Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
MONDAY 14 MAY 2007
DR KEVIN
ANDERSON, DR
ALICE BOWS,
MR BRIAN
SAMUEL AND
MR DAN
STANIASZEK
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon ladies
and gentlemen, welcome to the first evidence session in the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the draft
Climate Change Bill. As you may realise the field of inquiries
and commentators in this area has become quite crowded, but you
are very welcome to the first session. As always, this Committee
is ahead of the game on it and we are very grateful to the Tyndall
Centre for Climate Change for your written contribution and we
welcome, for the record, Dr Kevin Anderson who is Research Director
and Dr Alice Bows, the Senior Research Fellow. We also welcome
back the Energy Saving Trust, but on this occasion Brian Samuel,
the Head of Policy Research and Mr Dan Staniaszek, the Evaluation
Director. You are all very welcome indeed. The Bill is an interesting
document in that the Government have put great store by enshrining
in law targets, for example, which were already in the public
domain and which the Government of the day were already committed
to as part of public policy. On the other hand, commentators have
observed that in many ways certain sectors vis-a"-vis
emissions still continue to cause problems and against the original
track of the 60% reduction between 1990 and 2050, we are now running
behind schedule. So do you think it was a good idea to move to
enshrining a target that we are currently not able to meet in
terms of current direction of travel in law or would it have been
better to stick with the existing plans, which had been set out
to try to enable us to meet this target? Would it have been better
to stick with the plan or is it better to go with a piece of law?
Mr Samuel: Basically, you need
both. You need legally binding targets to send a clear message
and then you need to have the right policy framework in place.
Whilst we are moving in certain areas or certain sectors towards
emission reductions, we are clearly not going fast enough and
we need to do substantially more by putting legally binding targets
in place. Hopefully that will actually provide further momentum.
It also sets a long-term framework. The problem we have at the
moment is that the climate change programme actually only looks
as far as 2010; it just does not really go far enough. Therefore
that has actually impacted upon the policy decision-making process
and on those policies that are actually required to deliver the
longer-term objectives.
Dr Anderson: We need neither the
plan nor the law. What we require is action because neither the
plan nor the law brings about change in the CO2 emissions,
so it is whatever combination is necessary to bring about action,
and that action has to be something which is immediate. In that
case, it would appear that the plan, the climate change programme,
needs to be enacted in full, and even if it were, it would not
be sufficient. Clearly we need a more medium- and long-term signal
as to where that is pointing. There is no point having random
bits of inputs in policy such as the climate change programme
without actually having a very clear and traceable link between
that and what it is we are trying to achieve in terms of carbon
dioxide emissions.
Q2 Chairman: If that is the case,
do you think that in terms of the structural deficiencies that
the current plan has, this Bill plugs the gaps? Does it provide
you with sufficient additional ways in which action will result?
Dr Anderson: No, it falls way
short of that.
Q3 Chairman: Do you want to give
me a little scenario as to where it falls way short?
Dr Anderson: The first thing is
that there is a misconception between efficiency and actual reductions
in emissions. People think that if you improve the efficiency
of something, by definition then you reduce emissions, but you
do not at all. You may reduce the emissions, but you may of course
increase the emissions because of the rebound effect.
Q4 Chairman: When you say "the
rebound effect"?
Dr Anderson: The rebound effect
is that, if you make your car slightly more efficient so you can
get more miles to the gallon, you might end up driving more miles
because it is cheaper to run. This occurs at all levels with efficiency
and it is a well-known phenomenon amongst academics and energy
analysts. It is quite hard to actually quantify what the results
will be, but the important thing I am saying there is that it
is not simply improving efficiency, it is actually how you use
products or how many houses you have and how you live within those
houses that matters. So making a house efficient is all well and
good, but if you end up wanting to live at 22°C in the house
instead of 16°C or 18°C, you may end up with an increase
in your emissions. It is really important to have an overall carbon
target and strategy to aim towards and your efficiency is one
of the mechanisms you use to move in that direction. Efficiency
is just one and it is not a conservation in itself.
Q5 Chairman: The central headline
plank of the Bill is the setting into law of the existing target
of the 60% reduction from 1990 by 2050. Dr Anderson and Dr Bows,
the evidence which you very kindly sent us, the briefing note
number 17[2],
leaves one in no doubt that you do not think that the target that
is proposed in the Bill is adequate for the task and you have
very kindly produced for our consumption and education a little
slideshow. I just want to enquire whether all members of the Committee
have that document because I am going to ask Dr Anderson and Dr
Bows whether they would be kind enough just to go through this
thing slowly. I found the summary in your document pretty good,
but as I got further into it, it then got quite technical and
quite statistical; not that we do not understand numbers, but
it is the thinking behind it which your presentation seeks to
put a little transparency on and understanding. Would you like
to go through that slowly but surely for us by way of explaining
the content of your briefing note number 17?
Dr Bows: I will just explain the
slides.[3]
Starting on the first page with slide 2 rather than slide 1—we
do not need to go through the title—the position is that
the UK and the EU would like to prevent the most dangerous effects
of climate change and this is an aspiration that is stated in
a number of different policy documents. The UK Government and
the EU define this as not exceeding a two-degree temperature rise
above pre-industrial levels. Historically, this was correlated
with a certain level of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere
and that level was 550 parts per million. It says there in brackets
"or equivalent". That is because there is some ambiguity
in some of the policy documents as to whether it is just CO2
or whether it includes the other greenhouse gases. Following the
report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the
UK Government adopted a 60% carbon reduction target that was based
on this 550ppm CO2 level.
Q6 Chairman: Could I just be very rude
and stop you there? In the Bill in the first clause it says "It
is the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK
carbon account for the year 2050 is at least 60% lower than the
1990 baseline". Does that "UK carbon account" convey
to you as experts a clear definition as to what it is?
Dr Bows: No.
Q7 Chairman: Do you have any idea
what the UK carbon account is?
Dr Bows: No.
Dr Anderson: There is almost no
mention within the document of cumulative emissions which is what
the budget is; it is about cumulative emissions, it is the bank
balance, how many pounds you have in the bank that you can spend.
Q8 Chairman: Do you have any idea
from the Energy Saving Trust standpoint what this carbon account
is?
Mr Samuel: No; it does lack clarity.
Mr Staniaszek: It is the first
time the phrase has been used to our knowledge and stating it
clearly as the CO2 equivalent emission levels would
be much more understandable.
Q9 Chairman: In the second sub clause,
in 1(2) is says "`The 1990 baseline' means the amount of
net UK carbon dioxide emissions for the year 1990". It does
not define what this "net" is, it does not define how
it is calculated, it just makes it as a statement. So we have
in the first two sentences of the Bill something that talks about
a "carbon account" and it then talks about "UK
carbon dioxide emissions". I presume, Dr Anderson, that falls
into your lack of clarity box.
Dr Anderson: Yes, it is just muddled
thinking.
Q10 Chairman: How could we, if we
were looking to improve the Bill, bring some clarity into it?
What terminology should we be using to describe what this thing
is about?
Dr Anderson: As long as the terminology
is consistent I do not really mind if there is a glossary, but
broadly we use the word "budget" and the budget is the
cumulative budget, how much of the total amount of CO2
we can spew out into the environment between now and some date
in the future and that is our budget, measured in tonnes of carbon
or tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Q11 Mr Williams: The Chairman has
already raised the issue of CO2 equivalents of other
greenhouse gases. Do you think those should be included in the
Bill as well or is it because they are not quite as persistent
as carbon dioxide that they are not quite so important? I am talking
about nitrogen oxides and methanes.
Dr Bows: They should be included
in the Bill. To date the UK Government seem to have concentrated
solely on CO2 but we have to address the other greenhouse
gases.
Q12 Mr Williams: How could the Bill
be improved to include those other greenhouse gases as well? Could
we talk about carbon dioxide equivalents?
Dr Anderson: Yes, you could do.
Dr Bows: You could do, but you
would have then actually to be talking about that and not just
be saying it and then interchanging it with carbon dioxide. This
has been the problem in the past that it is not clear; people
talk about carbon dioxide emission reductions when they mean greenhouse
gas emission reductions and that kind of thing. It just needs
to be absolutely clear and then obviously the policies are going
to be different. When you are dealing with CO2 you
are generally dealing with energy, whereas when you are dealing
with the other greenhouse gases they are more process emissions
or agriculture and that sort of thing so those need to be much
more explicit.
Q13 Chairman: I am sorry Dr Bows
I interrupted the start of your presentation. We will go back
and I will try to be quiet.
Dr Bows: All I was going to say
on slide 3 was that the science that links the 550ppm level to
the 2°C has since moved on, as much of that was done prior
to 2003. According to some work that was carried out by Meinshausen
and presented at the Defra Exeter conference, 550ppm CO2
has about an 88% chance of exceeding the two-degree threshold
and these are approximate but the paper gives a range of probabilities.
The 440ppm level has about a 70% chance of exceeding the 2°C
and these are just CO2; these do not include the other greenhouse
gases. When it comes to the targets, the final percentage reduction
in a particular year has little relevance to the 2°C or the
440 or 550 concentrations because what are important are the cumulative
emissions. This is because when we are talking about CO2
it exists in the atmosphere for over 100 years and so the emissions
we release today add to those that we released over the past year
and then the past 99 years. It is not the percentage reduction;
rather it is the cumulative emissions that matter. If you look
at slide 5, what we have here at the left hand side are carbon
emissions, along the bottom we have the year from 1990 up to 2050
and with the black solid line we have just plotted the UK's domestic
carbon emissions; so this is just from the sectors that do not
include international aviation and international shipping. This
is just taken directly from Defra's website, so the emissions
that are submitted to the UNFCCC. Then we have drawn a trajectory
that is taken from the Climate Change Bill that passes through
a 26% reduction in 2020 and then reaches the 60% reduction in
2050. There is a graph underneath which is very similar, but in
this case it passes through a 32% reduction in 2020 and that is
just to reflect the Government's two targets for 2020, just to
show that they are not terribly dissimilar and that they both
reach the 60% carbon reduction target in 2050. Then on slide 7
we have shaded this area under the curve because that is your
cumulative emission budget effectively. The total emissions that
the UK will release, if it goes by the Climate Change Bill, are
reflected in this area under the curve. Due to the fact that there
is a bit of a range in 2020, this equates to around 5.5 to 6 billion
tonnes of carbon between 2000 and 2050, so clearly we actually
have data for the years 2000 up to 2005, 2006 has been estimated,
but from then on, it is just following the Climate Change Bill.
In slide 8 we have asked what happens if we include international
aviation and international shipping. It is often commented that
these are just a small proportion of our emissions so we do not
consider them at the moment and also that they have been omitted
from Kyoto. However, what we see in this slide 8 is that they
are actually very significant. So we have added to the data from
1990 up to 2006 the aviation and shipping additional emissions
which is why the solid line is now somewhat higher and then we
follow the Climate Change Bill for the domestic emissions but
we have included in this some assumptions about aviation and shipping.
What we have assumed are lowish growth futures for aviation and
shipping, a couple of percent lower than existing emission increases
until 2012 and then from then onwards for aviation around a 3%
increase in emissions up to 2035 and then 1% and then somewhat
lower for shipping. Basically, the message is that this adds an
additional portion of carbon emissions to your carbon budget or
to your area under the curve and that is illustrated in the purple
shaded area there. Under these assumptions, this would suggest
that the Government are currently omitting an additional 1.5 billion
tonnes of carbon by choosing to omit international aviation and
shipping. This is a rather significant portion if you consider
that their total budget before was between 5.5 and 6 billion tonnes.
Q14 Chairman: May I ask for clarification?
There is an indication that the Government wanted to make some
allowance for domestic aviation and shipping. When you used the
term "international aviation and shipping" does this
mean the total carbon dioxide consequences of shipping and aviation
activity that commences in the United Kingdom or finishes? What
does that mean?
Dr Bows: Domestic aviation and
shipping is just the aviation and shipping which exists within
the UK's boundaries and that is included in the total domestic
emissions, so the grey shaded area incorporates that part. The
international aviation and shipping is assumed to be a 50% of
all arrivals and departures for aviation and for shipping and
in fact the aviation data is slightly more accurate in terms of
the existing data that we have up to 2006 which is based on methodology
that actually considers the departing flights and how far they
have gone and the different kinds of aircraft et cetera.
The shipping data is much more estimated because we do not have
good information on shipping emissions but basically it is international,
so it is going out of the UK's seas and abroad to deliver goods.
On slide 9 we just say that consequently, if you tot up the aviation
and shipping additional emissions and include those within the
domestic emissions budget, you get a new total UK cumulative carbon
budget over a 50-year period between 2000 and 2050 of between
7 to 7.5 billion tonnes of carbon. If the same apportionment regime
is used that the Government used in order originally to come up
with its 60% target, this would equate to something closer to
a 600 to 750 parts per million CO2 rather than the
550ppm that the Government originally started from. If we then
look at the probabilities, again based on the Meinshausen paper,
of what a 600 to 750ppm CO2 concentration might look
like in terms of probabilities of exceeding different temperature
thresholds, this is a 92 to 100% chance of exceeding 2°C
or a 50% chance of exceeding four degrees. Finally, we just move
on to what would give us a more reasonable chance of not exceeding
the two-degree threshold, so a 450ppm CO2 alone would
give us a 30% chance of not exceeding it, still not a huge chance,
but would give us a reasonable chance and we have calculated that
this correlates with a UK carbon budget of around 4.8 billion
tonnes of carbon for the period 2000 to 2050. Again, this is based
on the same apportionment approach that the Government used originally,
but because we are spending this budget at quite a high rate at
the moment, we have effectively spent about 25% of this 50-year
budget in just seven years because we are still emitting at a
very high rate. If you look at slide 11, this just illustrates
graphically what we will have to do if we want to stay within
this 4.8 billion tonnes of carbon budget between 2000 and 2050.
Again, the data that has been submitted to the UNFCCC is in there
up to 2005 and then what we assume is that all domestic sectors
can stabilise their emissions up until 2010 to 2012, so we are
assuming that, although there are some policies existing to attack
the carbon emissions in the UK, they only manage to stabilise
emissions rather than actually reduce them and in fact in 2006
the emissions are thought to have gone up according to the provisional
figure. Then, what we are also assuming for international aviation
and shipping is that they actually lead to an increase in emissions
because the growth rates, particularly in aviation, are very high.
What that means, because again you are spending your budget very
quickly, is that in order to keep the area under the curve within
your budget, you have to make very significant cuts from the year
around 2012 right down to the early 2030s. In fact, if you look
at slide 12, what we are talking about are unprecedented carbon
reductions of around 9% per year over that period around 2014
to 2030 just so that we can stay within our carbon budget.
Q15 David Taylor: Slide 10 says in
the middle "based on apportionment approach used for the
60% target" that is the UK's contribution to global reductions.
Can you remind us in a couple of sentences what that approach
assumes in relation to the parallel contribution of other growing
economies like China, India, Brazil, and Russia?
Dr Bows: It was based on the contraction
and convergence regime that was used by the Royal Commission when
they first came up with a 60% target which assumes a convergence
date of 2050, which means that there are equal per capita
emissions globally by 2050. That therefore allows the emissions
of some countries which are very low emitting at the moment to
rise somewhat and then start to decline towards the per capita
value, whereas industrial countries like the UK and the United
States will have to make very significant reductions from the
start.
Q16 Lynne Jones: Is the reason why
your curves are going up purely because of the aviation?
Dr Bows: Aviation and shipping,
yes.
Q17 Lynne Jones: I had a Parliamentary
Question about stabilising greenhouse gases to 450 to 550ppm and
the minister said that global greenhouse gas emissions, CO2
equivalents, would need to fall by between 10 and 65% below 1990
levels by 2050 and therefore the 60% target was in line with this,
but that is a huge variation. Do you recognise the figures 10
to 65%?
Dr Anderson: Did you say global?
Q18 Lynne Jones: It says global GHG
emissions would need to fall by between 10 and 65% below 1990
levels by 2050. Why are they quoting such a huge range?
Dr Bows: I do not know why they
would be quoting such a huge range. I know that there is uncertainty,
but my understanding is that for global emissions there is a good
degree of understanding of the kinds of levels that will need
to be reached by 2050.
Q19 Lynne Jones: Which is what?
Dr Bows: I do not know what the
figure is exactly.
Dr Anderson: The latest IPCC report,
the UN report, has only just come out and the full document supporting
the science is not available as yet, only the summary document.
The upper end of that is my understanding of what is necessary
because the latest report tends to suggest that the lower end
of previous reports is now not scientifically justified and the
situation actually looks worse than we initially thought and we
are now having to incorporate a lot more feedbacks into the system
where the environment starts to kick back because of emissions
that we have put out and the consequence of that is that in fact
our emissions have to be lower.
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