Carbon Budget Order 2016 — House of Lords, 2016-07-19
Topic: Energy
Robin Teverson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister, who is very diligent in all her work, particularly in areas such as this. I welcome very much her appointment and look forward to working with her in this area, not least as chair of the House’s EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. In fact, the country was so pleased about me being appointed as chair of that committee that it voted for Brexit a month afterward—but never mind. I think we are still working out where those committees are going to go More seriously, I reflect the sentiment of my noble friend in saying that I, too, am concerned that DECC has just been wiped off the face of government. Climate change, whichever way we look at it—either because it is totally misguided, as the noble Viscount might say, or because we think it is incredibly important and precious—is an important part of government. That it is not there on the brass plate is of concern As the noble Viscount would expect, I celebrate the fact that we are moving forward and accepting the recommendation of the Energy and Climate Change Committee on the fifth carbon budget. In fact, the green sector of business and industry, not least the energy part of it, was one of the few areas to show economic growth post-2008, despite the financial crisis at that time. Rather than taking the scenario and explanation given by the noble Viscount—rather than making the equivalent step back from iPads to the typewriter—let us move forward into clean energy, create jobs and make that work. I agree that the externality cost to consumers needs to be taken into account, but we could always do it through taxation if we wished, rather than through energy prices. Perhaps that is the way forward I have just looked at the Sandbag app, and coal generation is still below 10%, on which I congratulate the Government, who I am sure have been instrumental in that. We are doing very well The Brexit point is important. Part of these orders relate to the EU emissions trading scheme, which is where the credits come from. I would be very interested to hear from the Minister whether the Government have begun to think about our future role—in, out or whatever—in the emissions trading system, and how that might be dealt with. However long it might take to implement Article 50, I presume that the situation will be resolved by 2028, and we need to think forward. The Minister may have news for me there, too I regret the fact that we still have the third carbon budget and the allowances as a comfort blanket. I do not get excited or annoyed about it, but it would be good to have enough confidence in ourselves not to need that. However, that is not a fundamental point in any way. What is fundamental—the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, may bring this up if she speaks this evening—is that carbon budgets account for only some 50% of carbon emissions that are dealt with from the non-EU ETS sector. That means that we do not take full responsibility for our carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. It would be much better if we were able to tweak the Climate Change Act so that the carbon budgets and accounting meant the actual emissions from UK business, industry, households, transport and commerce, rather than a mix of actuals and the trade of the major emitters in the European Emissions Trading Scheme I welcome both these orders, although not so much the second one. We are moving forward positively. I have a question about where we go with the EUTS. It is great to create targets—we know this from business and other areas—but we must meet them. An updated carbon plan showing how we will achieve them would give all of us who wish this project well a lot more confidence than we have had over the past couple of years.