Engineering: turning ideas into reality - Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 44 - 59)

MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2008

RT HON LORD DRAYSON, JOAN RUDDOCK AND PROFESSOR BOB WATSON

  Chairman: Welcome to our second panel for the afternoon in the IUSS Sub-Committee's work on geo-engineering. Welcome very much indeed, Joan Ruddock MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Department of DECC, Professor Bob Watson, the Chief Scientific Adviser at Defra, and Lord Drayson, the Minister of State for Science and Innovation. Welcome to all of you and thank you very much indeed for joining us today. I am going to immediately start by asking Ian Gibson to begin the session.

  Q44  Dr Gibson: The Tyndall Centre, which I am sure you have heard often, has suggested that the Government has been in a state of, in their words, "blissful ignorance" when it comes to geo-engineering. Do you agree with that?

  Professor Watson: No!

  Q45  Dr Gibson: Why not?

  Professor Watson: The issues of geo-engineering have been around for a long while. As the previous panel said, iron fertilization has been discussed on and off for at least 20 years. The volcanoes give us a natural experiment in putting aerosols into the stratosphere, so we know effectively what the implications of stratospheric aerosols can be. So I think on the issue of geo-engineering, certainly when I chaired IPCC for the 2001 report we were talking about it from 1997 through to 2001, so I am not at all convinced we are in a state of blissful ignorance.

  Q46  Dr Gibson: Right, but what are you doing to fathom the geo-engineering research which comes along? How are you keeping in touch with it in your busy life?

  Professor Watson: I think it is a question of whether that is the highest priority at the moment, given scarce resources versus actually putting investment into current technologies and pre-commercial technologies such as carbon capture and storage, IGCC, future generation biofuels. So I would argue at the moment that one of the key issues, which we are doing, is looking to see what the implications through theoretical modelling would be of adding tropospherical aerosols, stratospherical aerosols, particles in outer space, et cetera. So at the moment Defra is clearly not putting any funding into any of the engineering aspects but we have clearly been, as the paper we submitted to you shows, looking to see what the current thinking is of the academic community, what the potential implications are, positive and negative, of different approaches.

  Q47  Dr Gibson: Have we got a hope in hell with geo-engineering, do you think, giving us something interesting? Do you believe that at this stage?

  Professor Watson: I think it is still worth doing some exploratory theoretical thinking. I think the issue of the artificial trees has positive elements. I do not see that that has negative implications, although you still have to store the carbon dioxide afterwards, so there are some issues of storage. If we go to some of the other areas, on paper there are potential offsets, whether it is tropospheric or stratospheric aerosols, but I would argue the number one priority at the moment is to actually implement a low carbon economy in both the production and use of energy and that would be the number one priority. For example, carbon capture and storage is a crucial technology on which at the moment the rhetoric is way ahead in the world at large of actual implementation. While there is no single bullet technology to move to a low carbon economy, without carbon capture and storage we will never achieve a low carbon economy if the US, India and China continue to use their fossil fuels, given they are so cheap, to produce electricity.

  Q48  Chairman: So why are we procrastinating? Why did we fail to deliver on the Peterhead project? This is probably to Lord Drayson rather than yourself, but you must have a view?

  Professor Watson: The European Union is talking seriously about trying to do a dozen or so carbon capture and storage pilot studies, which I believe is what we need. I would argue we need somewhere between 10 and 20 pilot studies, both pre and post-combustion, in different types of storage facilities. So I think now is the time to move aggressively forward. It needs international cooperation. I would argue it goes even beyond the EU, it should bring in the US and Japan, but clearly this is something which I think has to be moved quickly. I would call it an Apollo-type programme where you do not do one, learn from it, do a second, learn from it and do a third. We need to go in parallel and try multiple approaches simultaneously.

  Lord Drayson: I think that is a very fair comparison and I think it nicely puts into context the real difference in the risk and benefit balance of something such as carbon captured storage against projects which we would consider under geo-engineering. I would say in the case of carbon capture and storage you have got an absolutely pressing need you have got a certain amount of time for that technology to be delivered. In concert with the changes which need to take place in terms of the switch at coal-fired power stations you have also got really quite a significant commercial opportunity. If the UK could convert successful research into this area into a commercially successful sector, it would have global export potential, particularly within China because of the number of coal and oil-fired power stations. If you compare that with geo-engineering, where some of the projects which are being postulated provide real questions of the downside risk, for example upsetting the radiation balance of the planet, incredible estimates of costs, for example, in terms of the reflective shields, as the Professor says, therefore the right thing to be doing is to be spending small to moderate amounts of money in the geo-engineering field, concentrating on the use of computer models, looking in a focused way at projects which have a sort of greater sense of feasibility, for example the artificial trees project, but at the same time really looking harder at how we can accelerate projects which have a real need now in addressing the challenge of climate change, and I think the example of carbon capture and storage is absolutely fair.

  Q49  Dr Gibson: What is the role of DIUS in this then?

  Lord Drayson: DIUS's role is to make sure that there is a clear link-up between the decisions which are taken under the Haldane Principle by the research councils identifying which projects are supported within research within a strategic focus set by the Government in terms of addressing key challenges which our society faces, an example of that being climate change, clearly, and to make sure that the link-up between the strategic objective at the top and the research input which is being taken at the very early stage gets pulled through into the creation, where we can, through the use of government procurement, through the use of the support for innovative new hi-tech industry, such that as we do the research to find solutions to these problems it does lead, we would hope, to the development of a strong sector around that. I think we really need to be, as we are, putting a lot of effort through the Technology Strategy Board to make sure there is think linkage between government policy, research input and the creation of next generation industry.

  Joan Ruddock: Chairman, could I just add something to what has been said? First of all, in relation to Dr Gibson's first question about whether we were completely unaware—which is not his own criticism, I know, he was reporting a criticism, but of course there was an internal paper produced by what was then Defra, which was the result of a lot of discussions which had taken place between the chief scientist and UK experts on the very issue of geo-engineering and it was looking at options for mitigating climate change, so very obviously we have, as a department (Defra and now DECC), taken an interest in this subject and indeed Professor Watson has been a leading light in that. There is a difference between taking an interest in a subject and then concluding that this interest leads you into direct action within the Department. The interest is there, the understanding is there and we are not in any sense unaware, but we have concluded things which do not lead us to a great deal of direct activity, and you may want to come on to that.

  Q50  Chairman: We just wanted to ask you that very specific question because we are a little confused now as to where your responsibilities and the new Department for Energy and Climate Change start and where Lord Drayson's responsibilities in DIUS finish, because he has quite rightly claimed in terms of climate change that there is a major responsibility for DIUS. What is it within this particular field of geo-engineering that you are going to deliver? Where do you see your responsibilities?

  Joan Ruddock: The question is, are we going to deliver anything? We would have to be convinced that geo-engineering offered us a major lever to tackle and to mitigate greenhouse gases.

  Q51  Chairman: Can I just start with the question which Professor Watson left us with, this vision of carbon sequestration? He made a very, very powerful case, I think, about European cooperation. He included Japan and the United States in that and I think we, as a Committee, particularly those of us who did an inquiry into this for a number of years, would totally agree with him. Do you regard carbon sequestration as geo-engineering, in which case why are you not fully supporting that?

  Joan Ruddock: Let us make it absolutely clear that we believe carbon capture and storage is going to be a major way forward in terms of mitigating CO2 emissions, so that is very, very clear. That has been the position of Defra and BERR, DECC now, for a very considerable period of time.

  Q52  Chairman: Is that geo-engineering?

  Professor Watson: I would argue no.

  Q53  Chairman: I want to know what the Minister feels within her Department. You are not the Chief Scientific Adviser for DECC yet, are you? Or are you?

  Joan Ruddock: But he will do!

  Q54  Chairman: He will do? I see. This is moonlighting!

  Joan Ruddock: I think whether somebody such as Professor Watson would advise us to consider it geo-engineering or not is not a central issue. I think we are already committed to this concept. We believe that it is the way forward. We understand that China and India in particular, but many other countries as well, will continue burning fossil fuels for decades to come and if they are to do that we have to find some way of capturing those emissions and sequestrating those emissions. So that is absolutely clear, that we believe this is a way forward and we have cooperated in a project with China, we are cooperating with one of the leading lights within the EU and keeping it as part of the 2020 package, and we also of course have our own competition which we are still pursuing.

  Q55  Chairman: Can we just put to one side carbon capture and storage? The rest of it you are actually disregarding? You say that that is not of any significance to your Department?

  Joan Ruddock: No, I am not saying it is of no significance to the Department. I said it was not leading to immediate action.

  Q56  Chairman: And you are not going to do anything about it?

  Joan Ruddock: We will have, at the very least, a watching brief. Also, there is work which is going on with the Hadley Centre. There is work which is worth doing, we believe, which is at the level of desk studies, at the level of modelling, and we are more than happy to contribute to that and indeed if there were other partners who seek to go forward then we will be more than prepared to consider whether we should partner with them, but as for the Department, let us make it absolutely clear there are no plans for us to fund research in this field.

  Chairman: That is absolutely clear.

  Q57  Dr Gibson: Bob Watson, can I ask you, how would you get your advice, what is crap and what is good in this field and what is going somewhere and what is not? How does that come to you?

  Professor Watson: Basically the same way as when I chaired the IPCC, and that is bringing together a broad range of experts to assess both theoretically what is possible and the experiments which have already been performed—and there has been a significant number of experiments on iron fertilization. As I have already said, nature itself almost does the experiment, in some respects, partially for us on stratospheric aerosols, so I would bring experts together, some of whom are very positive on some of these approaches, some who are sceptical, and actually access the evidence, just like we did at IPCC. What we did on our short desk study paper was that a couple of consultants put it together, but then we sent it probably to about 40 or 50 people to peer review it. As we know, the Royal Society is looking at this particular issue and it would not be surprising to me if the National Academy of Sciences in the US also looked at it, but what would be, in my opinion, quite worthwhile would indeed be a more in depth analysis by the IPCC or a combination of all the major academies of the world, the US with, I would say, the UK, also with China, India and Brazil. So it would indeed be an assessment which had a process which had buy-in from the international science community and the international policy community.

  Q58  Dr Gibson: I would like to ask all of you a question about the initiatives which are going on in this field. Have you seen new initiatives that are necessary to drive it faster or get new ideas in there by combining people together, international cooperation, things like that, new ideas coming through, or are you just going to let it tick over?

  Lord Drayson: I think the worldwide recognition of the accelerating effects of climate change are leading to a really quite significant development in the whole area of interest of development of the science in this field. I think it is important for us, therefore, in the role of DIUS, with responsibility for the prioritisation of research, to make sure that we continue to invest, although in a modest way, in blue skies research even for the most challenging areas of climate change. Some of the projects which are being postulated under geo-engineering do strike one as in the realms of science fiction with enormous budgets associated with them, the idea of massive shields to reflect the sun's light. However, with the development of computer models, modelling such projects, looking at the possible effects of aerosols, these are things which it is right for us to fund small amounts of money because groups, as you say, Dr Gibson, are developing an interest in this area and it may be that something comes out of this which may be of use. Also, scientists are postulating that there may be some really quite significantly nasty effects which come out of the effects of climate change which can create positive feedback, accelerating the rate of climate change, for example the release of methane from the melting ice, which would suggest that the value of an emergency-type solution in extremis and our views about the relative risk/benefit of such a technology may change in the future. Therefore, I think the balance we are striking at the moment is the right balance. We need to be moderate, keeping a careful eye on this area. It is an area which is developing and something may come out of this, but we must not allow the priority which needs to be taken on the urgent implementation of energy saving or action against climate change, apart from geo-engineering, to be detracted from.

  Q59  Dr Gibson: International development. Bob Watson has mentioned the United States academies, and so on. Are there joint papers in this field from different countries? Is the work jointly funded, or is this very much a British effort?

  Lord Drayson: This, in common with most areas of science, is an area of international collaboration.


 
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