change programme realistic?
Professor Sir David King: Is the
intention to reduce emissions by 60% by 2050 realistic? I think
it is realistic in the terms of: is it doable? I am not going
to give the answer you are expecting. Is it realistic in terms
of is it ambitious enough? I am not sure because it could be that
if we want to avoid these major impacts threatening the thermohaline
circulation, the Greenland ice sheet melting, that we may have
to increase that target perhaps to 80% by 2050. I think that my
only question of realism is: what is actually going to turn out
to be enough?
Q28 Mr Mitchell: Realistic even in
terms of emissions from aviation, for instance?
Professor Sir David King: I think
in terms of aviation, it is going to be critically important to
see that aviation fuel is included in emissions trading. In other
words, I think you have to internalise the external costs of CO2
emissions in order to provide the fiscal lever for good behaviour
in that arena.
Q29 Mr Mitchell: Basically, are you
saying it is realistic in terms of what the world is doing but
not realistic in terms of what it needs to do?
Professor Sir David King: It is
realistic in terms that, globally, governments need to recognise
the importance of this issue. Once that is recognised and there
is an agreement that we need to deal with and are all sitting
around a table, we can begin to tackle it. One of the criticisms
of the Kyoto process that is often made is that it will not reduce
emissions enough to tackle the problem. That is not the point
of the Kyoto process; it is a fiscal process. It is a cap and
trade mechanism which can be tightened. Once we have agreement,
sitting around a table and discussing what level of emission we
should aim to not go beyond, then we can sit down and reset targets
as we progress through the next few decades.
Q30 Mr Mitchell: Of course, that
is not rectifying the damage already done.
Professor Sir David King: The
only way we can rectify the damage already done would be to put
up carbon dioxide scrubbers in the atmosphere.
Q31 Mr Mitchell: Can we do that?
Professor Sir David King: There
is a scientist from America, Wallace Broecker, who is very keen
to demonstrate that we can do that. He has generated large scrubbers
that stand perhaps as high as the ceiling in this room and about
a metre wide and he reckons if we had about 1 million of these
placed around the United States we would begin to be scrubbing
carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That is not a lot, but the
problem is that, having captured the carbon dioxide, you then
have to store it, and that problem has not been solved.
Q32 Mr Mitchell: I have a great interest
in scrubbers actually, which are aesthetically pleasing, as windmills!
Professor Sir David King: Yes,
he set some up in the park in New York to demonstrate that they
were aesthetically quite pleasing.
Q33 Mr Mitchell: Politicians are
very good at preaching and warning of the dangers to come. What
does the Government need to do get and keep this on track?
Professor Sir David King: To get
the UK on track?
Q34 Mr Mitchell: Yes?
Professor Sir David King: Your
question is: how does the UK stay on track in order to provide
this leadership role.
Q35 Mr Mitchell: When it comes to
hard measures, what does the Government have to do apart from
preach?
Professor Sir David King: I do
not think that I see my colleagues preaching. I do see them acting
on this issue, but that is not for me to say. What I think is
required is—and I come back to fiscal process, to regulatory
process—right across the board, whether we are talking about
use of vehicles on roads, in the air, generation of electricity
by utilities, use of energy by industrial companies, the private
sector, the way in which individuals behave in our society, in
other words, is it really necessary to drive SUVs around London?
There are choices that we all make.
Q36 Mr Mitchell: It manifestly is
not, but people are going to go on doing it so long as it gives
them a kind of macho sensitivity, are they not? So government
at some stage is going to have to take measures that hurt. It
is no use just saying, "Do it this way, do it that way",
and just preaching to us. When is it going to begin to inconvenience
people? When does it need to begin to inconvenience people?
Professor Sir David King: Once
again, we come back to saying that I believe economic measures
are what will bring about most of the changes that are required.
I do not believe we should be preaching at people—I now
understand what you meant—to say, "Behave better",
but, if it is economically advantageous, for example, congestion
charges not being applied to cars with hybrid engines, it is precisely
that sort of thing. If you are coming into London on a regular
basis, it is quite a big cost difference, and then you discover
your petrol charges have gone down as well.
Q37 Chairman: Before I bring Mr Simpson
in, can I ask you about something that has been niggling at the
back of my mind, a term which is often used. You talked at the
outset about part of the reason why the energy generating sector
had contributed to an increase in CO2 emissions by
the greater use of coal. A phrase that is often used here is "clean
coal technology", as if magically we can dissipate coal as
a generator of carbon dioxide. Would you explain just explain
to me what this clean coal is?
Professor Sir David King: There
are two sides to clean coal technology. One is less noxious fumes.
Sulphur dioxide NOx is nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions
of the kind we have been discussing here. We have been focusing
this on carbon dioxide emissions emissions. You burn coal, you
get carbon dioxide. Clean coal power stations are, however, much
more efficient at producing electricity per ton of coal—you
do reduce the amount of emissions per kilowatt hour of energy
that is produced—so clean coal technology is a help. One
of the important aspects of pushing for clean coal technology,
for example, as China builds more and more coal-burning power
stations, we are encouraging the building of power stations that
use clean coal technology, because these power stations can be
retrofitted for carbon capture and storage once the storage capability
has been developed by the technologists. In other words, if at
some point 10 or 20 years down the road carbon capture and storage
becomes a useful technology, then it can be retrofitted on a clean
coal power station. It is a good form of behaviour, but at the
same time, one has to stress, at this point in time we do not
have a clear technology for carbon capture.
Q38 Alan Simpson: For one moment
there, Chairman, I was tempted to feel virtuous listening to Sir
David when he talked about the need to go into an increased use
of combined heat and power in the sense of changing individual
conduct in the way we approach energy! That is pretty much what
I am doing with a derelict building in the middle of Nottingham
which will generate more energy than it consumes on a renewable
basis; but I have to say from that experience, Sir David, if this
was being done on the back of market incentives I would not have
even begun to go there. So to presume that we have anything like
a framework that incentivises that shift does not square with
my experience, let alone my analysis. What worries me, however,
is that I am not even convinced that we can get there just on
incentives. One of the great paradoxes is that we might need to
push into this idea of changing market rules rather than just
fiscal incentives. If you go round the energy companies and talk
about their business plans today, they all still talk about selling
more consumption or having a larger share of consumption. Ask
them how they approach the selling of less consumption and you
just meet blank faces. I am just wondering whether, in fact, there
is not a case for a much more radical rethink of the nature of
energy markets. Why is it that we say to energy companies that
they are not allowed to take part in a trading market that sells
home warmth?
Professor Sir David King: Sells
home?
Q39 Alan Simpson: Home warmth, so
that you sell the non-consumption of energy against thermal efficiency
gains rather than the consumption of energy. Given the scale of
the scientific analysis and the consequence, do we not need a
paradigm shift in the way we think about the nature of markets
for non-consumption rather than slowing down damaging consumption?
Professor Sir David King: I think
you and I are going to find a large degree of agreement on this.
The kind of fiscal processes that I am pressing for are, however,
a vital part of that whole process. If I have understood what
you are saying, the mere fact that more people are discussing
this as an issue, that it is appearing in the media as an issue
now on a frequent basis, is already coming through into people's
thinking on how they should operate within this energy consuming
world of ours. I hesitate to say anything that would be interpreted
as preaching, but I do think that it is a changing culture that
will emerge simply by people becoming more aware of the consequences
of continuing as we did before. The kind of macho behaviour that
Mr Mitchell referred to I recognise, and, of course, we all do,
and in a way the high energy consumption indicator of your profound
ability to stand with a large footprint on this earth is part
of that process (a rather male sort of picture, I know), but I
think that changing that as the ideal image is what would accompany
this kind of discussion, but I do think we need the fiscal process
as well.
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