Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
164-179)
DR TERRY
BARKER AND
DR ALICE
BOWS
18 NOVEMBER 2008
Q164 Joan Walley: Thank you both very
much indeed for coming along. We value the contributions that
Tyndall has actually made to our Committee. The Government has
repeatedly affirmed that its overall climate change goal is limiting
the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2°C, but
to help set our current inquiry into context, could you briefly
describe the scale and urgency of the cuts in annual emissions
required by countries such as the UK in order for us to have a
good chance of meeting this target? We really need to know what
urgency there is about meeting the targets on an incremental level?
Dr Bows: The issue of aiming for
2°C means that when you apportion emissions to different
nations you need to be aware of the cumulative amount of emissions
over a particular amount of time that can be released by each
country in order to meet that 2°C goal. If you look at what
that actually means, if you look at what has come out of the latest
IPPC report, they produce a carbon budget, if you like, for the
century and if you know what your emissions are now and you know
what the emissions are that you have released in the first few
years of the century, you can work out what you have left for
the remainder. What the results seem to illustrate is that if
we do not peak our emissions globally by around 2015 then the
kind of emission reductions that will be required post-2015 will
be extremely challenging and we will essentially need to be decarbonising
by between 2030 and 2050 globally to meet this 2°C target.
What that will mean for countries like the UK that release a lot
of emissions already, so per capita emissions are very high, is
that the sooner we start to reduce those emissions the better
and really we need to be looking at peaking our emissions within
the next five years or so, otherwise the emission reductions that
will be required per year within the UK will need to be between
6-10% per year, so extremely challenging and far in excess of
those percentages that we are currently discussing.
Q165 Joan Walley: If what you are
saying is so clearly supported by the evidence, which I think
certainly our Committee accepts is the case, can you help us understand
why national targets in this country and elsewhere are so far
apart from the very steep emission cuts in the years to 2030?
If what you are saying is based on the evidence, and that makes
sense about the need to get there in this incremental way, why
do we still have this gap?
Dr Bows: One of the problems is
that what we are not doing is looking at the emissions that we
have already released and also the emissions as they are growing
at the moment. The emissions in the last six years have grown
globally at around 3.3% per year, I believe it is, which is greater
in percentage terms per year than it has been in the last 100
years on average. Thus the rates of growth are increasing but
often when people do an analysis they will assume that emissions
can start to decrease from next year and because it is the accumulative
emissions that are important, so because the area under the curve
matters, if you like, between now and some future date, say, 2050
or 2001, if you do not account for the fact that the emissions
are still rising and eating up a proportion of that budget very
rapidly then your end point target will not be consistent with
the climate change goal for which you are aiming. You need to
account for those emissions in the short term and we tend to forget
that emissions are still growing and we tend to forget that the
emissions are already very high. In addition to that, we generally
omit from our budgeting international aviation and shipping which
will also eat up a proportion of our budget, and within the UK
that is a reasonable proportion, so for aviation it is around
6% in any one year and shipping it is difficult to say based on
the data but it could be between 5 and 6% as well.
Q166 Joan Walley: Did you want to
add to that, Dr Barker?
Dr Barker: First of all, I would
like to thank the Committee for inviting me to give evidence this
morning. Secondly, I would say that my evidence is based on the
Summary for Policymakers of the Fourth Assessment Report of the
IPPC Working Group III, which I have worked on over the last four
or five years. The Summary for Policymakers has a chart in it
which shows the 2°C target and its relationship with greenhouse
gas concentrations and emissions. The main thing to be said about
this chart is the degree of uncertainty and risk between trying
to achieve a 2°C target and the profile of emissions to achieve
that target, and so there are uncertainties throughout the global
climate system, from the scale of emissions right through to the
effect of the damage at the end. As you know, the UNFCCC Framework
for Climate Change has as its objective the "avoidance of
dangerous climate change", and the European Commission has
interpreted that as the 2°C target and the UK Government
has signed up to this 2°C target. Going from 2°C to
the emission profile is fraught with uncertainties and indeed
the science is far from complete. There were not enough studies
covered at the time of the Fourth Assessment Report to say anything
with certainty or even with reasonable scientific reliability.
What we could say is something about a target which was much weaker
than the 2°C. This is a question of the probability of achieving
that 2°C. In fact, the evidence on the basis of the studies
that have been done gives us, for the lowest category of studies,
a 50% or less chance of achieving 2°C. Since we are talking
about dangerous climate change we want to have a much higher probability
of achieving it. In my view, it should be more like a 80 or 90%
chance of achieving it but to do that we would have to have a
much lower concentration level, probably more like 350 ppm CO2
equivalent which is the kind of target that somebody like Jim
Hanson would advocate and the group 350°C, which is a group
which was formed earlier this year. The issue really is that there
is not enough scientific evidence on the modelling of these more
stringent targets.
Q167 Joan Walley: So there is not
enough scientific evidence?
Dr Barker: Scientific evidence
to look at the more stringent targets. We have done a meta- analysis
of what there is to work out the costs of going to the more stringent
targets, and we have worked out that the costs are a very wide
range of costs including benefits depending on the policies being
followed whether the revenues from carbon taxes and auctions were
recycled or not, and even that excludes some extremely substantial
potential benefits, for example improvements in air quality in
developing countries' urban areas.
Q168 Joan Walley: You are saying
there is not enough scientific evidence. Are you involved in any
further research?
Dr Barker: We are indeed. There
is a major initiative by the European Commission's Directorate
for Environment looking at 400 ppm CO2 equivalent. That is probably
not sufficiently stringent but it is much better than the 450
and 550 which had been looked at in the earliest days. This is
being complemented by work elsewhere. The different modelling
approaches attempt to achieve these targets using the models and
this yields different profiles of the emissions over the next
century. There are widely different profiles possible. For example,
at the moment we are at the beginning of a major global depression
which may be greater than the Great Depression. During the Great
Depression in 1929-32 global CO2 emissions fell by 35%. In my
view, it is possible that global CO2 emissions could fall by 40
or 50% if the policies are going to be followed by world governments
as we have been seeing. In other words, we might achieve the target
much more quickly than we expect but in a most unfortunate and
damaging way to the world's economy.
Q169 Joan Walley: This particular
inquiry is about shipping and so in the context of what you have
just referred to could I just move on to shipping because we were
very much aware that previously you had criticised the Climate
Change Bill for not including international aviation and shipping.
This Committee is very interested in your views on the very welcome
announcement that the Government is going to take these emissions
into account when setting UK carbon budgets. We would be very
interested in your response to that.
Dr Bows: Personally I would like
to know what "taking them into account" means and how
they are actually going to be considered. We often club aviation
and shipping together as though they are one very similar entity
and my view is that they are quite different. We have a lot better
understanding of the emissions from the aviation sector and how
perhaps to apportion them to a nation whereas international shipping
is more problematic due to the kind of routing that you get so
there is often not just a start and a destination, there might
be many points in between which, makes it much more problematic.
Personally I would welcome the idea that we are going to be considering
international aviation and shipping emissions when budgeting and
it is therefore important to make as best an approximation as
possible as to the emissions in order that we can tell how well
the other sectors are doing in relation to our overall climate
change goal. That does not necessarily mean that you would have
to have a sophisticated method of emissions apportionment for
aviation and shipping but just to have an idea of the quantity
so that you can also look at the quantities from the other sectors
and see how they are reducing over time. In my view, I think that
we could actually put international aviation into the Climate
Change Bill sooner than international shipping simply because
we have a better understanding of the overall emissions from aviation.
Q170 Joan Walley: In terms of understanding
all of that in relation to shipping, whose role would you see
that as being?
Dr Bows: To improve the data?
Q171 Joan Walley: Yes.
Dr Bows: My understanding—and
Gillian Reynolds will be able to give more information on this—is
that there is a lot of information and data that is collated or
gathered from different shipping organisations perhaps the International
Chamber of Shipping or some intermediary would have a role in
gathering this data for the purposes of something such as this.
They could take the data from the shipping organisations and gather
it in such a way that it is useful.
Dr Barker: There are differences
between aviation and shipping but I think it is probably wise
to treat them together for various reasons. The first one is that
they are both outside the Kyoto Protocol and are not covered in
the negotiations so they needed to be treated together. They both
concern international waters and airspace and of course they both
have activities in remote areas of the globe and pollute the environment
in remote areas which are not covered by the usual national protocols
and treaties. The most important reason is that there is actual
substitution between them, particularly on freight. If you look
at the relationship between the carriage of freight you will find
that the huge increase in freight by aviation is partly because
of a substitution away from shipping. There is a possibility of
substitution between them and so from an economic point of view
it makes it quite important to treat them together, particularly
if we are decarbonising. I do have various other reasons for arguing
that they should be treated together. I suspect if there is a
scheme to decarbonise international transport it will be much
more efficient and the effect of having lower costs if shipping
is treated with aviation. I have various arguments about that
which are in this paper.
Q172 Joan Walley: Assuming that all
of this could be done, and that the UK's share of international
shipping emissions could be assessed and audited in that way,
how do you think that would affect the size and the urgency of
the carbon cuts that our country should be making in any case?
Dr Bows: If you have a set budget
then obviously if you start from a higher value because you have
included international aviation and shipping then you will be
using up your budget more rapidly. I would imagine that you would
be looking at an increase in the percentage reductions per year
depending on the period over which you look at your carbon budget.
I do not know the actual detail on that but I think the idea is
that you will be using up your budget more rapidly so you would
need to account for that and make sure that you consider that
when looking at your interim targets.
Q173 Mark Lazarowicz: Dr Barker,
you proposed earlier this year a Global Emissions Trading Scheme
in international shipping and aviation (GETS). What has been the
reaction to your proposal since you put it forward?
Dr Barker: There has been considerable
interest in developing countries basically because of the potential
for large flows of incomes to fund Clean Development Mechanism
projects or adaptation projects in developing countries. I do
not know exactly what was put on the table at the G-20 but I would
not be surprised if there was some mention of our scheme. The
G-20 meeting is in progress or has just taken place. There are
various developing countries that have shown great interest. We
have had a lot of interest also of course from the IMO and the
aviation bodies, IATA, which is a private body and then the UNFCCC
body which ICAO are on.
Q174 Mark Lazarowicz: How would that
differ from the strategy of moving forward by linking to regional
schemes?
Dr Barker: The linking to regional
schemes is complementary to the international schemes. The scheme
is for international transport, ie it is outside national boundaries.
I include in national boundaries the fictional boundary there
is above us in the air. Your Committee might have come across
these rather odd definitions of what is an emission and whether
it comes to a country or whether it suddenly goes into the world
atmosphere. The scheme as here is about international emissions
and that is outside national boundaries. That would be complemented,
for level playing field arguments, by national schemes which would
cover aviation and shipping within national jurisdictions. Obviously
you would not want any difference between the two and the great
advantage of complementing it is that the large continental economies
such as China, the United States, Russia, which have got huge
aviation fleets with very substantial emissions, which until the
Greater Depression, as I am calling it, would appear to be growing
out of control (there is a 20% per annum growth rates in Latin
American countries) could be covered by such a scheme and yield
very large amounts of revenues as the growth is curtailed by the
Emissions Trading Scheme now.
Q175 Mark Lazarowicz: Have you had
any sympathy to these proposals in precisely those countries?
Dr Barker: No, we have not. The
countries which are most interested are countries which tend to
be desperately in need of funds.
Q176 Mark Lazarowicz: Can you clarify
under your proposal what size of cuts would need to be made from
the shipping sector itself, ie rather than buying credits from
other sectors?
Dr Barker: From shipping?
Q177 Mark Lazarowicz: Yes, I mean,
is it an integrated shipping and aviation scheme?
Dr Barker: Yes it is and we have
not done any in depth studies. My work has been dominated by the
events of the credit crunch, but we have very great plans to work
on looking at the effects of decarbonising transport. We intended
to do some of it but events took hold.
Q178 Mark Lazarowicz: In which case
you may not be able to answer this question fully at this stage
but can you give us your assessment of how very ambitious cuts
in shipping would require new technology rather than more incremental
type of improvements?
Dr Barker: That is a very interesting
question. Typically if there is no carbon price at all, there
is no price signal, then industry sectors like shipping do not
care about CO2 emissions, it is just not in their budget. As soon
as there is a carbon price, even a tiny one, there will be remarkable
changes because they will suddenly look at things that they had
never thought of before and start doing them and old, very wasteful
emitting ships will suddenly disappear from the fleets, especially
at a time when the fleets are being reduced because of a global
depression. I do not know if the Committee is aware that, for
example, shipping rates have collapsed, things like this are happening
on the most frightening scale at the moment. If there was a carbon
price in there or a signal was put into the system, then you would
find there would be enormous differences in how the system responded
in the face of the cut down in the trade. In other words, they
would focus much more on high CO2-emitting shipping. That would
be what would go first because why would you keep that going and
have to pay prices on it when the others would be much less?
Q179 Mark Lazarowicz: I am interested
in what you say because we have had other evidence submitted to
the Committee which has suggested that whether you use a levy
system or a market-based system, shipping companies would be able
to pass the cost quite easily on to the end consumer precisely
because it is fairly small part of the overall cost.
Dr Barker: Absolutely.
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