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Over the next few years, decisions will be made that will shape the global energy and transport industries for decades to come. Down one path lies the kind of vision that my leader and those on the Opposition Front Bench have been urging for some time, which we discussed
yesterday. Down the other path lies not business as usual but an attempt to compensate for dwindling oil reserves by relying on unconventional sources of fossil fuel, most of which are unconventionally expensive and unconventionally damaging to the environment.
Paul Flynn: Will the hon. Gentleman explain why his party changed its view on nuclear power, seeing it now as a first resort rather than a last resort? Was it to do with the £93 billion bill to clear up old nuclear, or the fact that nuclear has never been delivered on budget or on time, or the fact that the only new nuclear power station in the world is already three years late and €2 billion over budget?
Greg Clark: I am grateful for that intervention. My assessment is that nuclear power is clearly a low-carbon source of energy. We discussed yesterday how we need to diversify our sources of energy generation for energy security purposes, so unless one has an objection in principle to nuclear as a technology-and we do not- given that it contributes to energy security, and is consistent with our climate change objectives, and if it is economically viable, I would expect to see it as part of the mix.
Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell) (Lab): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again on this subject. In what year would he estimate that a new nuclear power plant would deliver a new additional watt of so-called low-carbon energy, as opposed to what comes from the replacement plants that the Government are talking about first-off?
Greg Clark: That point again takes us back to yesterday's discussions. The difficulty we are in-it is one of the points I raised yesterday-is that we been through a period in which public policy has not grappled with the predictable issues, one of which is the fact that the majority of our current nuclear fleet comes to the end of its planned life during the decade ahead. It is now too late to even replace the capacity provided by those nuclear power stations before the existing fleet reaches the end of its planned life. I think that decisions were ducked during that period, but according to the promoters, such as EDF, for example, 2017 or 2018 are the earliest years by which we could expect that contribution.
Nia Griffith: Can the hon. Gentleman tell me which power stations were built between 1979 and 1997?
Greg Clark: I think- [Interruption.] Well, I was certainly in the Conservative party in 1997. On questions like that, I suggest that the hon. Lady asks her own Front-Bench team for factual information; I am sure they will be happy to oblige.
Let me make some more progress. Copenhagen will be seen by many as a fork in the road-and to some extent it will be, because trillions of dollars are waiting to be committed one way or the other, with investors looking to the world's leaders to set a clear direction. I therefore agreed with the Danish Prime Minister when he said last month that the meeting in Copenhagen
"may be one of the most important meetings of this new millennium-a meeting where we cannot afford to fail".
The worst kind of failure at Copenhagen, however, would be failure dressed up as success, by which I mean an agreement that literally promised the earth without achieving the action required of every major emitting nation, including those in the developing world. A fake deal would eventually be exposed for what it was, but by that point, precious time would have been lost.
Of course, it is in the nature of international summitry to blur the line between success and failure. We saw a prime example at last week's G8 summit in Italy, where on the face of it a great success was scored when the signatories agreed to make cuts of 80 per cent. in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. However, in the small print, the agreement referred to a base year of
"1990 or more recent years".
This matters because the choice of the base year can make a huge difference to the size of the carbon limits actually agreed to. For instance, between 1990 and 2007, annual emissions in the US alone increased by 1,000 million tonnes-more than the total annual emissions of Britain and France combined.
We have already seen Japan attempt to use 2005 as its base year, and the same date was used by this Government when they unveiled an aviation emission target as what I regard as a fig leaf for their decision to build a third runway at Heathrow. Fiddling around with base years is just one way of moving the goal posts, but the only goal that really matters is the reduction required to keep the rise in global temperatures below 2°C.
Edward Miliband: On the point about aviation emissions, which is relevant to the international deal, does the hon. Gentleman agree with our target to get such emissions in 2050 back to current levels?
Greg Clark: Of course we agree that if we are going to have carbon budgets, they should include all sectors, but my point is that having different base years for different contributors risks undermining the clarity that is needed for a rigorous deal.
Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I was happy to support the Climate Change Bill, but what does my hon. Friend say to those who point out that in recent years, global temperatures have not been rising, as the early computer models predicted, but have actually been falling? Is that not tempting countries to rebase the years at which they start their carbon reduction targets?
Greg Clark: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention, because what he has mentioned is exactly the problem. If countries rebased their targets every time a different direction was indicated over a series of a few years, we would never meet our commitments. I believe that we need stability and that we need to follow the long-term consensus of the science. In this country, that means following the Climate Change Act 2008, which my hon. Friend supported, under which a committee comprising scientists and other policy makers keeps the issues rigorously under review. That is the right approach. I hope that in this regard the role of the British delegation in Copenhagen will be to unblur, as it were, the line between success and failure and to focus on clarity in the discussions.
Twenty years ago, Margaret Thatcher stood before the Assembly of the United Nations and told the truth about the emerging scientific evidence on climate change. Twenty years later, the world's Governments will meet at Copenhagen and either they will agree to the necessary action or they will not-but we owe it to the people of the world to tell them which it is.
Another test of whether the agreement is a success or a failure is implementation, about which the Secretary of State rightly spoke. It is ultimately implementation, not targets, that provides the surest test. When it comes to the facts on the ground, it is impossible to blur the distinction between success and failure. Either megawatts of clean energy are installed or they are not. For instance, there can be no fudging of the fact that in the decade up to 2005, the share of renewable energy in the UK went from 1 per cent. to 1.3 per cent. I hope we all agree that that is disappointing. We can recognise that for what it is-a wasted opportunity-only if we are clear about the difference between success and failure.
The implementation agenda is all the more important because Copenhagen must find a way of binding in not only countries like ours, but developing countries, including those which are rapidly industrialising, such as China and India. They are not only significant contributors to global emissions, but are capable of making a real contribution to the development of a low-carbon economy both domestically and globally.
We are told that these developing nations will not agree to targets. That may or may not be the case when it comes to the negotiations, but if it is the case, it is on the implementation of action plans-with regard to reducing carbon intensity, for example-that this part of the global deal will stand or fall. It is therefore absolutely vital that we in the developed world can bring forward credible implementation strategies of our own to show that this can be done. Unless we do so in our countries, there seems little chance of guaranteeing that the same will happen in the developing world.
Barry Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman will know that developing countries have agreed that they should perform nationally appropriate mitigation actions. As part of that, they look to the developed world to provide funds to enable them to do that-as well as to intellectual property rights, which were mentioned earlier. Will the hon. Gentleman commit, as the Government have committed, to ensuring that only 10 per cent. of the official development assistance budget is used to facilitate the developing countries' nationally appropriate mitigating actions-and no more than that, as that would be seen by those countries as good faith, whereas anything more would be seen as bad faith?
Greg Clark: I certainly agree with one objective at Copenhagen, which is to set up a fund for adaptation, which is in addition to the aid agreements between different countries. I think it is important that we do that, but when it comes to existing action within ODA, we have to recognise the effect of climate change on variables that are the subject of aid at the moment. Tearfund, for example, brought to my attention a World Bank figure suggesting that climate change might put 40 per cent. of international poverty reduction at risk, so I would not want to be in a position of being constrained from taking action on poverty because of some other figure.
Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner) made an important point. We should absolutely continue to tackle poverty and it is good that on both sides of the House we are committed to the 0.7 per cent. share of gross domestic product. It would be a real problem, however, if under the guise of that 0.7 per cent. figure, a large proportion of that money was diverted to climate change. Then people would say that we were not funding poverty in the way that was promised, as it was being diverted to climate change. Of course the two issues are related, but my hon. Friend is right to press the hon. Gentleman to commit to 10 per cent. of the ODA budget.
Greg Clark: I do not think that there is any disagreement between us. Additional resources for climate change are needed, and we should not divert money from important programmes in our aid budget.
Taking action to show that we can implement the commitments is an important test of our good faith if we are to argue for them around the world. If continue to fail to live up to the ambitious targets we have set ourselves, we are in a poor position to bring other countries on board. That is why yesterday's discussion in the House was so important. We will continue to press the Government for more urgent, comprehensive and tangible action domestically.
I am reminded of a speech delivered by John F. Kennedy in 1963 on the subject of peace which in itself changed the course of the cold war. Before the United States could credibly call on the Soviet Union to reform its attitude to human rights and aggression around the world, the President argued, American citizens needed first to examine their own attitudes to peace and freedom in their country. Only when all American citizens lived with full equal rights and without fear of violence in their own country, the President said, would the United States have the moral authority to call on other countries to reform their behaviour. So it must be for us: if we are to have the moral authority truly to lead in Copenhagen, it must be by example as well as by exhortation.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Before I call the next hon. Member to speak, I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, and that applies from now on.
1.1 pm
Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell) (Lab): It is pleasure to take part in this short debate on climate change. The fact that it is a short debate indicates that more immediate problems tend to come ahead of climate change in our consideration-I do not intend to undermine the importance of the debate on Afghanistan in any way. I look forward to a longer debate on climate change in the autumn.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is correct that we must be consistent in trying to meet the targets that climate change science tells us we ought to meet if we are to stay within a 2° temperature increase. I would like to talk about those numbers, because policy based on scientific analysis is quite new in politics-policy of such magnitude based on science is extremely new. I address my comments
not only to Government Members but to Opposition Members, because the point would be a crucial one to miss.
The numbers are terribly important, and the Government are far more candid on them than they were two or three years ago, which I welcome. I draw Members' attention to page 35 of the "Road to Copenhagen" document, which for the first time provides an honest assessment:
"It is estimated that stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 450 ppm CO2 equivalent gives around a 50 per cent. chance of keeping temperature levels below 2°C and reduces the chance of increases of between 3 to 4°C. Higher concentrations would reduce the chance of staying below 2°C significantly and increase the chances of much higher temperature rises."
That is a major step forward from the publication of the Stern review two and a half years ago, when the range of targets discussed went up to 550 parts per million, on the basis of which one could plan one's policy, prepare one's budgets and so on. Nick Stern has now reduced his estimate of where we should be to, I think, 450 parts per million. Around the world, others are saying it should go much lower. Jim Hansen, for example, has suggested that 350 parts per million, which is less than where we are today, ought to be our longer-term target.
Those numbers may seem arcane to most people outside this Chamber, and I suspect that that is an inevitable consequence of a science-based policy. However, it is essential that we base our policies on numbers based on the science. I fear that in some cases we are still not managing to do that. The Committee on Climate Change's recommended budgets, for example, appear to be based on some modelling that rather ignores the impacts of coupled models, in which the impact of positive feedbacks and carbon sink failures are calculated. The Hadley centre, which contributed evidence to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, has examined the differences between coupled and uncoupled modelling, and shown that if we followed the coupled model, global carbon emissions would have to be reduced by 80 per cent., not the 50 per cent. that many people are now talking about. That is a radical step change in the budgets that we should consider. Should anyone care to look at it, that evidence from our own Hadley centre is repeated authoritatively in the IPCC AR4 work group 1 report, chapter 10, page 791.
There is already a big change in Government, which is welcome, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should be congratulated for shaking things up. However, we always seem to be chasing our tail on climate change policy, and the science seems to be pointing south-even more so than six months ago. In March, the Copenhagen congress on science suggested that the impacts of climate change will be worse than many people thought.
Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that even though everyone in the Chamber would honour the Secretary of State for the way in which he has changed attitudes so rapidly, he must expect, and we ought to give him, constant pressure on such issues? Consensus should not mean silence on this issue. We must press all the time if people are to listen.
Colin Challen: I could not agree more with that assessment. If my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State goes to Copenhagen and tells his colleagues-or tells the Americans or the Chinese before Copenhagen-that he is under constant pressure in the House to do a better deal, that is of great value. I make no apology for sometimes sounding critical of my Government. The criticism should come from all sides. We are not looking for a consensus around motherhood and apple pie. I am looking for a bigger effort.
In another example of the Government's candour of late on the issue, in response to my written question about the contribution of Government policy to reductions in CO2 emissions in this country since 1990, I received the reply that the dash for gas contributed 15 per cent. of that reduction, that the change between imports and exports-the fact that more manufacturing takes place in China and we import it back-accounted for about 30 per cent. of the reduction in carbon emissions, and that other factors, of course, also contributed. The written answer stated:
"The direct effect of Government policies overlaps with the estimates given above and is likely to have accounted for about 15 per cent."-[ Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 36W.]
Therefore, between 1990, the baseline year, and today, Government policy-from Governments of both parties, presumably-contributed about 15 per cent. to our reduction in greenhouse gases.
In my view, 15 per cent., which is equivalent to the contribution from the dash for gas, is simply not enough. Hopefully, the budgets that have now been published, and the report and statement yesterday, will indicate that we will go well beyond 15 per cent., and I hope that we will be much more interventionist in the markets, and tell them what they have to do-not leave it all to the magical formula called, "Not picking winners", which so far, I think, has managed to pick quite a few losers.
The idea that we would aim for higher greenhouse gas emissions cuts if we had a global agreement calls on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, Ministers and the EU generally to make a big impact on the Americans. I know that we all welcome President Obama's contribution to the debate, and we all welcome the Waxman-Markey Bill, although its headline reduction figure seems lower than that of the Kyoto protocol. However, a recent comment has caused me considerable concern. Todd Stern, who is President Obama's lead envoy for climate change, said in June, during the Mexico talks of the Major Economies Forum,
"In our judgment"
the cut proposed by the European Union
"is not necessary and not feasible given where we are starting from. So it is not on the cards."
That is an alarming position for us to find ourselves in, particularly now that the Waxman-Markey Bill has left the House of Representatives, having been watered down quite a bit and facing a much tougher battle in the Senate, where the Republicans-in my view, a horrid little core group of far-right extremists when it comes to this subject-will dig their heels in and oppose it every inch of the way.
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