Climate Change

Yes, indeed. It is easy to think, "What harm will one more garage or one more patio do?" but we need to be aware of the effects that we have collectively when we do these things. We must look for ways to mitigate those effects and try to reduce the amount of surface water that we contribute. On the low-carbon economy, we all realise how important it is that we get ahead of the game and ensure that we develop low-carbon industries, instead of ending up importing things that could have been designed, developed and manufactured in this country. We must give clear signals to manufacturers about what we want. That was certainly the evidence put to us in the Committee on the draft Climate Change Bill, where manufacturers said, "You tell us the parameters, you tell us what you want, and we will deliver." We have to say what we want and set strict objectives, whether on emissions, fuel efficiency or producing electric cars, and manufacturers will respond. On renewable energy, too, we cannot just leave things to market forces. We have to take a very proactive approach, and in particular not limit it to the easy-to-develop types of technology. We need to spend a lot more time encouraging and giving financial incentives to develop some of the more difficult renewables, such as the use of marine current turbines under the sea or other methods of harnessing water energy. We have tended to see things simply in terms of wind or solar and have not developed water, of which we have a huge resource in this country. The beginnings of the industrial revolution came from water mills. We must look carefully at what we could do in harnessing a lot more of what we might call mini-hydro on many of our rivers. Some very small mini-hydro projects run into trouble because of various rules on water extraction. The Environment Agency tells people that they cannot do this or that, but it is important that we consider what can be done to enable people to develop mini-hydro projects, perhaps by increasing water capacity so that they are not seen as destroying the environment. Essentially, all they do is take water out and then put it back; the difficulty is the level that it goes down to when it is taken out. I am sure that more help could be given to people to overcome such small, technical problems. Once the resource is established and the system is in place, it can run for ever. We must ensure that we give full encouragement to a full range of renewables, but we also need to decide how many of each facility we want. One problem with our planning system is that there can be applications all over the country, but people have not added up the sum total of what they will lead to. One example is biomass plants: many people are racing for them, but I ask whether we have enough biomass to fuel a large number of plants. If it is simply a matter of sweeping up sawdust and using the rough materials that we can provide in this country, that is one thing. However, if we are not careful, we will end up competing for precious forest products from across the world, which makes no sense at all, given the problem of deforestation. Sadly, people are not as honest about sustainability and replanting when they are anxiously trying to get a biomass plant so that they can access the funding that is available for renewables obligation certificates. We need to examine the overall strategy for the whole country and ask whether we are getting the numbers right on the availability of biomass. In an ideal world, perhaps we would like to give up using fossil fuels, but we have to be honest and say that currently 70 per cent. of our electricity comes from such sources, whether coal or gas. It is not realistic to want to throw fossil fuels out of the window just like that. We need to develop clean coal and carbon capture technology, because if we are to rely on coal for some considerable time to come, it makes sense to use our indigenous coal as cleanly as we can and put carbon capture measures in place. It is absolute madness to import coal or use enormous quantities of vegetation when we have a compact form of fuel in our coal. We need to consider what to do to encourage deep mining, now that Tower colliery in south Wales and others have closed. That requires more investment, or we will be left with a simple situation in which people go for open-cast mining, with its unpleasant environmental impact on local communities. I wish my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State all the best in securing a strong agreement at Copenhagen. I look forward to supporting him in driving forward a strong agenda for tackling climate change, and particularly developing renewable energies and providing further investment in public transport.