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Lord Marlesford: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is disappointed with the debate. I am not entirely surprised because, after all, we tend to look to the reality of the world and try to form policies that fit it. Of course, as the noble Lord said several times, with his interest in surveys he represents a party which tries to do everything through focus groups. We are going rather wider. I hope that tonight we have had the opportunity to put the Government on notice that we are fairly dissatisfied with their making of statistics and we shall draw attention both to that and to other relevant factors in the poor governance which results from time to time. Meanwhile, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Climate Change (EUC Report)

Lord Renton of Mount Harry rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee on The EU and Climate Change (30th Report, Session 2003–04, HL Paper 179).

The noble Lord said: My Lords, there are many things that one does out of duty, even in the House of Lords, that do not give one very much pleasure. But chairing Sub-Committee D, which produced the report that we are debating tonight, did nothing but give me absolute pleasure. I had marvellous colleagues with whom to work, most of whom knew a great deal more about the subject before we started than I did. We had a very good Clerk in Nicolas Besly, and I thank him and our specialist adviser, Fiona Mullins.

I think that frankly we all learnt a great deal more about the subject as we moved along. We ended up a great deal more expert and rather more pessimistic, but it was a very interesting and well timed exercise. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, who I see sitting on the Benches opposite. He was willing to be a co-opted member of the committee and, with his great scientific knowledge, was of huge help to us. Indeed, just the other day he
 
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sent me the Houston Chronicle of 6 February, which includes an article by him with the good title "Fiddling While the Earth Melts".

I said that I thought our timing was very good because obviously the controversy continues. Only on Wednesday last in London, the chairman of ExxonMobil, Mr Raymond, with no apologia at all, said very firmly that the combination of economic growth and population increases alone would mean a rise in primary energy demand of 50 per cent by 2030. That equals 100 million barrels a day of oil equivalent, or 10 times the current output of Saudi Arabia. Two days later, Dr Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a worldwide expert, said that the marine temperature had risen by an average of 0.5 degrees centigrade over the past 40 years. He added:

"The debate is not have we got a clear global warming signal—the debate is what are we going to do about it".

Our committee took the view from the start that climate change was happening and that it was very largely man-made. We took that as given. We accepted that CO2 emissions were rapidly rising but we reckoned that, despite the presence of those like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, it was not for us to make a judgment of by how much temperatures were rising or how many more parts per million of CO2 were now in the atmosphere. We simply took it that there was a substantial man-made problem.

As I mentioned just now, the view of the committee became progressively more pessimistic as we took evidence from February until June last year. Our view overall as an EU committee had to be that we could not take the whole global view, much as we were tempted to do so at times; we had to continue to ask what the EU was doing about climate change and what more could or should we in the European Union be doing. I think that our headmistress report on the EU at this relatively early stage would be: good start; promising ideas; ahead of the field; should co-ordinate European research into clean technologies; but can and must do even better if we are to survive into the 22nd century.

I shall deal with just a few of the major points in our report and I turn, first, to the question of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. With regard to that, we had no doubt that the EU deserves our praise for forward-thinking and leadership. It is a central element in the EU's programme. At present, it applies only to industrial sectors. It currently applies only to carbon dioxide, but other gases may be included from 2008. The scheme covers all the biggest point source CO2 emitters, and those account for approximately 46 per cent of EU emissions. It makes companies and not member states responsible for reductions. There is no UK register yet. The only country that has a register is Denmark, and that means that at present all the deals are in forward contracts rather than spot contracts. It is a bold scheme—the first multinational scheme of its type—covering 23 of the 28 countries which Kyoto caps.

One of our witnesses from the bank that has set itself up specially to deal in carbon trading/climate change capital called the scheme as good an example as one could have of backing rhetoric with real decisive action.
 
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I think that it is a striking example of effective action being taken at the Community level when 25 separate countries' programmes could not have the same effect. It must be extended globally to include other major developing countries. However, it depends on national allocation plans as the basis. Here, there is a surprising development so far as concerns the UK. Having submitted the national allocation plan some months ago, the Secretary of State at Defra withdrew it and has resubmitted it with a 3 per cent increase. That is now being considered by the Commission. Frankly, I think it is very disappointing that we, having been one of the first to make a submission, should have withdrawn it and come back with an increase which, not unexpectedly, has been very badly received both by the Commission and by other countries.

We emphasised the wish to have stronger co-operation with third countries to promote enhanced technology transfer. That, in brief, is covered by the linking directive at paragraph 38 of our report, and it is also dealt with in Box 2 on page 16. This is a complicated matter and it is only just beginning. But the point behind it is that it allows credits representing emission reductions in, let us say, the developing world to be set against debits in the developed world. If, for example, a German power company persuaded China to build a new electric power station with very low CO2 emissions, that would give the German company credits on its contract which could be offset against carbon dioxide emissions in its German manufacture. It is very complicated and ambitious. A lot of working it out lies ahead, but it emphasises that, potentially, we are looking at an emissions trading scheme that should be global in effect and which would, one hopes, embrace the large developing countries such as China, Brazil and India.

Transport is dealt with on pages 28 to 42 of our report. We emphasise that transport contributes about 25 per cent of United Kingdom CO2 emissions and that road transport contributes about 85 per cent of that. Therefore, it is self-evident that we say that more should be done to develop low emission vehicles.

Aviation accounts for about 11 per cent of the UK's total climate impact and that will rise sharply. A mistake was made in some of the figures that BAA gave us and in many copies of the report, the reference is that aviation accounts for 4.6 per cent. That is a mistake and has been corrected in the copy of our report that is on the web. As we all know, the UK Government, like those of other members states, are pursuing the growth in air travel capacity very hard. I live close to Gatwick and I am well aware of the plans greatly to increase the throughput of Gatwick in the years ahead.

There is a paradox: at the same time that the Government are building more airports and encouraging more cheap air traffic, they are saying that they intend to make the question of climate change and the reduction of the carbon emissions one of their key debating points this year when they are in the G8 and head of the EU.
 
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Aviation emissions is the fastest growing source of emission and will be a major contributor to future climate change. It is interesting that it is judged that the impact of aviation emissions is 2.7 times that of carbon dioxide alone. Unsurprisingly, we came down very strongly on a recommendation that emissions from intra-EU flights should be brought into the European Union ETS as soon as possible. That appears to be a measure that is supported by the Government.

Alternative energy sources are covered in pages 43 and 44 of our report. Our research into them was, it must be said, not deep. We encouraged the EU to look into research into nuclear fusion and encouraged accelerated research into alternative energy sources away from carbon fuels. We did not look deeply at the question of nuclear power, but my own view, and not necessarily that of the committee, is that we will have to revisit the question of building new nuclear reactors in this country. France produces 75 to 80 per cent of her electricity from nuclear power. It seems to me that it is going to be very difficult to meet our targets for CO2 reductions without doing that.

Finally, we considered how to get the public involved in this—this is a matter always in the mind of the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, who I am delighted to see in her seat today. How do we engage the public in worries about CO2 emissions and what is likely to happen to them, their children or their grandchildren? The historian in me sometimes looks back to the very obvious example of climate change, which is Genesis Chapters VI and VII and the floods that covered the mountaintops. As noble Lords will remember:

"The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot"—

a delightful expression. I wonder what message Jonah received that he managed to get two of every animal and bird into the Ark with him before the flood started.

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