Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY 2005
MS BRYONY
WORTHINGTON
Q240 Mr Mitchell: The new accession
states usually come from a mucky industrial tradition. It is going
to get worse, is it not?
Ms Worthington: Well, it is interesting.
Their part of the burden-sharing agreement is to obtain an 8%
reduction on 1990 levels, which is the same as the EU's target,
and they are well below that because they have had quite a significant
economic downturn since 1990. So there is not much incentive on
them at all to clean up, but with them coming into the EU you
would hope that financial flows from the reconstruction bank or
EIB would help them to clean up their industry and they would
continue to go on and make savings. So I do not think the picture
is clear yet as to what they will b doing and the jury is still
out really in terms of looking at their allocation plans to industry
through the Emissions Trading Scheme, which would give you a good
signal as to which countries are continuing to want to improve
their resource efficiency and which are not, but I would have
to submit some supplementary on that.
Q241 Mr Mitchell: Do you want a further
reduction of 30% up to 2020? How likely is that given the fact
that we are failing already?
Ms Worthington: Essentially what
we are beginning to look at is rather than talk about scary large
numbers that are at a long distance from here which politicians
actually feel able to sign up to because it is nothing to do with
their particular term in office, we should probably start to look
at incremental targets which are expressed annually. There are
studies which show that from 2010 if OECD countries are to make
substantial reductions you could set targets of maybe just a two
to 3% reduction per annum. That is much more manageable as a figure
than setting a very long distant target and Friends of the Earth
is still looking into those options as a new way of looking at
targets. It is very well supported by the science of climate change.
Climate change is dictated by emissions over time, not simply
by how low our emissions are at a certain point in the future,
so the linear pathway is a really crucial thing in trying to control
those concentration levels.
Q242 Mr Mitchell: You also want a
reduction in the cap for Emissions Trading Schemes in the second
phase. How likely is that given the fact that the revision of
our own National Allocation Plan has already made it more difficult
in the first place to achieve that?
Ms Worthington: I think I would
agree with Christina, who said that anything is possible if you
have enough political will and on this issue hopefully we will
see slightly more willingness to make the market work. This has
been a trial period, this first phase of trading, and I think
everybody is pretty unanimous that there is not going to be much
scarcity and it will not deliver many of the savings. But we are
testing how it works and by the time the second phase comes in
there will be more willingness to take action. The problem will
be, of course, competitiveness concerns and whether the EU can
continue to push ahead while other countries are not involved.
We would argue that the EU can and should push ahead, but it ought
to be mindful of how it can protect some of those industries that
it might want to, and particularly they could use border tax adjustments
or traditional trade routes to try to protect themselves as they
go forward from making themselves uncompetitive relative to other
countries.
Q243 Mr Mitchell: How happy are you
with Emissions Trading Schemes? Is it not really just going to
be a way for individual industries to buy a failure to comply
and overall of obfuscating the issue so much that people think
something is happening when it really is not?
Ms Worthington: We are not very
happy at all with how it has been implemented to date.
Q244 Mr Mitchell: You would prefer
another method?
Ms Worthington: No, the scheme
itself theoretically can work and can be very economically efficient.
The problem is that it is a political instrument and it has been
implemented in a political way. We hope that it can be improved.
Q245 Mr Mitchell: Is it going to
be an effective discipline, do you think?
Ms Worthington: It will fundamentally
change companies' attitudes to their emissions. Company accounts
being produced from this year onwards will carry a new asset line
in the budget which says whether you have a carbon liability or
a carbon asset. So suddenly it is no longer just the concern of
the environmental manager within a company as to what their emissions
are, it is going to be a matter for the financial directors and
the chief executive; it will appear in the accounts. So it fundamentally
changes the attitude of emissions by its introduction, so it is
groundbreaking. It is not yet implemented in the right way, but
that does not mean to say that the theory behind it is not strong.
Q246 Mr Mitchell: Just one last question
from a layman's point of view. How is it all measured? How can
you be so precise, a reduction of 2.9%? How on earth do you know?
Ms Worthington: A good question.
Q247 Mr Mitchell: It is comparing
old plant, new plant, all kinds of systems, the efficiency of
which you do not know. It is not as if it is an overall measure
of somebody going out with a sniffer and saying, "2.9% worse
this week." How precise is the measurement as to what it
is?
Ms Worthington: Well, we had a
very stark illustration of how you can get it wrong with the DTI's
energy projection, where they were forced to admit that they had
actually got the figures wrong and they were using the wrong conversion
values. But in layman's terms what happens is that an installation
is required to calculate its CO2 emissions derived
from its fuel consumption and then use formulae for that. They
are quite detailed formulae and they take into account the different
fuel types, even to the degree that different coal stocks have
different values for carbon dioxide. But it is a derived calculated
figure.
Q248 Mr Mitchell: Is it cheatable?
Ms Worthington: Yes, but it is
regulated by the Environment Agency and their officers are responsible
for checking and verifying that those figures are correct, and
they are independently verified.
Mr Mitchell: Thank you.
Q249 Joan Ruddock: You have heard
my question previously on global dimming and the fact that I,
as one person, having seen one television programme am much exercised
about this. I just wondered in the light of what you know of global
dimming just how likely you feel we are to meet any of the targets,
in particular the very ambitious 60% by 2050? Is it doable?
Ms Worthington: Well, as Sir John
Houghton pointed out, they have known about the effect of aerosols
and whether it has an enhancing or a dimming effect on the effect
of concentration, but the degree of uncertainty about that part
of the science is probably the largest degree of uncertainty of
all of it, so it is still highly unknown and uncertain.
Q250 Joan Ruddock: Can I just interrupt
you there? Is it not that more recently it has been measurable
because of the reduction in air pollution in western countries?
Ms Worthington: The programme,
which was very compelling, seemed to imply that. I think we will
have to wait to see what the IPCC make of it in terms of integrating
it into their next assessment report. What we believe, to use
a poor analogy, is that we are essentially in a car hurtling at
a speed at which we do not really know how fast we are travelling
towards a wall and we are not quite sure how far away that wall
is. Essentially, what is important is that somebody sits down
and works out how to invent the brakes. That is what the UK can
do and that is what the UK and Europe can do. We must work out
how to control our levels of emissions and that will involve Government
intervention. That is the challenge for our generation. I feel
very passionately that we can show it can be done, we can do it
without huge amounts of pain and economic recession. That should
be then an exportable set of knowledge that we can then send out
to other countries and encourage them to take the same path that
we have. But we have to prove it can be done and the exerting
of control and the inventing of the brakes is important because,
as science firms, once we have the levers in place we can simply
ratchet down according to the levels of the later science. Without
any degree of control we are simply out of control and very possibly
will reach a point where we have no return.
Q251 Joan Ruddock: Your analogy suggests
that we do not know how to invent the brakes, whereas I think
Sir John and his group were perhaps suggesting it was the political
will that was lacking. Do you really think there is a knowledge
gap still?
Ms Worthington: There is a combination
of a partial knowledge, because nobody is looking at it in its
entirety. Governments tend to take a very bottom-up approach,
"We will tweak this tax here," or, "We'll introduce
this policy measure here," but no one is looking at it in
its entirety and that is what is needed now, to gain control over
all sources.
Joan Ruddock: Thank you.
Q252 Mr Lepper: If I could just follow
on that line of thought, because in your evidence you say that
the current climate change programme has a mixture of measures
which seek to achieve emissions reductions but there appears to
be no consistency of approach. I think that is exactly the point
that you have been making to us just now. Is there any sign that
the review of the climate change programme is addressing that
lack of consistency? I am not going to get mixed up in your analogy
of the car, but where do you see the driving force ought to come
from in knocking heads together and bringing about that consistency?
Is it the department we shadow, is it the DTI, the Department
for Transport, the Treasury, or does it much matter which of them
it is as long as somebody takes the lead?
Ms Worthington: Sadly, I think
it does matter who does it. Obviously some departments have more
clout than others and this is why I think possibly we would be
interested to see if the Treasury felt it was a role they should
perform. The Cabinet Office, similarly, who have cost-cutting
responsibility could also be encouraged to do more. As to whether
the current review of the climate change programme has taken a
different tack, we would like to see the failings of the last
programme more clearly acknowledge, that the bottom-up approach
to policy making has not delivered the kind of control which is
necessary. That said, there are some interesting measures which
have been discussed within the programme which take us some way
towards addressing some of the obvious gaps, but I do not think
there is a sign yet that they are recommending a new holistic
kind of carbon budgeting approach, which is what we would like
to see adopted.
Q253 Mr Lepper: Is there any sign
of the emphasis that the Prime Minister has been placing on the
pace of climate change during the presidency of the EU and the
G8, etc? Is there any sign that the urgency which he in his public
statements gives to that whole issue is affecting the thinking
generally within government departments?
Ms Worthington: Sadly, not enough
really. I think Mr Blair seems to be more interested in the kind
of global politics of the current impasse and seems to
be quite relaxed about the fact that perhaps we are not doing
as well as we should be at home. That is regrettable because it
is not something which goes unnoticed in these discussions and
I think he should pay far more attention to domestic policies
on this issue if he is intent on taking a leadership role internationally.
There are lots of examples. The recent emissions trading debate
over the allocation of more allowances at the last hour indicates
that Number 10 did not step in on the side of the angels but actually
chose to put competitiveness concerns, or so-called competitiveness
concerns ahead of the environmental integrity. So yes, it is an
important issue which we would hope they would place more attention
on.
Q254 Mr Lepper: So it is talking
about the global problem and the need to deal with it rather than
looking at what we can be doing?
Ms Worthington: There is a mythology
that does the rounds, which is, "We're only responsible for
2% of the emissions. We've already done a lot since 1990. We're
doing our bit." But we all know that the bit that we have
done was almost entirely an accident because of the dash for gas
and that 2% of remissions, although it is small, we are one of
the leading developed countries and if we, as a stable, well-developed
county cannot show that we can get our emissions onto a downward
trajectory how on earth can we persuade anyone else to do the
same?
Mr Lepper: Thank you.
Q255 Joan Ruddock: I know Friends
of the Earth is always going on about road transport and transport
in general as being the key to making some real change. Can you
tell me, in relation to the price rises for fuel which have occurred
over say the last year is there any evidence that those rises
have been sufficient to reduce car usage?
Ms Worthington: No. The policy
at the moment seems to be frozen and the fuel duty escalator has—
Q256 Joan Ruddock: No, I was talking
about the market rises rather than in terms of global oil prices.
Ms Worthington: Well, the problem,
as always, is that it is not simply about price because elasticity
kicks in and people will simply be prepared to pay more for a
service that they require or need. What you need is a mechanism
that triggers innovation. There is a lot of people making a lot
of money out of the status quo and, as we have seen with the renewable
electricity industry, what you needed was some kind of carrot
and stick that said, "We're not just simply interested in
relative prices, we are actually going to oblige a certain portion
of your business to change towards renewables. That thinking,
which has resulted in a good mechanism, has not been applied to
any other sector. So we see the Treasury simply reducing duty
on biofuels in the hope that that will introduce a whole new industry
producing renewable transport fuel. It simply will not because
unless the big companies who control that market who are asked
or obliged to do that there is no reason on earth why they will.
It is a highly capitalised industry and new players find it very
difficult to enter. So obligation is the obvious route. So I do
not think it is as simple as what the effect of prices are; there
is also this question of how do you force innovation.
Q257 Joan Ruddock: I asked you that
because you believe that there should be a greater escalation
of the fuel tax, but if there is no evidence that raising the
price reduces the amount of mileage that we all do in our cars
then how is that going to have a major effect? How high would
you have to go to actually make people reduce their mileage?
Ms Worthington: We do not have
an answer for how high because we see it as part of the package.
As I was saying, we need to try to use mechanisms which cause
innovation. So if you were to do it through a tax route the important
part would be the recycling of that revenue to Government into
alternatives to the car. So it would not simply be the price alone
but the fact that you would recycle into public transport or alternative
transportation which would perhaps cause a reduction in emissions.
So it is not simply a price issue on its own.
Q258 Joan Ruddock: But is there enough
public transport to get people out of their cars?
Ms Worthington: I think there
is a shift towards more investment in public transport. Certainly,
as we have seen in London, with the Congestion Charge there has
been quite a shift and various cities around the world are looking
at very innovative solutions. There are talks of very lightweight
tram systems being looked at in Wales at the moment. There is
more interest in it, but yes, we need to have dedicated funding
mechanisms for that. Obviously the fuel duty goes into general
taxation. Some of that should be ringfenced for public transport.
Q259 Joan Ruddock: What about the
liaison between departments, DTI and Defra? Do you think that
is good enough? Does that have an impact on whether these solutions
are taken forward?
Ms Worthington: I have to say
we have witnessed probably one of the most unhelpful interactions
between two departments through the Emissions Trading Scheme with
the DTI representing what they believed to be the competitiveness
of industry and Defra representing our need to meet our targets
and it has been, I think, quite acrimonious at times. So I do
not think the relationships are as strong as they should be. I
think we have to accept that we simply cannot protect existing
high emitting companies to the detriment of the whole society.
There is going to have to be a shift and actually it will be for
the benefit of society as a whole if we encourage those players
to move and innovate. It is regrettable that often a very conservative
approach is taken to simply helping those who are currently powerful
to remain powerful and we need to see more innovation.
Chairman: I would like to bring Alan
in on the domestics and the time constraints.
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