Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
280-299)
Dr Terry Barker and MS
ANNELA ANGER
8 OCTOBER 2008
Q280 Lord Wallace of Tankerness:
What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages if we end
up with several schemes operating in parallel rather than necessarily
coming together? Do you think that would happen?
Dr Barker: Most of these schemes that
we are talking about are pretty big. I should have thought there
would be a common US scheme and I think the US schemes we have
seen at present—the one on the East Coast and the one on
the West Coast—are trial schemes in the way the UK had a
trial scheme, and they will get rolled out to great benefit across
the States. It is obvious it is a single market—it is more
of a single market than a European one—and they will power
ahead much faster, depending on who wins the election, but whoever
wins will go into the emissions trading scheme and it will power
ahead as a national scheme and very, very quickly be greater than
the European scheme, but depending on the target, because Europe
could advance its target and push ahead of the curve, especially
with the global depression and develop its economy in a low carbon
direction to great benefit.
Q281 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
In a sense you may have answered my question already by reference
to what the MEPs are doing. You argue that penalties for non-compliance
should be adjusted not only to changes in inflation, but also
to the carbon price—notably if the carbon price turns out
to exceed the penalty. Are you aware whether the provision has
been amended in the way you suggest?
Dr Barker: No, it has not, so that is
excellent, it is good news.
Q282 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
Could I just produce one out of the air on decarbonisation of
the housing stock. Do you see that as a lower priority than—
Dr Barker: I see that as the very highest
priority.
Q283 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
Than transport.
Dr Barker: I do not think it is a competition
between the two because they are so different. There are synergies
between them, there are very important synergies, but I see for
the UK in particular that decarbonisation of the housing sector
can be of extreme benefit to the national economy and to national
welfare. I have been pushing for this in terms of trying to get
the key organisations involved working together to produce basically
a plan to decarbonise the UK housing sector as soon as possible,
absolutely as soon as it can be done, and the reason for that
is that the construction industry in the UK is in terrible straits,
in disastrous straits, it is catastrophic for many construction
companies and for employment in construction. We urgently need,
throughout the country, massive development of existing homes
to decarbonise them, using all the new techniques that have been
developed, learning from Germany's experience in improving the
housing stock in East Germany, learning from the Norwegians with
their problems of driving rain and what happens to housing stock
if we are going to get worse storms than we have had. I am very
much in favour of doing something about the housing stock.
Q284 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
Would the Government not argue that the deal it has done or is
about to do with the energy companies in part is a step in that
direction?
Dr Barker: I have to say that the energy
companies have not been doing a good job with the scheme for insulating
homes.
Q285 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
I am talking about the agreement that has been reached on the
amount of money that will be available to electricity companies
for insulating lofts and all the rest of it.
Dr Barker: Yes, that is what I am talking
about. I have looked into that scheme and I was very disappointed
at what had been done. Ofgem is in charge and Ofgem is supposed
to be regulating the industry. I find it difficult to believe
but when a home is insulated by British Gas for example under
this scheme—so British Gas gets money to do it—what
they actually do is a bean-counting exercise. They put insulation
in the walls, they put insulation in the roof, they give you some
light bulbs; they do this, that and the next thing and it is all
neatly counted up—bean-counting. They do not measure to
see whether it has been effective or not; they can do that easily,
they can measure the gas input if it is British Gas and it is
just gas and not electricity, or they can measure the electricity
input and the gas input. They can see how much is used before
and after, but they do not do it, they really do not do this,
they do not put in the measurements. I had someone come to my
house to do it and I know what they did, they just looked around
tick, tick, tick, tick, and then at the end of this process Ofgem
receives a report from all the electricity companies and all the
boxes are ticked, everyone is happy, all the money has been spent.
Have we got improved housing stock? Maybe a bit if we are lucky,
but if we are talking about decarbonising we have to be much better
at it than that; you cannot just push insulation everywhere and
hope that it will work.
Q286 Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe:
Thank you.
Dr Barker: I am glad I have given the
Committee some amusement.
Lord Cameron of Dillington: We admire
your enthusiasm.
Q287 Earl of Arran: I am from Yorkshire.
On the basis that you hope it will work, your answers have been
so comprehensive that I think you have probably already covered
the point about whether verification, monitoring and reporting
of the scheme is to be successful. I suspect you have very grave
doubts on this.
Dr Barker: Indeed, yes. We should be
adopting a whole house attitude and every house is different;
they are not the same, they are in different parts of the country,
they face different climatic conditions, there are different people
in them who do different things, different behaviours. That is
how we should approach it, not just from the electricity companies
or the gas companies, there are lots of others involved. The IPPR
had this green streets initiative which seems to have been tremendously
successful in energising local communities to do something about
their housing stock, because it is not just a question of decarbonisation,
it is a question of whether people are living in decent conditions,
of whether the community is looking after its own.
Q288 Earl of Arran: Do you have any
hope of the fulfilment of your vision?
Dr Barker: Yes.
Q289 Earl of Arran: You do.
Dr Barker: I do, yes, partly because
of the terrible crisis we are in. I do not think people understand
how deep it is.
Q290 Viscount Brookeborough: Is it
not true that for even the future housing or the housing that
we are putting up at the moment the building regulations and so
on are simply not stringent enough and the regulations that we
are operating with now are similar to those that were operated
by in particular Denmark, with a similar climate, 20 years ago?
Dr Barker: Yes.
Q291 Viscount Brookeborough: We simply
have not gone anywhere, so we are creating a problem every day
let alone curing anything.
Dr Barker: I call this regulatory capture.
The construction industry has been lobbying—I have not done
studies of it but I dare say if we studied those who have been
responsible for the regulations, who has been sitting on which
committee, what jobs they have, what bonuses they get, we might
find that the regulations have been captured and that they are
doing what the construction industry is wanting to do in a rather
stupid, short-sighted, mean sort of way. What do we have at the
end of the day? We have some of the smallest rooms in Europe—Barratt
build houses with some of the smallest rooms in Europe; it is
incredible. We are becoming like the Japanese, living in tiny
rooms. Maybe everyone will like living in tiny rooms; I do not
want to live in a tiny room in a Barratt house.
Q292 Chairman: I think that is it,
but as one Yorkshireman to another, let us be direct then. It
is a European emissions trading scheme, it is a regional scheme;
that is an enormous weakness is it not?
Dr Barker: It is, but it is an example—and
that is a positive advantage—to the rest of the world.
Q293 Chairman: Unilateral nuclear
disarmament was going to be an example to the rest of the world.
Dr Barker: But it is an example which
has brought great benefit to Europe. Certain European industries
are much stronger than they would otherwise be, particularly in
Denmark—I have mentioned Denmark, I have mentioned Germany
and other aspects. The City of London has benefited from its expertise
in trading carbon; you can now export that expertise to the rest
of the world, to Wall Street for example.
Q294 Chairman: The other thing is
what arguments can we advance to bring the BRIC countries into
a more reasonable position because they are completely opposed
to any form of control and yet that is where the emissions are
increasing and will continue to increase.
Dr Barker: BRIC is Brazil, Russia, India
and China: the first argument I would say is if you decarbonised
your transport sector you might get rid of an awful lot of air
pollution and you might save yourself an awful lot of money in
terms of lost output and hospital admissions. Indeed, it is that
argument that we are going to investigate in an academic study,
bringing together air pollution and the decarbonising of Mexico
because Mexico City has particular climatic conditions. I would
say that was the first benefit; the second benefit I would say
is your economy will advance technologically much faster if you
move to a low carbon technology than if you stay with these old
technologies—burning coal and gas. Basically, technology
is a growing argument. Thirdly, I would say if you go the low
carbon way you would get far more money from the high carbon Western
economies, the old economies.
Q295 Chairman: I suppose the real
challenge is that all those countries may turn round and say "Our
overriding priority, our sole priority, is economic growth, alleviation
of poverty and those objectives can only be met by increasing
CO2 emissions."
Dr Barker: In the present circumstances—this
is a global depression that we are facing, not just in the United
States and the UK, it will go throughout the world. It is a very
big shock, in Russia for example, when the stock market collapses—which
is more or less what is happening because many people lose huge
amounts of money and the system really starts creaking—this
will have its effect unless the policy reaction is better than
it has been in creating huge losses of jobs. Therefore, any investment,
even the Keynesian type investment of taking stones out of fields
and building walls with them, is going to be beneficial because
it is going to take up some of these resources which have been
set free by the bankers' follies over the last 20 years.
Q296 Viscount Ullswater: I am longing
to ask one question: is nuclear old technology or new technology?
Dr Barker: It is both; we have mostly
old technology but it would be nice to have the new technology
and to lead in the new technology but the UK is far too small.
China is much bigger and we should be buying our nuclear power
stations from China if we were going to follow an economic route.
I suspect we are not and we are rather going to buy them from
France.
Q297 Viscount Ullswater: But you
are not opposed to nuclear energy.
Dr Barker: Not at all, no.
Q298 Viscount Ullswater: It is in
the mix.
Dr Barker: Yes. I am in favour of nuclear
stations which are protected against attack and which have technologies
which cannot be used easily by terrorists. There is obviously
a very severe problem with proliferation and so I am very much
in favour of hoping to prevent that but some countries are going
gung-ho for nuclear and they are obviously going to develop a
world technological lead in nuclear.
Q299 Viscount Brookeborough: What
about the future storage of the waste?
Dr Barker: That is an extremely serious
problem.
Chairman: The Finns have got that sorted.
That is it; thank you very much indeed, that was a delightful
session.
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