Clause 23
Climate Change Bill [Lords]
6:49 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 75, in clause 23, page 12, line 15, after ‘dioxide’, insert—
‘( ) methane (CH4),
( ) nitrous oxide (N2O),
( ) hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs),
( ) perfluorocarbons (PFCs),
( ) sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).’.
This is an important amendment and one that is, in its way, just as important on a similar set of principles as the inclusion of aviation and shipping that the Government have already conceded. It has been subject to a substantial campaign outside Parliament from people who are concerned that the plans and policies we adopt in this place are representative of a genuine and comprehensive effort to tackle climate change. It is pretty difficult to see how that can be done by legislating for only one greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide.
Various arguments have been put against the inclusion in the Bill of the other greenhouse gases that make up the Kyoto basket of greenhouse gases. It has been said that carbon dioxide is the most important gas and that, in any case, it represents 85 per cent. of greenhouse gas emissions. That is certainly true. It is obviously important that we focus a large part of our effort on carbon dioxide, but there are other potent greenhouse gases. The short-term impact of methane—CH4—is much more serious than that of carbon dioxide. It captures heat 20 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide, so, in its way, it is a much more potent gas, even though it is present in the atmosphere in a less persistent way.
In the same way in which aviation and shipping should not be allowed to escape the provisions of the Bill, we need to ensure that greenhouse gases such as methane are tackled. Otherwise, we could be in the ludicrous situation in which if the other greenhouse gases that only represent 15 per cent. of emissions now are allowed to proliferate and we make huge efforts to reduce carbon dioxide, the percentage of other greenhouse gases might rise on a much faster scale. We could end up with 20, 30 or 40 per cent. of our emissions coming from those remaining greenhouse gases, if they are allowed to increase.
In Committee in the other place, Lord Rooker argued:
“We have a good understanding of the costs and benefits of reducing CO2 emissions, whereas there is much less understanding about the cost-effective potential of reducing other greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the long-term.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 January 2008; Vol. 697, c. 841.]
In one sense, that is an argument against us participating in the Kyoto protocol, which, of course, demands that we accurately measure and account for the whole basket of greenhouse gas emissions. If we were to include other greenhouse gases in the Bill, it would be a good incentive for developing better measurement systems for the other greenhouse gases. Perhaps we have been lax in developing a better understanding of those other greenhouse gases.
Our understanding is not quite as bad as Lord Rooker suggests. The National Audit Office’s report, “UK greenhouse gas emissions: measurement and reporting”, goes into some detail about the methodology used to look at the whole basket of greenhouse gases. It talks about the intergovernmental panel on climate change guidelines on greenhouse gases, which specify in detail what methodologies to use for calculating emissions, and how trade-offs between precision, accuracy and resources should be approached. The report states that emissions should be estimated
“using a bottom up approach. Using the economic activity data supplied by government departments, trade associations and businesses, AEA and sector specialists the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER) model emissions of all known anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases in the UK within the following five specific source sectors: energy, industrial processes, agriculture, land use, land use change and forestry, waste.”
It goes on to state:
“These broad areas are then broken down into activity types, subtypes, and activities. The emission-producing activities include the combustion of fuels such as coal in power stations, the use of petrol and diesel in road transport, industrial processes such as cement manufacture, agricultural sources such as enteric fermentation in cattle, and sources and sinks of CO2 caused from changes in the way land is used.”
In case hon. Members are in any doubt about the meaning of enteric fermentation, I can tell them, courtesy of Wikipedia, that it means fermentation within the digestive systems of ruminant cattle. I am trying to avoid using any unparliamentary language, but I was interested to discover that most of that fermentation is belched rather than emitted in any other way. Half of Australian methane emissions are created in that way, which has been a serious incentive to the Australian Government to support research into the vaccination of cattle to try to reduce flatulence—[Laughter.] Although that is making hon. Members laugh and smile, that is a serious result of Australia measuring and recognising the seriousness of reducing methane emissions. I understand that other research on that is under way in Japan and Germany.
Finally, there is the possible excuse that the Government are following the recommendation of the joint scrutiny Committee, which was divided over the issue of other greenhouse gases and said:
“Expanding the Bill in this way might therefore jeopardise its coherence and the extent of support which it might command.”
Just in case the Government are inclined to quote that Committee in support of their position, I shall cite some of its other conclusions:
“We agree with the Government on balance that it is reasonable for the Bill to focus on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, and we therefore accept its overall architecture. However, this in no way relieves the Government of its responsibility to continue to reduce other greenhouse gases”.
It is difficult to see how we are going to follow that instruction with no policy tools at our disposal that even look at those other greenhouse gases.
The amendment is, in its way, as important as the measures on reducing aviation and shipping emissions. The logic for the Government’s acceptance that we cannot exclude any large section of the economy from greenhouse gas measurement and reduction policies applies just as much to the other greenhouse gases.