Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-06-26
Topic: Energy
Oliver Michael Robert Eden (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I do not think that I will be behaving like a Stalinist censor if I kill off the debate at this stage; I suspect that the House will be with me if we bring this to a conclusion. I shall address a few of the points made in the debate, although I confess that I will not be able to address all of them by any means Perhaps I may start by making a brief comment to my noble friend Lord Lilley, whom I served with on various occasions many years ago and for whom I have the greatest respect. He worried that this was one of those measures where the two Front Benches being in agreement probably meant that it was wrong and that it would not get proper scrutiny and proper debate. Certainly I can say that the two Front Benches are not in total agreement on this because we have the amendment that we have been debating from the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, and I said earlier that I did not think there was much point in it. He was worried that his amendment could be misinterpreted. I think that it was and still is misinterpreted and that it is unnecessary I also say to my noble friend that there has been considerable debate over a mere two hours. There have been contributions from a number of noble Lords, ranging from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who feels that we are not going nearly far enough, the Liberal Democrat Benches, who say that we are not going far enough, and others who say that we are going too far. We have covered a large range of subjects, including whether we are failing on our carbon budgets and the suggestion that we need to do more onshore. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said we need greater clarity on nuclear. Even my noble friend Lord Deben, who generally supports what we do, feels that we are failing on domestic heating and cars, and wants us to go further on those issues The noble Lord, Lord Fox, wants me to lie down in front of a bulldozer at Heathrow, but that is not part of my plan. However, he also mentioned the importance of storage—a subject that he and I have discussed on other occasions. I agree that that is important and that there are matters such as storage, energy efficiency, batteries, hydrogen and heat exchange where more work and more research need to be done. The Government will be doing more and he will hear about that in due course Many noble Lords felt that there needed to be more on the costs and in the way of impact assessments and so on, and I will address those matters in due course. Others, including my noble friend Lord Ridley and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, talked about carbon capture and storage. Again, that is vital for the future and we obviously need to look at it I could go on, but it is important that I address two particular points. The first is on costs. Secondly, I should say a little—I cannot say more—about "how". The question of how deals with the next two carbon budgets and the claims that we will fail on those and in so doing will—as my noble friend said—fail later, putting off and making it difficult to reach the net zero target by 2050.