Climate Change

It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who made a passionate and well-informed speech about the need for the Government to do more about HFCs. I entirely agree with him, and he has cross-party support for his call for greater action and urgency than we have seen from the Government to date. I intend to speak about China, Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment—GLOBE International—and climate change. In the context of climate change, China is often portrayed as a large, irresponsible polluter, as a country that will not come to the table, and, along with the United States, as the chief barrier to international progress on action on climate change. The question that logically follows that portrayal is, "If China—coupled with the United States—is unprepared to take real action, why should we, a country whose emissions amount to only 2 per cent. of the global total, need to take action ourselves?" My engagement with Chinese legislators through GLOBE, an international cross-party group of parliamentarians from the major economies, has revealed that that perception of China is far from the truth. If anything, it is we who are in danger of being left behind in the race towards a more prosperous low-carbon future and the new jobs and industries that it will bring, to which many hon. Members referred. Using some indicators, one could be forgiven for thinking that China is the developed country and the United Kingdom the developing country when it comes to tackling climate change. The Minister may smile. For many years she campaigned for greater action from the Government, and she now finds herself in the unenviable position of having to defend the indefensible from the Front Bench. However, I know that she and her colleagues —including, I hope and believe, the new Secretary of State—are bringing greater urgency to the necessity for Britain to take action at home as well as talking so ably abroad. Let us look at the figures relating to renewable energy. In 2007, 8.5 per cent. of the total consumption of primary energy in China came from renewable sources. In the United States the figure was 7 per cent., and in the United Kingdom it was just 2 per cent. The figures for electricity production make similar reading: 15 per cent. in China, 8.5 per cent. in the United States, and just 4.9 per cent. in the United Kingdom. The source of those figures is the Department itself. For a country with some of the best renewable resources in Europe, including wind, tidal and wave, the United Kingdom's progress—to put it kindly—looks weak. Let us now look at the amount invested in green technologies as part of the economic stimulus packages, which offer a real opportunity to ensure not only that money flows in the economy but that we prepare for a low-carbon future. In China, the figure devoted to green technologies, including clean energy, low-carbon infrastructure such as smart grids—who would have thought that China, a developing country, might be making more progress than us on smart grids?—electric vehicles, public transport networks and the like was 34 per cent. In the United States, it was 12 per cent. Those are the figures for the two "laggards", but the figure for the United Kingdom was just 7 per cent. That is not exactly something of which we can be proud.