Climate Change Bill [HL]

We are having this argument a second time. I find it slightly difficult to understand why there should be one rule for one amendment and a different rule for a different amendment, according to some minds. We need to recognise what the Minister is postulating as an end game when we get to 2050. As far as I can see there is no such thing as a completely carbon-neutral economy. Certain industries will still require fossil fuels to operate. The obvious category is the smelting industry, which reduces metal ores to basic metal. Coal is used there not as a fuel to produce heat but to produce a chemical reaction. The cement industry has the same problem. Those industries will continue to use coal whatever happens if we are to have a supply of the raw materials that we shall continue to need and, more importantly, the raw materials that will be needed on an ever-greater scale globally for population reasons, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. We may well find that, because of fuel density, aviation has to continue to use fossil fuels, and shipping may have to for similar reasons. We cannot conceive of being without any of those industries in a modern society if development is to move forward. There will be a base line requirement to use fossil fuels, about which we can do nothing, but that does not mean—this is where the Minister’s argument fascinates me—that we should not have trading. It might mean that our target should be more than 100 per cent. I think that is where the logic will take us in the end. Not only will we require to use fossil fuels but so will every other country. The developed world can gain a very real benefit through the trading scheme in investing in other countries so that their benefit in carbon-free development helps us to continue with these fundamental industries about which we will probably be able to do nothing. That is where we are heading. Those industries will be required in third-world countries which at present probably do not have them, or they may not have the raw materials. We could be looking at that end game and it could be that the 80 per cent target beyond 2050 will have to be stronger than that; it may finally become greater than 100 per cent for economies such as ours. That will not matter if one accepts that 20 or 30 per cent of what actually happens is as a result of trading. That is perfectly acceptable.