Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-601)
Ms Julie Hill, Miss Hannah Hislop, Mr Andrew Lee
and Ms Sue Dibb
11 MARCH 2008
Q600 Lord Lewis of Newnham: Can I
just ask the question of you. You have repeatedly used things
like carbon figures and carbon footprints, things of this particular
nature across a variety of different issues. How reliable are
these particular assessments? Does anybody assess the reliability
of a figure that comes forward? Certainly I think in terms of
biofuels we get vastly different figures depending upon whether
you include or exclude a certain type of commodity in the actual
cycle or not.
Ms Hill: I think it depends on whether the data
is derived from, say, regulatory measures or trading or the financial
measures. Where there is a very high stake in having those figures
right because of the impact on a business, they will probably
be more accurate than, say, voluntary disclosure or figures that
have been put forward by businesses individually on differing
methodologies. We know that standardisation of carbon calculation
methodologies is a big issue going forward. That was highlighted
by the carbon foot-printing work by the retailers; it has been
highlighted by the Carbon Trust. I could be very crude and say
at the end of the day if all this was regulated, then you would
get accurate figures. Either a prosecution or a price tag would
depend on the companies concerned doing accurate measurements.
A lot of what is in the research field has been done by academics
and it is by no means clear that their methodologies are consistent.
We know that this is an issue, and it is wider than carbon. It
is an issue about resource flow data. We know shockingly little
about the stuff that moves through the economy—what materials
it is, what quantity it is in, what are the carbon and other consequences
of processing it into product. We simply have not wanted or needed
to know any of that before because we have not sought to manage
it. As we know in the well-known mantra: if you cannot measure,
you cannot manage. As soon as we want to manage resource properly,
we will have to find the ways of measuring it. There undoubtedly
needs to be more government-funded research in this area or, as
I say, the very simple alternative is to put a general obligation
on all of business to know its mass balance, which applies in
some parts of America, and business does the measuring and there
is no argument.
Q601 Chairman: Thank you very much.
You have been very fulsome in your evidence. There are one or
two things which I notice from our check list we have not covered,
issues relating to WEEE directives and collective producer responsibility.
We will drop you a line and ask you for more information in that
area. If you have any afterthoughts, second or third thoughts,
please let us have them, regardless of the amount of paper involved.
Ms Hill: We will do it all electronically.
Chairman: You send it to us and we will use up the
Norwegian forests. Thank you very much for coming this morning.
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