Climate Change: Carbon Budgets

My Lords, in the first progress report of the Committee on Climate Change, one sentence on page 31 says it all: ""Whilst emissions currently appear to be falling as a result of the economic recession, this will be largely reversed when the economy returns to growth"." So not much progress so far. This, incidentally, gives lie to the claim made by the EU Environment Commissioner, reported in the 27 November issue of Resource Management & Recovery, that emissions in the 15 oldest European Union member states had fallen by 4.3 per cent from 1990 levels by 2007. He made the misleading boast: ""These projections further cement the EU’s leadership in delivering on our international commitments to combat climate change"." No doubt one could find similar empty claims made by national Ministers. So all of our recent achievements, such as they are, have been derived not from our own efforts, strenuous and expensive though those have been, but as the result of an economic recession that none of us would have wished to happen—none of us, that is, except, conceivably, those diehard environmentalists and others who would prefer not to see economic growth and prosperity as priorities of policy . The question is: will the future tell a different story? I shall confine my remarks to electricity generation, which accounts for the largest single demand for primary energy, ahead of transport, and is the primary energy-using sector with the highest CO2 emissions at about one-third of the total, ahead of both industry and transport. A recently published report by the leading engineering consultancy Parsons Brinckerhoff, entitled Powering the Future, forecasts that the United Kingdom generating capacity existing today will fall to a half of its present level by 2023 and will have disappeared almost entirely, with the sole exception of Scottish hydroelectric power, by 2040. So virtually our entire electricity-generating capacity will have to be replaced in the next 30 years. It will mean that new plant will have to be built at a rate at least equal to the highest historical rate achieved in this country and at a time when our own power plant industry is greatly reduced. At the same time, the demand for electricity will surely rise, with, as the report before us shows, population expected to increase by 9 million by 2022, 3 million new houses likely to be built by 2020, road vehicle emissions expected to continue rising as they have in the past and demand for electricity itself having shown in the years leading up to the recession a secular increase of just over 1.5 per cent a year—and all that before the appearance of the electric car, for which the climate change committee also calls loudly. Against this background of demand for new plant on an unheard-of scale for replacement of our existing power stations, and the likelihood of a substantial increase in the demand for electricity, unless it is stifled by the effect of environmental taxes, how does the committee propose the gap be filled? It proposes three essentially carbon-free means: nuclear power, carbon capture and storage and wind power. The trouble with nuclear is that even the committee cannot see more than two new nuclear power stations coming on stream before 2020, by which time it would have liked us to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 per cent. According to the table on page 146 of the report, the contribution of nuclear power will be less in the third budget period than it is in the first. The problem with carbon capture and storage is that the committee and the Government are calling to their aid an unproven technology. It looks likely to be extremely expensive, requiring twice the amount of fuel perhaps to produce the same quantity of electricity. And if it comes at all, it will come too late, at any rate to help meet the targets. As the report sets out, there are still demonstration plants due to be built by 2016, and the first new full CCS plant is not due to appear until 2022. It is no wonder, therefore, that the report is obliged to conclude on page 76: ""Investment in wind generation is key to necessary decarbonisation of the power sector in the period to 2020 and beyond"," adding on page 112, ""because it is the only low-carbon technology that is ready for deployment now"." So the immense reduction in CO2 emissions that the committee is looking forward to—40 per cent by 2020; even more than 50 per cent at one moment, as stated on page 93; 60 per cent by the third budget—is so far as electricity generation is concerned all to depend on wind power. At what cost will that be and how realistic are those expectations? In the first place, wind can deliver only very modest amounts of electricity. Even Denmark and Germany, two countries renowned for their achievements in this field, get only 7 per cent of their annual electricity consumption from wind. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was right to say that Germany has gone ahead of this country: it has almost 10 times the number of turbines as us. But do we wish to follow it? In this country, wind power is paid for by enormous subsidies, mostly indirectly from the consumer, to the tune of more £1 billion per annum today and likely to rise at least fourfold if the Government’s targets are ever to be met, pushing electricity bills through the roof. There is not much on that subject in the report. Wind power is far into, but has by no means finished, the process of industrialising much of our finest countryside, which has been a magnet for visitors from all over the world and inspiration for some of our most famous artists. Here, I declare an interest in that I continue to oppose wind farm applications made close to where I live in the north-west of England. Wind farms drag in their wake new transmission lines, bringing electricity from remote areas to where it is required at the other end of the country. Incidentally, these new transmission lines are in themselves inefficient, because they have to be capable of operating at a level of capacity which they are only occasionally required to reach. Offshore wind is little better. It costs at least twice as much as onshore wind, takes twice as long to install and brings with it immense maintenance issues. It must be most doubtful whether the Government’s offshore wind targets are achievable. As the report points out on page 117, the United Kingdom will need to access no fewer than 10 additional installation vessels, which cost between £50 million and £150 million each, have a three-year procurement period and of which we currently have only two. Even if we had the vessels, the rate of wind farm construction that would be required has never been achieved anywhere else in the world. Wind farms also eat up capital that should be spent on more appropriate efforts to resolve our looming energy crisis. In this regard, the chief executive of Ofgem had some ominous words for MPs last week when he told them that the major energy companies now had serious capital constraints and that the United Kingdom was in danger of losing its position as a prime place for energy investment. We do not live in a world in which we can afford to waste vast sums on the wrong priorities. Aside from the expense and inefficiency of wind power, what about its justification in the climate committee’s eyes: its supposed capability for reducing CO2 emissions? Is it effective in that regard? It must always be borne in mind that the existence of wind power, however big the so-called wind estate, does not result in the closure of a single fossil-fuelled power station. On the contrary, conventional power stations on their own must always be able to meet peak demand, for there are moments, often coinciding with extreme temperatures, when no wind is available, often across the country and even across Europe. Moreover, these changes occur abruptly and flexible forms of conventional generation must be ready to step in. Present nuclear plants are no good for that purpose as they can take 48 hours to warm up. That is one reason why far more gas-fired power stations than any other sort are now being built. These power stations are kept in a state of so-called spinning reserve and are constantly being ramped up and down, which of course produces additional CO2 emissions. Moreover, why is it right to ignore the CO2 emissions produced in the manufacture, erection and maintenance of wind farms and their attendant transmission lines, considering that they are all entirely surplus to electricity-generating requirements? There is another factor. To the extent that the conventional power supply sees its CO2 emissions reduced by a move to nuclear power and, in theory, eventually to coal with carbon capture, wind power’s carbon emission savings are reduced because they are calculated by reference to the CO2 emissions from the other forms of generation for which wind is a substitution. The Government have already conceded that wind farms save less than half the CO2 that they did a few years ago while gas has replaced coal. If the committee was to attain its eventual objectives for nuclear power and coal, wind power would cease to produce any CO2 savings. So even if wind power produces on balance some CO2 savings today—and even that is doubtful—one day it will produce none at all. Yet we will still have the wind farms, a blot on the landscape and a reminder of our past follies. This report stands fully behind, indeed it shares a responsibility for, the Government’s commitment to spend staggering and ever-rising amounts of money—the agreed total at the moment seems to be something in the order of £200 billion by 2020—not in an attempt to ward off an energy crisis, nor to help this country achieve greater economic competitiveness, nor to try to uphold the standards of living of the people of this country, but to pursue a policy which has a negative impact on all those imperatives and to do so at a time of the utmost financial stringency and economic vulnerability. I cannot conceive of anything less in the interests of this country, the West or, indeed, developing countries. One of the Miliband brothers called my noble friend Lord Lawson—who, with Christopher Booker, leads the climate change sceptics in this country—"profoundly irresponsible". I very much doubt whether that will be the verdict of history.