My Lords, I beg to move that this House agrees with the House of Commons in its Amendment 20, as well as with Amendments 32 and 38. I shall also speak to the subsequent Amendments 20B and 20C, which the Government have tabled in this group. I restate this Government’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. To meet our challenging climate targets we will need significant quantities of renewables, nuclear and gas in our energy mix, and we are committed to listening to the experts and their advice on how to reach those targets. The Committee on Climate Change said that for flexible power supply, the UK will,
“continue to use considerable, albeit declining, amounts of gas well into the 2030s”,
which will leave,
“a considerable gap between production of North Sea gas and our total demand”.
The committee argues that this demand,
“can either be met through imports or UK production of shale gas”,
and concludes that,
“if anything using well-regulated UK shale gas to fill this gap could lead to lower overall lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than continuing to import LNG. It would also increase the proportion of energy produced within the UK, improving our energy sovereignty”.
Notwithstanding this, concerns have been raised in both this House and the other place about how the UK’s shale industry will affect our carbon budgets. We therefore tabled amendments in the other place that
will place a duty on the Secretary of State to seek advice from the Committee on Climate Change as to the impact of petroleum produced onshore in England and Wales on our ability to meet the UK’s overall climate change objectives over time. The Secretary of State must consider the advice of the Committee on Climate Change and report on his conclusions at least every five years.
The Government now seek to further strengthen this commitment by specifying that if the Committee on Climate Change advises that shale gas may adversely impact climate change objectives, the Secretary of State must either make regulations providing that the right of use for petroleum and deep geothermal exploitation will no longer be available for future projects or report to Parliament on the reasons for not doing so. Amendment 20B and the consequential Amendment 20C seek to address this commitment. By introducing these amendments we are making it absolutely clear that shale development will remain compatible with our goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions.