Carbon budgets - Environmental Audit Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-58)

PROFESSOR SIR BRIAN HOSKINS AND MR DAVID KENNEDY

9 JUNE 2009

  Q1  Chairman: Good morning, and thank you very much for coming in. We are very grateful for your time. Just so that we can try and pace this, we have quite a lot we would like to talk to you about and we have about an hour and a quarter as we have another witness, so we will proceed as briskly as we can, dealing with the issues in a thorough way. Could I start by asking if you feel that the budgets and targets which the Government now has, whether they are actually consistent with the aim of avoiding dangerous climate change.

Mr Kennedy: Perhaps we can answer that in two stages. First of all, we recommended targets which, we thought, were consistent with avoiding dangerous climate change, and that is the 80% in 2050 of all greenhouse gases, including aviation and shipping, and we recommended, what we called, an "interim target" of 34% emissions reductions in 2020 rising to 42% if there is a global deal, as being consistent with that 80% longer-term goal, so that is what, we thought, would make us avoid the risk of dangerous climate change. The Government has accepted all of those recommendations, so, as you know, the 80% is already in the Climate Change Act and the 34% which, we said, should go into the legislation prior to a global deal has been accepted in DECC, and Ed Miliband announced that and it is going through the House at the moment under the affirmative resolution procedure. The other thing that we recommended as well was that the 34% should be achieved through domestic emissions reductions, not the purchase of credits, and again the advice has been accepted there. The last thing is that, if you look at the narrative to the secondary legislation, we have recommended a set of options for reducing emissions to meet the budgets, whether that is energy efficiency improvements, electric cars or renewables in the power sector, and the narrative in there very much reflects what, we suggested, are the appropriate set of measures to reduce emissions.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: If I could come in on the first part of that, there is a lot of discussion of what "dangerous climate change" is and, if you are in an island in the Indian Ocean, I suspect it is pretty dangerous already, so we looked at this. There is this EU target of two degrees and some people take that as very robust as if 1.9 is all right and 2.1 is just over the top, and there may be thresholds in the system somewhere near there, but we certainly do not know they are at exactly 2.0, so we took the attitude that we wanted, in probability terms, to keep the 50-50 point as close to two degrees as we could. We also then looked at something else, the chance of reaching four degrees above pre-industrial levels, and I think sometimes, when we speak about four degrees, we think, "Oh well, everywhere could manage four degrees", but it really becomes an index of how far we have gone along the road. If you think about the regional changes and perhaps even global changes that would correspond to that four degrees, there is no doubt that that would be a world where life, as we know it, could not be pursued. We wanted the chances of going there to be of the order of 1% or less, so we wanted the 50-50 point to be two degrees and, if it could have been less, we would have said "Fine", but we did not think pragmatically that that was possible at this stage, so those are the two criteria, the 50-50 point close to two degrees and then a very, very low chance of getting to that four-degree world. This led us to the sort of idea then that the global emissions should peak before 2020 preferably, but certainly by 2020 and drop around 4% per annum after that, that is for global emissions, and down to about a 50% global cut by 2050 and, then going from that global cut of 50% by 2050, we had to say, "What does that mean for the UK?" and we said that the only way you can envisage that is that this is a per capita emission allowance at that stage of something over two tonnes of CO2 per person and that means an 80% cut for the UK. The way we decided is that that was the 2050 point, but then, on the way to that, we took account of the EU targets of approaching 2050 consistent with this global emission curve and what was actually technically possible, and we came up with the earlier targets, so we believe what we have is consistent with keeping climate change within bounds that are pragmatically possible and as least dangerous as we think can be done at this time.

  Q2  Chairman: That is interesting. If we are saying that already there is a 50-50 chance of an increase of more than two degrees, we are saying it is quite possible that the world could become a dangerous place even if the current targets are achieved, which at the present time some of us might think is also quite an optimistic assumption, but let us leave that at the moment. Even if we do what we are planning to do and what you have set out as a Committee, there is still a significant risk that we are going to be in very dangerous territory.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I do not think we can be complacent about a world where the globally average temperature rises above two degrees. There is no doubt there will be huge adaptation that is required to face that and the question is whether that is possible and whether that is possible in most countries, particularly in the poorer countries of the world. I do not think we would say it is necessarily going to be easy and, if one had gone back to 1850 and made choices, perhaps one would not decide to be here, but it will require major adaptation around the world to face that sort of climate change. The chances of crossing major thresholds, perhaps at this time we do not know we will cross those, and sea-level rise for 1,000 years is possible to levels which maybe we can cope with in time, but we certainly could not if they happened rather quickly.

  Q3  Chairman: Is there a risk that, if we start to think about adaptation measures on the basis of a rise in temperature of significantly more than two degrees, (a) that kind of admits we are not going to achieve the two degrees, and (b) it may even weaken the pressure to do so and if we are in a world which has a three- or four-degree rise?

  Mr Kennedy: This is something we are thinking about at the moment because, as you know, we have just established an Adaptation Sub-Committee which Lord Krebs is the Chair of. We are aware of Bob Watson, who is the Chief Scientist at Defra, saying, "Let's aim for two, but plan for four", and we want to explore that idea. Do we really want to aim for two and plan for four? I am not sure that those two things fit together and we want to articulate what you actually aim for and adapt to, we have only just started, so we are not sure how we are going to bring those two together at the moment, but that is clearly an issue that we need to tackle.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: If I can add to that, you drive a car in the manner of not having an accident, but you still take insurance, and I would view the adapting to a higher level as an insurance against the possibilities of that sort of thing happening.

  Q4  Dr Turner: The Report published a week or so ago suggested that 300,000 people globally have already died each year because of climate change, and I do not know if you accept that or not, but, if we are talking about being a global leader tackling climate change and that amounts to a 50-50 chance, is that an acceptable level of risk? If somebody gave you a gun not with one bullet in it, but three, with every other chamber free, you would not accept that kind of Russian roulette, so why should we claim that we are doing the right thing?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: This is a very interesting position for me. I have never been attacked from this side before in a parliamentary committee and it has always been the other way.

  Colin Challen: It is friendly fire!

  Q5  Dr Turner: That is the worst kind!

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I agree, and in the summer of 2003, for instance, in Europe there were many deaths associated with that and there clearly will be major events which almost definitely can be related to climate change. It is always difficult with individual events to relate them, and in terms of health then relating the actual increase in the number of deaths to climate change is always a problem, but I am sure there will be events. If we manage to limit climate change to two degrees, there still will be events that will be extremely serious ones, it will happen, and I think that, if we could see a realistic scenario where we went below that, we would be recommending that. I think where we are at this time, if I thought the world could keep to the sort of emissions scenario we were proposing in our Report, I would be fantastically pleased. We would hope for more perhaps, but that is going to be incredibly difficult to keep to what we are saying, and I think what we have is a compromise between what is possible, just possible if we really work at it, and what we would like in a perfect world.

  Mr Kennedy: Let us say, we are very confident in saying that the 50% global cut should be a minimum and the 80% cut for the UK should also be the minimum. As Brian says, in order to recommend more than a 50% global cut, you have got to have a sense of what it is you are going to do to bring your emissions down below 50% of current levels and how much it is going to cost and what the impact of that is going to be of taking you away from this two to three degrees band of temperature change, so you get into a grey area where it is not clear how much it will cost and it is not clear what it will achieve, so we did not feel confident in saying that more than a 50% cut is what we should aim for. We are certainly open to people coming to us and saying, "We have got a plausible scenario for a bigger than 50% cut. This is what it involves and this is what it will achieve", and then a more ambitious target may be appropriate.

  Q6  Colin Challen: We are basically saying to ourselves and to developing countries that we will only go so far as we feel we can afford and we may afford a bit more if other people can reach an agreement. Is that really sending out the right signals about the level of risk we are expecting other people to accept?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I have just been to India and given a public climate change talk and I put in the targets that the UK is specifying in its legal framework and they were incredibly impressed that the UK, after all this talk in the developed world, someone is actually putting this in as legal targets to meet, and I think the crucial thing at the moment is that the world emissions peak, and start to go down before 2020 and that we head on in that direction. There is a lot of work that suggests that it is the cumulative carbon dioxide that we emit that is the real problem, so what we have got to do is to start limiting that as soon as possible, but there is no doubt that we will continue to monitor the science and, if there are real indications that things are even worse than we took into account in our Report, then we can do that adjustment to reduce that cumulative carbon emission later on. I think that to agonise too much at this time whether the 2050 target should be just a little bit lower or not, the crucial thing is that we start on that trajectory going down at that sort of rate and we can do some adjustments afterwards, and I suspect the science has always, over the last 20 years, tended to suggest that things are worse than we thought they were before, so it would not be at all surprising if we are turning the screw further later on, but at this time, if we can really head in the direction we are proposing, then that is a marker to the world actually of what we are intending to do.

  Q7  Colin Challen: If you say that we can turn the screw a bit tighter later on, that is a licence to politicians, as it were, to print credits for themselves until the cows come home. It is giving them a green signal to say, "Okay, the big effort comes a bit later".

  Sir Brian Hoskins: No, I think we have given them a very hard signal now and it could be made ever harder.

  Mr Kennedy: We have given them a hard signal and there is a gap in our work, so the gap is that we have got the path to 2023 and we have got the target in 2050, but we have not got the path yet defined from 2023 to 2050, so it is something we come back to in the Climate Change Act and we fill in the gaps over the next years on that path, and we will be recommending the fourth budget which applies to the end of the 2020s next year.

  Q8  Chairman: But the crucial thing, even if you have a pathway beyond the 2020s, is to make sure that enough happens before 2020 to get that peak.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Absolutely.

  Mr Kennedy: Very much so, and that is our focus in the Report we will give to Parliament either in September or October this year when we will set out our vision in detail of what has to happen to meet the carbon budgets.

  Q9  Mark Lazarowicz: Just to be clear, Mr Kennedy, I thought you said that could not come up with a plausible scenario to go beyond 50%.

  Mr Kennedy: I said that, in principle, somebody could come up with a scenario. We have not come up with one, the IEA has not come up with one or Nicholas Stern or anybody else out there. If there were to be one, we would consider it, and I come back to the point that our recommendations are a minimum.

  Q10  Mark Lazarowicz: So you have the expertise to be able to give us a range of scenarios if you were asked to do that?

  Mr Kennedy: We have given a range of scenarios for meeting the very ambitious targets that we have proposed. We have not found any scenarios to go beyond, to get more than a 50% global cut.

  Q11  Mark Lazarowicz: On the point of the importance of cumulative emissions, does that not underline your argument that we should really be working towards the intended budget rather than the interim budget in the planning? That is obviously again a matter for the Government and Parliament, but does that not underline your argument that the more ambition at the early stage that we can put in, the better?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: The very term we used was "intended" and that is certainly what we thought would happen, given the global agreement, and, if it is possible to go towards that target, then that would be more consistent with the cumulative carbon emissions globally, and the more every country can do, that will help.

  Mr Kennedy: We are hoping to have the intended budget in place in the next two years. If we did not have it in place for 10 years because there was a problem with the global deal, and we hope that does not happen, but, if there were not a global deal and we are stuck with the interim budget, obviously then there will be more to do in the 2020s, but we hope we do not get into that situation.

  Q12  Mark Lazarowicz: Again, I appreciate that the decisions of what percentage to have to go for is a combination of the scientific projections combined with the pragmatic realities of politics, but, from what you are saying, I get the impression that certainly the European 20% cut is very much a pragmatic political one rather than a scientific one and that is basically what is behind it, is it not?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: The target we have set is consistent with the European 20% and 30% for the 2020 period and the UK has to do more as its share of that.

  Q13  Mark Lazarowicz: But that is not only the scientific basis for the 20%, is it, it is the basis of the horse-trading at the European level, is it not?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I think they were actually designed with something in mind, though I am not sure how definite that was, of actually contributing to this notional trajectory towards 2050 and what the European contribution could be, but I am sure the hope again was that it would be the 30% one they would be going for, but that will be part of the negotiations in Copenhagen.

  Q14  Mark Lazarowicz: But the intended budget was for a low-carbon pathway and should we just not domestically be going on that pathway because it makes sense to do so for all sorts of reasons?

  Mr Kennedy: Well, what influenced our thinking was that to be on the intended path in the first budget period would involve us, for example, purchasing credits in addition to the domestic emissions cuts through energy efficiency and whatever else we are doing. We asked ourselves, "Is it worth the UK purchasing credits when nobody else is stimulating the global market at the moment?" and we did not think there was a strong rationale for that. We think there is a strong rationale for the UK being a participant in the global market when everybody else is and building this market up and achieving a bigger global emissions cut.

  Q15  Dr Turner: How content is your Committee with the way in which the Government has implemented your recommendations so far and, if you have got any areas of concern, can you tell us about them?

  Mr Kennedy: I think we have said that the Government has accepted our recommendations, I think that is a first step, and we have talked about the importance of actually meeting the budgets, achieving the emissions cuts; I think that is where the hard work starts.

  Q16  Dr Turner: There is a lot of difference between accepting a recommendation and implementing it. That is the area I am asking you to comment on.

  Mr Kennedy: I do not think it has been implemented at the moment, so we have got the targets and they will be in the legislation. We have a whole set of policies from the Climate Change Programme to the Energy White Paper, but do those separate policies together add up to a coherent, strategic approach to meeting carbon budgets? I think our sense is no and, as we said in our Report in December last year, we do need a strengthening of the policy framework in certain areas. For example, we talked about the supplier obligation going forward and we are not sure that that will deliver, unless it is radically reformed. We talked about the need for a set of policies to support renewables, to support nuclear, policies that need to be in place for coal-fired power generation, a strategic approach to developing electric cars in the UK. We are looking to the summer strategy which DECC will produce in the next month or so to give us that vision, the set of policies which will deliver the emissions reductions, and we will provide a view on that summer strategy in the narrative in our Report to Parliament in September/October, which will be our vision and our strategic approach to meeting the carbon budgets.

  Q17  Dr Turner: That is about as much as an answer to that question as I can reasonably expect to hear, I guess.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Perhaps I can add to that that the Committee is an independent one and, there is no doubt, we will be monitoring and monitoring very hard what those policies are and whether they are likely to do it, and we are eagerly waiting to do that.

  Q18  Dr Turner: And you must tell us what you think, with no reservations.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: We certainly will.

  Mr Kennedy: There is a specific response actually, so we raised the point about whether we could allow investment in conventional coal-fired power generation over the next 10 years with a view to retrofitting that, and we set our position out very clearly. It could be allowed if it was on the full expectation of a retrofit and, if CCS is not retrofitted to conventional coal plant, then conventional coal will not generate in the 2020s and there should be a regulation to say that. Now, the Government has responded with its three-pillar policy which is any new plant has to have some CCS, CCS would have to be retrofitted, and they are talking about whether, if it were not to be retrofitted, you would then say that a coal plant cannot generate. That is something where we will be working with them, we will be following their proposals as they develop and they are going to have a consultation in the next couple of weeks on that.

  Q19  Dr Turner: Do you think there is a risk with budgets that they could end up deferring action if it looks as if enough has been done to meet a particular budget, so a country could just say, "We don't need to do anything for another couple of years, chaps, desirable though it might be because we've met the budget"? Do you think there is a risk of that?

  Mr Kennedy: Yes, I think there is a very specific risk over the next five years. We have got a recession at the moment and the recession will reduce emissions, and it will reduce emissions to the point that, in principle, you could meet the budget which is in the legislation without doing much. That, for us, is a very dangerous situation because we need to start improving energy efficiency and we need to start investing in renewable electricity and the whole range of measures. If we do not start those things now, we are not on the track to our 2020 goal or our 2050 goal, so the way round that for us is not just to look at emissions reductions and whether the policies are on track for the budget, but to look a level lower and to say that it is not just the level of emissions, it is a whole set of things which have to happen underneath that, whether it is investment in renewables or lofts being insulated or electric cars on the roads, so we will have a very comprehensive framework that looks at all of these things.

  Q20  Dr Turner: Can you give us comfort and assurance that there is no question of your recommendations being tailored to what you know the Government might accept?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Can I, as an independent member of the Committee, say absolutely no chance.

  Dr Turner: That is very important.

  Q21  Colin Challen: The Tyndall Centre was discussed at your meeting on 20 March and clear differences emerged, and I think the main one was their recommendation that we should aim for the stabilisation of 450 parts per million as soon as possible, whereas your Committee seems to suggest that we should keep the 500 and then try and retrieve the situation to get back down to 450 parts per million. What do you think is wrong with the Tyndall Centre's approach?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: The Tyndall Centre has an alternative approach, but let me say what we have done and contrast it with what they have done. We have said that the target is a temperature target, that is what we are interested in, and we then have looked at the problem as a transient one, as one that develops in time, and we have gone for emissions trajectories which may actually slightly overshoot in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and then fall afterwards, whereas the Tyndall Centre did not do any calculations. We did lots of calculations and the Tyndall was based on some calculations in a paper two years previously by someone else and what that was was actually looking at an equilibrium level of carbon dioxide of 450 and, when you start to think of that equilibrium, the scientific uncertainty is far higher and it is including all sorts of slow processes which might occur in 1,000 years' time which we cannot have confidence in, so what we have gone for is actually the transient one where we are actually going for a trajectory and we looked at various trajectories which, in the carbon dioxide level, would slightly overshoot to maybe near 500, but then decrease afterwards, so we are not thinking about an equilibrium. In a sense, if we think about an equilibrium, we want to return to the pre-industrial eventually, so we do not want an equilibrium at 500/450, but we want to actually go back to a lower level than now so that this is a transient pulse of climate change that we are giving the world. We have gone for doing calculations using the latest models and we have done lots of those, and they used previous calculations and only a few of those. They went for this equilibrium level out there, whereas we looked at the dynamic problem and also we included all the greenhouse gases considered separately in the calculation. In the calculation they took account of, it was only carbon dioxide and they tried to fold the others in, so it was not nearly such a sophisticated calculation that they were using.

  Mr Kennedy: If we come back to your point, you have talked about the 50-50 above two degrees or below two degrees, and actually, if you look at the temperature distribution in the Tyndall Centre analysis, they have the same probabilities of being above and below two degrees as we do pretty much, so they end up in the same place, but they get there a different way.

  Q22  Colin Challen: The models that you are using, do they fully incorporate possible feedback effects such as ocean acidification, deforestation and so on, and how actually do you assess those things when they are very indeterminate?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Do they include them fully? I cannot answer honestly yes. We do not know what we do not know. However, the climate change models at the moment, the fully-fledged climate change models, try to include all the processes you have mentioned, the Arctic sea ice melting, for instance, which changes the reflection of solar radiation, the change of the Amazon forest which would have impacts on the climate, the fact that the soils, as the climate gets warmer, may not absorb as much carbon dioxide. We took all those sorts of things into account according to the current knowledge, so we took a range of the parameters associated with all those feedbacks and that gives the sort of probability distribution that we came up with, so we are taking those into account at the best that current knowledge is. One of the advantages for the Climate Change Committee is that it was all done essentially almost in six months before the Report was produced, so we were able to use all the science that was around up to this time last year and nothing has really come since which says that we did something wrong, so the feedbacks are in those calculations as best we know them at this time.

  Q23  Mr Caton: In written evidence to this inquiry, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers has criticised your Committee for not carrying out a rigorous and detailed analysis of the feasibility of achieving the targets. What analysis did the Committee make of the feasibility in terms of policy, engineering capability, industrial capacity or the skills base available or likely to be available in the engineering community?

  Mr Kennedy: Certainly we differentiated between what we call "technical" emissions reductions and feasible emissions reductions in the first three budget periods. We showed that, in our view, what is feasibly achievable is enough to meet the carbon budgets. To give the example of energy efficiency improvements, we know that there is a lot of opportunity and that we have not taken that opportunity in the past. We considered the state of the industry for energy efficiency improvement, we considered the social research evidence base, why it is that people are not acting in the way that we might think they should act, and we brought those things together and gave an assessment of what we realistically think that we can achieve. In terms of the specifics of the engineering side of things, it is very important to consider have we got an engineering capability to deliver, for example, offshore wind, and investments are going to be very important in the next 15 years, have we got the capability to deliver nuclear investments again and CCS; there is a whole range of things where we will need some engineering expertise. I think we did not go into detail on that in the December Report, but it is something we are thinking about as part of our roadmap and vision for what has to happen to meet the carbon budgets and it will form part of our Report to Parliament in October.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Clearly, we had a limited period in which we could put our Report together, but I think what we produced has then stimulated activity, for instance, at Imperial College, where I am. There are 600 energy engineers and there is now a programme looking at how we get to that, essentially, zero-carbon electricity supply by 2050, and that involves the technology, the grid, the policies and the people to do it, and it is a huge task to see what is there, but I think we have stimulated that and we will certainly take on board what these sorts of groups come out with, but it is a major challenge. We could not look at the whole feasibility, but we did an overview of it and there are people working in greater detail on that and that will affect the policies which we will be recommending or looking at and seeing whether what the Government is doing is sufficient.

  Mr Kennedy: We should add that we have got an engineer on our Committee, Julia King, who is very aware of these kinds of issues and brings them up regularly at committee meetings, and that is why we are focusing on them going forward.

  Q24  Mr Caton: The current annual percentage reduction in emissions is around 2%. What is the annual percentage reduction in emissions implicit in the budgets recommended by your Committee and accepted by the Government?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Well, we are looking at 80% over the 70-year period, so essentially, if we are around that over the whole period, then we must be going at something like the 1 or 2% per annum level, something in that range. Clearly, at times it is much more difficult to squeeze out than at other times and, where one can make the greater reduction, then clearly we will.

  Mr Kennedy: The average annual emissions reduction under the intended budget is about 2.8% and, if you draw a curve that goes from now to 2050, you can see that that 2.8% is on the path to an equal annual percentage emissions reduction up to 2050 which we think is probably an appropriate path towards 2050.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I did the wrong analysis, sorry, it is double what I said.

  Q25  Mr Caton: Is that 2.8% achievable?

  Mr Kennedy: Well, we think it is and we have set out how we think it can be achieved through a range of measures in buildings, in the power sector, in transport and also in agriculture, which we should not forget because that is an important area which we brought into focus in this debate. Will we achieve it? If we think we will not achieve it, we have to do something differently, and we have not achieved those kinds of emissions reductions in the past. What is it that we have to do to achieve it? We have hinted in the December Report and we will put our views in full in the September Report and we hope they will be consistent with the Government's summer strategy which needs to, as I have said, give this vision, this strategic direction and a detailed set of policy prescriptions on how we are going to achieve our policies to achieve the cuts.

  Q26  Mr Caton: What reductions do you think we are going to see comparatively in the immediate future, in the next couple of years or the next few years anyway?

  Mr Kennedy: In the next couple of years, well, we will see emissions reductions through energy efficiency improvements, and we have CERTs which is the energy company-led policy of insulating lofts and cavity walls and sending you compact fluorescent lightbulbs through the post. That has to change going forward, we think, and the supplier obligation has to be much more whole house and neighbourhood based, but, as I say, we will talk in detail about our views there. Energy efficiency improvement is one and emissions reductions from transport, we will see some efficiency improvement over the next years with conventional combustion engines, we will see some investment in renewable electricity and over the next five or 10 years we need to make massive cuts through all of these measures, we need to make some progress on electric cars and probably we need to feel confident that nuclear is coming into the mix, and CCS by 2050, we want to know whether that is going to be a big part of our story or not.

  Q27  Chairman: David, when you came to us in February, we asked about contraction and convergence and you said that equal per capita emissions by 2050 seemed "reasonable". Nick Stern has suggested that close to equal per capita emissions in 2050 would not really be fair because that does not take enough account of the responsibility of the developed countries for the problems that exist. Do you think that there is an argument for saying that the scale of the contribution which developed countries should make should actually be even greater and, therefore, the targets and budgets that we are looking at will need to be made even more demanding?

  Mr Kennedy: I think this is really beyond our scope as an organisation to take a view on. What we have said was that it is very hard to imagine a situation where the UK is above the global average, and the UK could be below, but whether it is below is a matter of judgment and negotiation that we have not wanted to get into, so we are aware that there are different ways of attributing responsibilities, whether it is historic or differentiated paths to contract and converge or whatever. As I say, that is really beyond our scope and it needs the kinds of judgments that we do not feel we can make as a committee.

  Q28  Chairman: I cannot tempt you?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: There are clearly various arguments there and I could be persuaded by one or the other. I think I view this again as the danger of arguing on the head of a pin the 2050 target. The immediate thing is that we have got to turn over these global emissions and head down that direction and it could well be that the UK, if we really do manage to get a zero-carbon electricity supply by 2050, a fantastic target and, I think, an amazing opportunity if we can develop the technologies to do that sort of thing, maybe we will say, "Yes, we can do that", and a lot of the residual that we were saying is going to be associated with things like agriculture at that stage, the greenhouse gases associated with agriculture, and really we are in only the early stages of seeing what could be got out of agriculture, so it could well be that the UK could decide to go below that level at that time. However, I think that, if we spend too much time at this stage arguing about whether it is there or there, if it is compared with where we are now, it is down there and I suspect that, if we really are in that direction, we might be able to do more and in helping others, but by that stage, if we are really able to help others in the zero-carbon electricity supply, maybe they will not need more either.

  Q29  Colin Challen: I recognise it is not really your job to enter into the political domain, but you are, by the very nature of this task, in the political domain and that does mean talking about burden-sharing and it does mean talking about global agreements and our contribution now with either intended budgets or other kinds of budgets. With that guided philosophy of contract and converge, as Lord Turner calls it, or contraction and convergence, how would it affect your budget-setting process if the Waxman-Markey Bill with its fairly low interim budgets, how would that affect our share of the burden? Would you be happy to continue with the prognosis that you have delivered about the next three budgets and so on if the Waxman-Markey Bill were the basis of a global agreement?

  Mr Kennedy: I do not think we are in a position to say that at the moment in the sense that we will have the negotiations at the end of the year and we will see where we are in the States. Will the 30% target be triggered? That is the first question for us and, if it were to be triggered at the EU level, then that would trigger our intended budget. If it were not to be triggered and there were to be an in-between outcome which could result because of Waxman-Markey not being ambitious enough in the eyes of Europe, would we then suggest that our intended budget is too ambitious as a contribution to a lower overall European effort? We have not considered that and I do not think we can give an answer without having a full consideration of it.

  Q30  Colin Challen: Is burden-sharing something which the Committee needs to spend some more time having a look at? It spends a lot of time on the science and at the economics and not the burden-sharing, yet the burden-sharing aspect is an essential part of this stool and it will not stand up without that third leg.

  Mr Kennedy: Very much so, and I think we were careful to say that the 2050 target is not contract and converge, it is equal per capita emissions in 2050, and contract and converge is about the path to the data in which you get convergence as well, so we do need to think about the burden-sharing methodologies and we have the opportunity to think about them. That is when we look at the fourth budget period which we will start to look at immediately after we give our Report to Parliament in September or October. I do not think we can define the appropriate UK contribution and path through the 2020s without thinking about the different burden-sharing methodologies, so we will give it our full consideration at that time.

  Q31  Dr Turner: Given the enormous reliance which the Government and your Committee place on the EU ETS as a policy instrument for delivering CO2 reductions, there seem to be some very big questions around it, notably, for instance, the proposed cap in Phase III is supposed to deliver a cut of 21% emissions in the European power and manufacturing sector, but if, on the other hand, the full quota of project credits is used, the reduction of emissions within the EU could shrink to just 7%. Does this not weaken the advice which you are giving to the Government on budgets and is it consistent with the whole carbon budgeting process?

  Mr Kennedy: I think we should differentiate ourselves there. You have characterised it, firstly, that the Government has set a lot of store by the EU ETS and I think the Government, although I cannot speak for them, I think they do set a lot of store by the EU ETS, and we have questioned the role of the EU ETS. We have said it is a useful tool to have there alongside a range of other tools and what has happened since we reported in December is that the carbon price obviously has gone very low as a result of the recession. We are carrying out our analysis at the moment of whether we think the carbon price is going to bounce back and, if it does not bounce back, that is a real problem for us because we are relying on the carbon price to drive a lot of low-carbon investment, particularly in the power sector. There is a real question: will the carbon price play its role? Adair Turner has hinted at this before the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee where he said that he thinks that it makes a lot of sense to seriously consider underpinning the carbon price, and what we are looking at is possibly underpinning the carbon price, but a whole range of electricity market interventions that are mainly required to support power sector decarbonisation, so it is an open question for us, is the carbon market going to play its role or not, and we are moving, I think, in the direction, without saying what we are going to say in September/October, where a range of interventions needs to be seriously considered if we are not confident in the carbon price.

  Q32  Dr Turner: But the carbon price is a very significant element and underpinning it in some ways is an issue which is increasingly discussed, but it is kind of separate from the implication of, for instance, banking allowances and using credits in Phase III. Just how do you take that into account with national carbon budgets? There seems to be such a level of unpredictability there that it potentially makes a nonsense of the whole structure.

  Mr Kennedy: I think there are two things. One, I think you are hinting that possibly at the European level maybe we do not need to reduce emissions because there will be so many credits in the system. We do not think that will be the case and we think there will be emissions reductions needed in Europe and within the UK energy-intensive sectors. Another way of coming at that, and maybe this is what you mean, from an accounting perspective is how do we factor in the emissions reductions that are from purchased credits rather than domestic emissions reductions and, in that sense, we have the traded sector budget, which we set out in our recommendations last December, and what we look at there are the net emissions from the traded sector and those net emissions are the emissions minus any EUAs that are purchased by the UK and any CDMs that are purchased.

  Q33  Dr Turner: Has the Committee considered taking a position on the use of credits? I notice that the Government has limited the use of offset credits for the non-traded sector to zero, but only for the first budget period. Do you think we ought to introduce more certainty in the whole process by yourselves making some serious recommendations to control or to limit the use of offset credits?

  Mr Kennedy: Are you saying that we should then change the primary legislation? I think it is the primary legislation that requires the limit on credits to be set only one budget ahead, so, within the parameters of the primary legislation, they have done as much as they can. We have said that we do not think we should use the purchase of credits to meet the second or third budgets, except in a world where we have got the intended target in 2020, so, if you could design the legislation in a way to accommodate that, then our recommendation could be fully implemented. At the moment, it cannot be.

  Q34  Dr Turner: But, looking at it from a slightly broader perspective, ultimately most of the 80% cut by 2050 will have to come from domestic efforts, otherwise it is just not going to be meaningful, so would it not make sense to drastically limit the reliance on offset credits and allowances now so that we stimulate more domestic action more urgently and achieve a better result faster?

  Mr Kennedy: I agree in the sense that we recommended that the 34% cut in 2020, which is the basis of the interim budget, should be achieved through domestic emissions reductions and not the purchase of credits.

  Q35  Dr Turner: So you are on the side of the angels then.

  Mr Kennedy: But, as I say, within the current legislation, there is not a lever to actually write that down as a formal commitment of the Government.

  Q36  Dr Turner: I think we can agree that you have identified a grey area with all sorts of serious implications that need to be addressed.

  Mr Kennedy: Whether they need to be addressed, it is certainly something we will be very focused on. We have to monitor the Government's progress in reducing emissions next year and, as part of that monitoring, we will be saying, "Is the bulk of the emissions reduction being achieved through domestic emissions cuts?" and we will be looking at the complementary purchase of credits and saying, "Is that appropriate or is it too much, and is the Government shying away from the difficult political choices to get domestic emissions cuts?" That will be central to our narrative over the next years.

  Q37  Mark Lazarowicz: Have you any view on the way that the Government has indicated that it intends to approach the issue of purchased credits or maybe the Government is not putting it yet? What is your initial feeling about the way the Government has said that it intends to approach these credits?

  Mr Kennedy: They have said that they do not intend to purchase any credits for the first budget period and they have not really said anything about their intentions for the second and third budget periods.

  Q38  Mark Lazarowicz: Is there a case for a different approach for EUA credits or CDM credits because the EUA ones obviously are a scheme which is the cap and with the CDM ones there are more question marks, so is there a case for having an approach between the two of them?

  Mr Kennedy: In principle, it would have been an issue, but, in practice, they cannot purchase EUAs to meet the non-traded sector budget and they cannot do that because of the way that the European Framework was designed, so I do not think it is an issue for us in practice.

  Q39  Colin Challen: We know that the IPCC reports, when they are published, are already a few years out of date because of the necessary peer review process and so on, and it does rather beg the question of how often the Committee should review the science and what might constitute a significant enough development of the science for it to initiate an immediate review?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I was very involved in the last IPCC and I was involved in a meeting a couple of months ago to think about the next one in terms of the science. We have our finger on the science that is occurring through my role and through generally the Committee having a contact there, and we certainly are keeping an eye on any new developments in the science and we will continue to do so. If those are suggesting in any way that we should revise our proposed targets or our advice, then we will certainly take that on board, and we have this continuing process which allows us to do that and I think that is extremely important, so I agree with you, the IPCC is assessing and it then has a tremendous robustness because of the whole process, but the penalty you pay is that it tends to be a little dated when it comes out, so we are keeping our eye on the science and we have very close relationships with the Hadley Centre here and the other global climate centres around the world, I have personal contacts with all of them, and we will be taking it on board, I assure you.

  Q40  Colin Challen: And that could lead to recasting the budgets then?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: If we found that the science was telling us something new and we needed to recast them, then we should do that.

  Q41  Colin Challen: Well, some people argue that actually there has been a lot that is new since the IPCC Report was published, particularly on the feedback cycles.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Well, I think this is where, as I said before, our work was really done this time last year and the IPCC Report then was 2007 and, as you say, most of the work that was published was in 2006, so we were really able to take on board two more years of science which had occurred. If you look at our Report and see the things we mentioned, I do not think there is anything that really has come to the top of the agenda that we did not mention there, so the melting of the summer Arctic sea ice, yes, there is a problem and it is at the higher end of any of the modelling, but we took that on board in our Report, so we were cognisant of the things that have happened since the IPCC Report and we have recognised them and that is why we made our targets as stringent as we did, and the modelling that we did took those on board as well.

  Q42  Colin Challen: If there were changes in the UNFCCC methodology and the way that they calculate historic datasets at all, would that lead to your having to revise the carbon budgets, do you think?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: The historical datasets?

  Q43  Colin Challen: Yes.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I thought you were going to be referring to the other greenhouse gases because, if I can just mention that, one of the problems is how you actually consider the range of greenhouse gases. We talk as if they are all carbon dioxide and we talk in terms of the carbon dioxide equivalent, which is how we have tended to put the final bit of our budget, but the other greenhouse gases do behave in a different manner and they affect the climate in a slightly different manner as well, so the Kyoto "basket" is one way of tackling those, but we would certainly recognise in the modelling that we do that we have to consider them in different ways, and it may be actually that thinking about those in different ways in the UK might turn out to be a good thing to do. In terms of the historical, I think we are aware of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere now and of methane and nitrous oxide, et cetera, so we can measure those, and I do not think we are in for any shocks in terms of measuring what we have done to the climate system so far in terms of the actual gases in the atmosphere. In terms of the impact on the climate system, of course we may find that there are problems.

  Q44  Mark Lazarowicz: How worried are you, or how worried should we all be, of the fact that every climate model seems to underestimate the situation when we look at it again a few months or years later? Clearly, we cannot predict what is unpredictable, but how far should this always push us towards a precautionary approach and going for the tougher end of emissions reductions rather than the weaker end?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Again, I am on a different line here. Usually, I give a talk and say that we should be aware of all these possible dangers. If there is one criticism of climate models I have, if you double carbon dioxide, you get this and, if you quadruple carbon dioxide, you get this, and it is all too smooth, whereas most complex, dynamical systems like the climate system tend to behave more in terms of plateauing and then more abrupt changes, so yes, I think things have tended to be moved towards the more constraining end all the time and I think that, in going for a two-degree target or trying to keep as close to that as possible, one is recognising that more and more of these things are liable to kick in beyond there, and there may indeed be surprises which are going to push us to say that we are not going far enough. If I can mention the summer of 2003 again, that should not have happened yet. The climate models were giving it as routine by the middle of the century, but at the moment it occurred, it occurred partly because of the particular weather pattern and we do not know at the moment whether that weather pattern is liable to occur more frequently in the future, so yes, there is a possibility that, with more understanding of the science, we are going to be pushed to the more constraining end and, if and when we see that, then we will take that on board in our targets. I think that, given the direction we have started on, it would be easy enough, and it will always be difficult, but we could adjust to the new information and, given that we have set out on this new direction for the UK, it would be possible to take that on board.

  Q45  Mark Lazarowicz: How far is your modelling and your policy work generally taking account, as far as it can, of the possibility of these types of changes in the science, requiring greater constraining? How far are you trying to take it on board in what you are doing?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Well, I am on the Climate Change Committee, so I suppose that is a recognition. Weather and climate is my thing, so that is a recognition from Adair Turner and the organising of the Committee that they needed someone on board who is up to what is happening on the scene. I am there at every meeting, or try to be, and, if I find something new, you can believe that I will be bringing that forward to the Committee, so we have the information coming to our regular monthly meeting and, if there is something new, then I will be bringing that to the table or else the secretariat will have found it and will be discussing it, so I believe we are on board and we can very actively discuss it if there is new information which suddenly says that we have got to do more.

  Mr Kennedy: In terms of a concrete opportunity, I have said that we will be looking at the fourth budget period next year and, as part of that, we will take a look again at the science. If the science tells us that we need to be more ambitious, we will reflect that in our advice for the fourth budget, but, if we are more ambitious in the fourth budget, we would have to ask the question: does that mean we have to be more ambitious in the first, second and third budgets to be consistent with that? We will be asking ourselves those questions next year.

  Q46  Mr Caton: Continuing on the problems of climate models, has any work been done recently to reduce uncertainties in projections, to correct against over-optimism and ensure better peer review of the model?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: There is. There is a lot of work going on the whole time, I assure you, to actually evaluate how models are performing compared with the real world, compared with each other, to look at any new observations that come in, to see whether the models are consistent with those new observations or whether it means one should refine something or change something. This is a living process that is going on. The models have a firmer basis on equations of physics, Newton's laws of motion, et cetera, so there is a very firm foundation there, but then, when you start putting in another process like clouds, of course there are all sorts of different ways that can be done and all the time you could say that weather techniques are being tried. For weather forecasting all the time in seasonal behaviour, there is an experiment going on in the system the whole time and this is used to confront models and say, "Are you still doing the right thing or should we adjust the way we are doing it?" so this is a living process which I, with other hats on, am very involved with and it is certainly happening. I think that, when we talk about the uncertainty, the uncertainty is much wider if you go to this equilibrium situation that Tyndall was talking about before and, when one talks about this transient behaviour over this century and sort of thinking about the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaking and then perhaps coming down afterwards, the uncertainty is rather less than that partly because it involves less understanding of how heat is diffused through the deep ocean and things like that, so there is major uncertainty. I think that uncertainty is much higher when you consider the regional manifestations of what a two-degree or four-degree rise would mean, so, if you ask me, the Indian monsoon is amazing for its lack of variation. Plus 10% and people are flooded out, minus 10% and they cannot grow their crops. Is that going to stay the same in a four-degree rising temperature? Probably not, but we cannot tell you at the moment where that would go, so I think the uncertainty comes much more in saying, "What would that mean if I lived in India or I lived wherever?" rather than in the globally averaged temperature context.

  Q47  Mr Caton: Recognising that there is uncertainty, as you do, is that addressed in the policy framework at this stage or can it be addressed in the policy framework?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: It is extremely difficult to do so, but I suppose that comes in in our twin targets of trying to keep the 50-50 level near two degrees and saying that the four-degree world is one where we believe many of those things, such as the Indian monsoon or whatever, might make life untenable in certain regions of this earth, so it is taken on board when we set the criteria we set, and that is very much guided by people like me, saying, when I look at the climate system, that I can see that there are going to be real fault lines in that system as we get into that sort of world.

  Q48  Mr Caton: To what extent is your Committee dependent on emissions projections from the Department for Energy and Climate Change model in delivering your advice on carbon budgets and on the balance to be achieved between the traded and non-traded sectors?

  Mr Kennedy: Certainly we draw on their model, so in the December Report we had, what we call, a "referenced" emissions projection and then we had the budget and the difference between those two was the emissions reductions we need to achieve. It was not the only thing we used. We did two things. First of all, it was a bit of a black box, the DECC energy model, so we brought in some consultants, Oxford Economics, to review that model and they said that it is largely fit for purpose, but they recommended a few changes and those changes were implemented. We also hired some consultants to develop alternative emissions projections for us which we could use as a benchmark against which to compare the DECC model, and that was a Cambridge Econometrics' set of projections that we used. They are reasonably close. The Cambridge Econometrics' projections are a bit higher than the DECC emissions projections, so, if you believe them, there is more emissions reduction required to get to the budgets that we have proposed. There is a great deal of uncertainty in emissions projections modelling, as you know.

  Q49  Colin Challen: How confident are you with the integrity of our carbon accounting systems? It seems that much of this is just based on estimates, for example, the input of fossil fuels rather than a measured output from a chimney stack or the problem that aviation presents relating to pulsing. There is a whole range of things here, so is carbon accounting sufficiently accurate for us to actually make sensible decisions?

  Mr Kennedy: I think we are reasonably confident for things like power generation and the way that we measure those emissions for our inventory. I think where we raised the question in the December Report was in the non-CO2 emissions where we are lot less certain, for example, about methane emissions in agriculture and it may turn out to be the case that some of the non-CO2 emissions are lower or higher than we currently think and, if that were the case, then either we would have to reduce emissions more than we currently think or less, depending on whether they were higher or lower. If you look at the range of uncertainty there, we do have estimates of the range of uncertainty and our view was that it is manageable, so, if there were to be a revision of the way we count these non-CO2 gases, then we could accommodate that within the budget framework.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Can I just pick up on aviation, which you mentioned. It is very difficult to count, at the moment, in a single number, what is the impact of aviation. You have the carbon dioxide that is going to perturb the carbon in the atmosphere for the next few hundred years and you have a contrail that may live for an hour, and actually putting those two together is really stretching the science in terms of actually finding metrics to really understand what that behaviour is. Indeed, there is still no understanding—or the understanding is at a very low level—of what the impact of aviation is on the cloud in the upper atmosphere—so not the contrails themselves but the cirrus cloud impact of aviation. So this is a very live issue. The actual metric for something like aviation—you know how much aviation fuel is used but then getting a metric for the other impacts is the subject of current research.

  Mr Kennedy: That is something we are going to come back to in the report that we do on aviation in December. So we will ask the question: if you think the radiating force factor is one for aviation, would it be sensible to add the incremented capacity at Heathrow; if you believe it is two, would you still want to add that? So we will set the range of scenarios across the estimates of what people think the forcing factor might be.

  Q50  Colin Challen: The net carbon account. What would you think would be the width of the error band deviated from the central case? Is it 5%, 10% in either direction—15, 20? Could you put a figure on it? This is a very serious question.

  Mr Kennedy: It is a serious question. The Clerk of the Committee said, actually, we are allowed to come back after the event with answers to very difficult technical questions, and I think I would place that one in that category, and one we can come back to you with a band of uncertainty.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Could I say, globally, I think, the gleam in the eye is that within a few years, perhaps, from satellite measurements, from in-situ measurements and from modelling, one may be able to invert and actually find out remotely what are the emissions from each country. In the end, that sort of policing might be required for a global view.

  Q51  Colin Challen: This line of questioning, obviously, would lead to the validity and the equivalence of offsets and carbon credits, if they are sought from countries which do not have the level of technical expertise that we do. Do you discount at all any of those credits for that reason in the calculations that you make?

  Mr Kennedy: Our position on credits was—let us turn it round; because in 2050 we have to reduce emissions domestically then our budgets are dominated by domestic emissions reductions. We did not see an issue in complementing those emissions reductions with the purchase of EUAs. We did not see a problem with, at the margins, the purchase of CDM. We know there are debates about the certainty of credits where you do not have a cap against which you can issue those. It is not something we have really got into and I think our view is that, probably, there may be a need to strengthen the framework for issuing CDM, and as far as we understand the UN is working on developing that kind of framework and it is something for the Copenhagen discussions, I think, to develop project-based type mechanisms.

  Q52  Joan Walley: Can I pick up on what Colin Challen raised in respect of carbon accounting. In view of what you said, Sir Brian, about aviation and about looking at new ways of being able to assess from satellites and so on, can I just ask you how the policy of the Climate Change Committee then gets translated into policy on the ground in respect of infrastructure projects? If there is so much uncertainty or still so much knowledge that we do not yet have to translate into the accounting of the budgets, how do you then, from the Climate Change Committee, advise governments about the factors which need to be taken into account when government is appraising, using Treasury rules etc, the long-term climate impact of, for example, expansion at Heathrow? How do you translate that into policy on the ground?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Let me start then with the Heathrow link. We are looking at aviation and we will be reporting in December in terms of keeping the UK aviation emissions or impact on climate at, certainly, not higher levels than currently. I think we can act as a conduit for the best current scientific knowledge to say how one should assess something like aviation, and then we can look at the implications of that assessment on the budgets. I do not know if you would like to take it from there.

  Mr Kennedy: In referring to the kind of rules for appraisal of projects you are talking about the social cost of carbon that they use—

  Q53  Joan Walley: And, also, about the basis on which planning decisions are being made right now, not having that clear, long-term information. Could what you do lead to changes in assumptions that would lead to a policy change on the ground?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: We would hope so, yes. When we have come to a clear view of aviation, for instance, that should have an impact on policy and what happens on the ground.

  Q54  Joan Walley: With due respect, is that not going to be too late for decisions about Heathrow at the moment?

  Mr Kennedy: There is that specific point. Our view of what has to happen (and this will be investments across all of the sectors) we will publish in—I keep saying "September or October" but the law says we have to do it in September, but we cannot give a report to Parliament when you are not here, so it may be when you come back on 12 October)—and that will have a detailed set of investments, and it is not too late to lay those out in October with a view to those being taken forward over the next five and 10 years. On the specifics of Heathrow, first of all, we do not know what we are going to say about Heathrow; we are now in the middle of doing analysis. Is it too late for what we say to feed into the discussion in December? I would not have thought so, but there is a lot of politics involved, which is, again, not for us.

  Q55  Mr Caton: To calculate progress on meeting UK carbon budgets, the Government intends simply to count the trading sectors' allocation of allowances rather than its actual emissions. This has been criticised by environmental groups because it provides no incentives for driving emissions below the cap given within the ETS. Do you have a view on that?

  Mr Kennedy: We do, and I think we were very clear in December in saying that we cannot just say: "This is a black box we have got to cap and so we do not care what happens in the energy-intensive sectors and, in particular, in the power sector." What we said is a certain set of things have to happen to make us confident we are on track to decarbonising the economy on the path to 2050. Going forward, we will not just look at the ETS path and say: "Well, actually we cannot ever miss the budget for the traded sector", because by definition it is a cap set so we will be looking a lot deeper than that; we will be saying: "Is there enough renewables stuff being proposed into the planning process? Is it coming out on time? Is construction starting? Are the renewables coming on the system? Are the investments going into transmission? What is happening with nuclear? What is happening with CCS?" So our focus will be all of the things that drive the emissions reductions, which I think the critics of this way of accounting are very interested in seeing happen.

  Q56  Mr Caton: Would you like to see the Government shifting away from just using the allocation of allowances?

  Mr Kennedy: It is not a key issue for us to have a discussion about the way of accounting; the key issue for us is that these things have to happen and that the monitoring framework has to include a very sharp focus on what is it that is happening on the ground in terms of investments. We will make sure that is part of the monitoring framework.

  Q57  Chairman: Progress in Britain towards a 20% cut by 2010 has been disappointing. Are you pretty optimistic that we are going to do better by 2020?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: We have to remain optimistic. I would never have guessed a couple of years ago that the UK would have these targets—so fantastic. I remain optimistic that once we start thinking about those we will see the amazing opportunities that this new technology is going to get us and put the UK in the right position. So if we are always treating this as a: "God, we're being held down to this; this is too much", I think it really will be a struggle. If we could just turn the corner and see the opportunity, I think we might actually quite enjoy it.

  Mr Kennedy: If you look at the social research, there are grounds for optimism in the sense that people understand that there is an issue with climate change and they would like to do something about it, but they do not really know what they can do. If you put that together with the fact that there is a range of things that we can do over the next five, 10 and 15 years that are not bad, in terms of quality of life—so energy efficiency improvement saves you money and reduces emissions; a lot of people would not go and buy an electric car now but in five or 10 years' time it will be as good to drive an electric car as a conventional car. The power generation story. Again, if we are serious about this and if we get the policies in place this summer we can really make some progress on increasing renewable electricity. So I think there are grounds for optimism. It is going to take leadership from government, and it is a social transformation we need. We have been successful in social transformations in the past, whether it is attitudes to drink/driving or smoking in pubs; there are positive examples from the past and I think it is all to play for. The summer strategy is, for us, key and we will be looking at what are the range of measures in there?

  Sir Brian Hoskins: I can look at two previous situations: the Clean Air Act, which was remarkable and a great turnaround, and it was not easy—we do not know what a fog is these days—and the Montreal Protocol; again, a superb example of where the problem emerged, the science said: "This is what the problem is", and because industry saw an opportunity—the substitutes for CFCs, there was a new market here and something new to do—it all fell into place. In fact, the Montreal Protocol has actually done more for helping the mitigation of climate change than Kyoto. So the Montreal Protocol was fantastic; we have done it before, it was easier but I think there are examples and this one we can do as well.

  Q58  Chairman: Those are all very fair points, I think we would accept. We just felt that in the past the Government has not been very accurate in predicting the impact of its climate change policy and we have identified what we call "optimism bias" in some of their future projections. There we are. We have covered a lot of ground this morning and we are very grateful to you. We are running out of time, as we have another witness, but I am sure we will be wanting to talk to you again. I should have said at the beginning, incidentally, and I am sure it is the view of the whole Committee, that we are delighted that the Committee on Climate Change exists and are very encouraged by work you have done so far. I think the reports have been extremely helpful and to the point, and you have our complete support in all that, and we look forward to a continuing dialogue.

  Sir Brian Hoskins: Thank you very much indeed.





 
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