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Noble Lords: Noah!

Lord Renton of Mount Harry: Noah! My Lords, I am sorry: Noah managed to do that. What was his secret? Goodness, we need it now. This is the big unresolved question. How do we—politicians, scientists, editors and the media—put over to the public the potential dangers ahead and advise them about what they can do to minimise the damage and to use human inventiveness, the inventiveness of mankind, to overcome it? That is the unanswered question that lies ahead of us.

Moved, 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).—(Lord Renton of Mount Harry.)

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, and his colleagues on the committee for their report and for giving us the opportunity to discuss it this evening. I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Haworth. I am also delighted to see in her place my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone,
 
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whose colleagues at the Environment Agency do far more than ever gets recognised. They do an important job in the area that we are debating this evening.

This is an excellent report. It is in the best traditions of this House. The committee gathered the facts and interviewed many experts. Having gathered the facts, the committee analysed them and reached judgments, which are put across in a readable way. Maybe a tabloid edition of the report might be one way of getting the public more involved. I found the report to be one of the most readable documents on climate change that I have seen in a long time. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, had something to do with that.

I shall address the issue that the noble Lord spent a few moments on: the EU emissions trading scheme that appears on page 27 of the report. It deals with phase 1, which came in this year. Aviation is covered in that section of the report. The noble Lord spent a few moments talking about the growth of aviation and the growth in emissions that will come from it. This committee has been very wise in the way it has approached it. There are too many people who think that the way to deal with it is to shut aviation down, stop it growing and put punitive taxes on it. That would be severely damaging to the country economically. The way to deal with it is to have a very strict adherence to the European emissions trading scheme, which I welcome and which I hope will become global. For it to work, it is essential for it to become global. We can do what we can in Europe and lead by example, but it has to extend globally. It is also an effective way.

I gather that British Airways is the only airline that joined the scheme at the beginning. I congratulate the Government on the work that they have done in this area. BA says that between 1990 and 2010 it will cut fuel emissions by something like 30 per cent and save about 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Those are very positive steps, which we need to extend considerably.

The Government have made a very welcome statement that in their period of presidency of the EU they will put aviation and the European emissions trading scheme within their agenda. It is a very positive move; I think it is a very brave one.

Part of the problem we have to deal with is very clearly set out on table 22—or is it page 22?—of the report which lists all the nations covered. The European emissions trading scheme has to cover the whole of aviation throughout Europe. Nations have to be included in it; they have to be part of it; and they have to meet the targets which we need to set.

I end this short contribution by saying that at the moment about £1 billion is raised through airport tax, which is paid by people who use aviation. I believe that we are a bit different from Europe—we are an island. Over a third of all our exports by value go by air. So, we have to be careful what we do that will affect our economy. The way to deal with it comes back to this
 
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point about emissions trading. It goes to the heart of the issue and actually forces the industries involved to address the issue.

The report is an extremely constructive contribution to the debate. We are struggling to have a difficult debate, which too many people would prefer was not there and would wish to ignore. But, I must say that something as concise as this is a contribution to the debate. I am delighted that the Government have indicated that they are going to pick up the parts of the report on the emissions trading scheme.

Lord Lewis of Newnham: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, for his excellent and very effective chairmanship of Sub-Committee D. It was a pleasure to be a member of such a committee and I agree that the report, which was primarily due to his efforts, has turned out to be very successful.

Perhaps I may also say that I very much look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, give his maiden speech.

I should like to comment on two areas that have not been covered or brought into the emissions trading scheme within the UK, which are principally concerned with the electrical industries. These are transport and buildings. John Cridland, deputy director-general of the CBI, has pointed out that UK industry cut carbon emissions by 6 per cent between 1990 and 2003. During that period house emissions rose by more than 10 per cent and emissions from transport rose by 4.6 per cent.

Transport emissions have virtually doubled since 1970 to 2002. That is the greatest increase from any source of emissions. Transport emissions clearly include aviation, which has been discussed by previous speakers.

In the transport sector there have been encouraging signs of addressing the problem, but these have been mainly for new motor cars with the introduction of a fuel economy labelling scheme and attempts to reduce the carbon emissions by engine design by 25 per cent of the 1995 figure by 2008. In addition, there has been the development—and very much welcomed idea—of the hybrid technology car and the use of biofuels as a carbon-neutral energy source.

However, considering the magnitude of the problem—with over 20 million cars in the UK and approximately 1 million of these being new cars—each year a major programme needs to be mounted to even begin to face the problem. A difficult feature is that much of the pollution occurs from older cars, which often have long half-lives and so present a long-term problem, which at the moment does not appear to be being addressed.

In the case of diesel engines, which often have a life of about 1 million miles, we are looking at the technology of over 25 years ago. Whereas the present engine is relatively benign, the older ones are major pollution problems.
 
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The situation with aviation is even more difficult, as the international nature of much of the business makes it difficult for a single country to legislate for any form of fuel tax. I agree completely with the noble Baroness that taxation is not the answer to this particular problem. That was recognised very early on in the Chicago convention in 1944. Any consideration of emissions from aircraft was ignored. That was also considered but excluded in the Kyoto protocol. Nevertheless, as we discussed, this is a very significant global polluter. In addition to carbon dioxide emissions, water, which is relatively benign on the ground, becomes a major problem when one is dealing with things in the stratosphere, as this then provides a cloud formation which increases global warming considerably.

This topic has been raised on many occasions in this House and in the other place. I was very pleased indeed to see in the Government's response to the report that they have agreed to take this on board during their present presidency of the European Union. I think that this is a very commendable act on their part.

Finally, may I turn briefly to the energy loss from buildings? The Building Research Establishment has recently pointed out the important potential that the present and proposed new building regulations coming from the EU have in providing energy-efficient buildings. They claim that the use of energy in buildings accounts for half of the carbon dioxide emissions in this country. Considering the large housing programme that the Government have under consideration, the incentive to reduce the energy consumption in homes must be great.

The BRE has also reported, in the testing of new houses by air permeability tests, that almost one third of new houses failed to achieve the level required. In many instances there was criticism of the effectiveness of the inspection of the properties and the competence of the building profession. Although it is the local authority that is responsible for the implementation of regulation, the building inspectors themselves have warned that the workload—particularly with the new regulations—will provide them with great staffing problems. It is absolutely paramount that something is done in order to help them in this very difficult situation.

In addition, of course, there remain the problems of the older houses, and older houses represent a significant proportion. They are one third of the total building stock of houses built before 1940. For houses of this nature, techniques have been developed and are being developed, and it is important that we consider these as a significant factor in our energy reduction.

The committee generally accepted the EU approach to the problem of global warming and indeed, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Renton of Mount Harry, commended them on the leadership role they have played. With the acceptance of the Kyoto protocol, the EU has, to my mind, provided a good lead in implementing a regime that will allow for control of emissions throughout the Union and will doubtless provide a model that can be employed by other
 
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countries. However, we are at the beginning of this story and I feel that there are many problems which still await solution.

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