Climate Change

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, on securing this important debate. The Government have much to be proud of in their record on climate change. They have pushed forward the agenda at Kyoto. They have enforced the climate change levy. This Government enacted the Climate Change Bill. That said, the debate is too important to give into partisan instincts. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is quite right to focus on what really matters: the practical changes we all need to make to reduce emissions. I do not propose to go over the details of the targets set in the excellent report of the Committee on Climate Change. Whether we focus on the 34 per cent reduction in emissions that it proposed for 2020 or the 42 per cent that it suggested if we reach agreement in Copenhagen, both will require enormous changes in every aspect of our lives. That means we must address both local social changes and global challenges. Individuals and nations often put off doing what is right for the planet because of fears over cost, economic consequences or impracticality. People want to protect the planet, but they also wish to live within their current means. Those in power should understand the pressures people face and try to help them to take environmentally friendly decisions. One way to square the circle is to develop superior technological solutions to global environmental challenges. There are two stages to doing this. First, there are incremental steps to lowering energy consumption. We can develop and deploy photonics and plastic electronics that will deliver high-quality, low-energy lighting. Lighting causes as much as 20 per cent of UK emissions, so this would help consumers to change their impact on the environment. Such steps might also involve finding better alternatives to plastic bags and the more energy-efficient use of public transport during the school run. These technological and social changes will have a minor impact individually but will make major differences as they accumulate. Next, major step changes in the way in which our society works, such as modal shifts in transport, have an impact not only on individuals but on the way in which we all live. On these, we need to take a cradle-to-grave approach to emissions reduction. For example, implementing electric cars requires a major network of power supply stations. Yet if our energy transmission and production systems are not green, reducing tailpipe emissions by burning ever more coal and gas is unsustainable. We might well be better investing our resources in lightweight materials, tyre technology and driver assistance systems, especially if other countries cannot plug cars into a national grid without building dozens of new power stations. After all, we need to develop low-emission technologies that are applicable globally if we are to drive social change worldwide, not just at home. The International Energy Agency says that we will see a growth in global CO2 emissions from 27 gigatonnes in 2005 to 42 gigatonnes by 2030. India and China will account for almost half of that emissions growth. Why are their emissions rising so fast? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that 6 per cent of global emissions, or 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2, were caused by goods exported from China. That is a third of China’s total emissions. As one of the biggest consumers of those exports, we must recognise that our relentless hunger for low-cost, high-tech goods creates emissions elsewhere in the global economy, and we must take steps to address the emissions that are created by our demand. That is the issue lurking in the sustainably sourced woodpile, if the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, will forgive the pun. To reduce emissions, we must make individual, society-wide and global changes at the same time. To take one example, we know that western businesses and drivers cause the greater part of car emissions, so we need stricter regulations to reduce tailpipe emissions. We saw just this week the agenda that President Obama and Governor Schwarzenegger have set up to help to reduce car emissions; but we cannot leave it at that, welcome though such regulations are. We must also help to change the behaviour of individual members of our society. A driver employing a low-carbon driving style can save up to 40 per cent of their fuel consumption, according to Japanese research that builds on work done by our own Institution of Mechanical Engineers just across the road. That kind of saving will happen only if thousands of drivers are trained to have a low-carbon driving style and if we develop technology—such as stop-start ignition systems, which are already there—that makes it simple for everyone to drive with lower emissions. Yet even this will not be enough. The scale of the green challenge cannot be confined to one individual or one society alone. We know that many of the component manufacturers that supply parts for our cars are located in other countries, so the emissions from component production are kept there. We also know that as the population of developing countries becomes wealthier, there will be increased demand for vehicles, just as we have seen in Britain in the past 60 years. Component and car manufacturers around the world must develop sustainable technologies if we are to reduce global emissions. Today, those businesses are looking for our help. We must offer it or be left behind when others do. If we work with suppliers, manufacturers, technologists and researchers around the world, we stand a better chance of making the changes that we need at home and helping emerging markets to cut their own emissions. This will help our global partners to make changes in their society as we improve our own. It will make reducing emissions far more co-operative and far more profitable for us. We cannot know for certain the most effective path to reduce emissions. We do know that, whatever happens, the research and work that is being done around the world will find ways to reduce emissions. In transport, this could be through battery technology, hybrids, driver education, tyre technology or lightweight materials; it might well be all of these together. However, if Britain is to contribute significantly to this global environmental challenge, we must help individuals to change their behaviour, research to develop new technologies, and co-operate on a global level to reduce emissions. This effort must reach every corner of our society. There are two societal changes we must make if we are to help deliver a lower emissions world. The first change is to take responsibility for changing our own behaviour step by step, process by process, and technology by technology. The second is to invest in global, low-emissions technology, both for ourselves and for those around the world who have a shared interest in a greener global society.