Andrew George MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Andrew George's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 11 Parliamentary debates in which Andrew George has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 22 Jan 2014: Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

  13:00

  I join other hon. Members on both sides of the House who have thanked my hon. Friend and his Committee for the excellent work they have done. In his examination of the type of senior civil servants who are lobbied, did he note the reports of the lobbying on fracking and shale gas of senior officials from the Department of Energy and Climate Change? Apparently, they discussed, over hospitality and via e-mail, lines to take, so that the same solid response came from government—from senior civil servants—and the shale gas companies. That is a perfect example of what he is talking about.

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• 17 Oct 2013: Oral Answers to Questions

  Many people query why that is important. The recently published Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fifth assessment report confirms both the nature and the scale of climate change and human contribution to it. Does my right hon. Friend believe that any Government engaged in evidence-based policy making can afford to ignore these trends? What would be the risks and consequences if we attempted to do so?

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• 11 Jul 2013: Oral Answers to Questions

  14. What steps he is taking to promote investor confidence in renewable energy. ( 164492 )

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  While the Government’s announcement on the strike price is very welcome, there are, as my right hon. Friend knows, many parts of the country that want to take full advantage of the future green energy revolution. Certainly in Cornwall we are very keen to become the green peninsula within the UK. Would he be prepared to come to Cornwall and speak to all aspects of the green energy revolution happening there, because we want to take this energy forward?

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• 17 Apr 2013: Energy Generation

  16:30

  It is a pleasure, Mr Howarth, to perform under your chairmanship for the first time. I understand that the debate in the House is winding down to a possible vote. I am well aware that this debate, which I am delighted to have secured, has attracted a lot of support across all parties. There is tremendous interest in the matter. The Energy Bill will return to the House for debate, and my concern is whether we will have sufficient opportunity to discuss the matter then. This debate is not so much an early skirmish, but an opportunity to ensure that we begin the process of opening a parliamentary dialogue on a matter that is clearly vital as we take forward an excellent Bill, on which I congratulate the Government. It includes some significant stepping stones in setting out a clear agenda for energy generation in this country to achieve energy security. I am sure many hon. Members will want to contribute to this debate on decarbonisation and lowering carbon emissions from this country’s energy sources.

  The debate is timely, today of all days, partly because of last night’s vote in the European Parliament on the European trading scheme. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on whether he believes that that enhances or makes it more difficult to advance the case for a decarbonisation agenda in the UK. I would argue that it makes it even more urgent for the UK to ensure that we press the agenda firmly.

  The debate is also timely because of a matter partly related to the way in which we do business in the House. Yesterday, I was significantly frustrated that we were unable to debate or divide the House on the Government’s proposed abolition, which is shortly to be enacted, of the Agricultural Wages Board. We will have further debates on the Energy Bill and the failure to debate abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board may be an example of how, despite the issue being deeply significant to many hon. Members, including me, we were unable to debate the matter. There was no mechanism by which to divide the House to establish what support exists for that abolition, which was introduced in another place. That worries me, and to ensure that today is not our only opportunity to debate the decarbonisation agenda, will the Minister ensure that when the Energy Bill returns to the House there will be protected time in the Chamber for a proper debate and votes? That is important.

  I congratulate the Government, the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on their significant progress in advancing the case. My intention today is primarily to advance the economic case for green jobs and investment as the fundamental justification and raison d’être for advancing as quickly as possible a decarbonisation agenda in the UK. If we are to corner a growing global market, we must lead the way and ensure that future investment in the manufacture and production of green and decarbonised energy generation. The UK needs to be at the forefront.

  The pinch point in the debate on decarbonisation and the setting of targets is that the industry looks in the long term against a political cycle that, by its very nature, is relatively short term—often five years at the most. I congratulate the Government on rightly looking at this vital agenda decades ahead, but the worry is that the political agenda might drive the basis on which decarbonisation targets are met.

  The aim of a decarbonisation target is laudable, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should not rush forward with increased proposals for the nuclear option, which might be seen to be an easy option in the long term?

  The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. This debate is primarily about the decarbonisation of energy supply; conservation and reducing energy demand is a separate debate. To be fair, the Government have established a strong case through the green deal and the establishment of the green investment bank, which will support many measures to address energy conservation. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, but this debate is about energy generation and supply, and I do not want it to stray too far.

  “that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face”

  “We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies. We will implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.”

  Does the hon. Gentleman share my frustration that it is three years since the coalition came to power, and to drive the agenda forward, we need things such as targets to create the impetus for some of the measures to be put in place and to create a situation where investors have confidence? At the moment, so much is uncertain about the future of Government energy policy. We have the Treasury driving fracking forward, a lack of targets and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change criticising the general thrust of energy policy that is being imposed on him by the Treasury. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that certainty is important and that decarbonisation targets are an essential part of that?

  I am grateful for your guidance on that, Mr Howarth, and I am particularly grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), for his telling intervention. As he rightly said, this is an issue of hard-headed financial decision-making and not one that is driven purely by eco-warriors. This matter is all about ensuring that we have a strong economy, and in terms of the hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be created through the green economy, Britain must lead the world. It has an opportunity now, but that opportunity will not exist for many years, and if we miss it, we may be dragged behind other places. We will be importing their technologies into this country, and the cost to the economy will be very significant. My hon. Friend is engaged in an excellent campaign on that issue, and I congratulate him for his contribution.

  “a decarbonisation target for the electricity sector could increase certainty for investors in large and long term low carbon energy projects like renewables, new nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage. That is why, last year, I worked for and achieved Government agreement to set a 2030 decarbonisation target range”—

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  16:59

  “a target would not be set in isolation but in the context of considering the pathway of the whole economy towards our 2050 target, and making sure we do that in a way that minimises costs both to the economy as a whole and to bill payers.”

  The problem with that is that the bulk of industry interested in energy generation and the bulk of investors interested in the future of the energy generation economy do not take the same view. I, of course, have tremendous respect for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State; he acknowledges that it is Liberal Democrat policy to set a decarbonisation target now, rather than in 2016. That target has to be the result of a compromise, and as in any coalition Government in the world, between two coalition parties, we sometimes do not get the outcome that we desire. That is why a large number of interested companies have written to the Chancellor, rather than the Secretary of State, to move the agenda forward, which indicates the target at which the debate needs to be directed.

  The UK green economy has continued to grow, even while broader economic activity remains relatively subdued. The CBI has demonstrated that more than one third of UK economic growth last year is likely to have come from green businesses. Renewable and low-carbon energy businesses are the segment of the green economy with the most stake in the 2013 decarbonisation target. Cumulatively, they generate more than £98 billion in sales and employ more than 735,000 people—more jobs than the entire UK automotive and telecoms sectors combined.

  Figures from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills demonstrate an average growth rate of 6% each year for that portion of the economy, which equates to some £7 billion of additional sales for UK plc or 6,000 new jobs each year, based on today’s figures. That growth is now placed at risk by a lack of investor certainty and confidence, which a 2030 decarbonisation target would certainly remedy and remove. Setting the target sooner, rather than later, would provide the certainty and confidence that such investors require.

  Although the Energy Bill makes significant advances, for which the Government should be congratulated, the difficult compromise that they have come to needs to be teased out and debated further than we have been able to so far. I do not know how we will do it, but we should have a debate with the Department of Energy and Climate Change that includes the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury. When we debate the Bill in the Commons in the coming weeks, it will be a pity that we will not have the opportunity for a full debate with all the Departments on which it will have an impact. I hope the Minister will address my earlier question on the impact of last night’s vote.

  That is vital. I welcome that the Government are supporting the wave hub. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is clearly taking a significant role in the future management of the project, which has been handed on from the South West of England Regional Development Agency. It is difficult to scale up to a commercial level from the prototype machines at the demonstration project in Orkney. The Government need to provide the wave hub project with more certainty and address some of the long-term investment issues, some of which feed and bleed into the decarbonisation agenda. I hope that the Minister will visit the wave hub, talk to those involved and address the funding gap, which still exists, to bring the wave devices on to the site.

  How does my hon. Friend respond to the statements that, in the 2050 target, the UK has the toughest legally binding emission reduction target in the world and that no other nation on the planet has a 2030 decarbonisation target?

  The UK is setting the standard for the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will move in that direction in due course. It is important that there is cross-party agreement that we want to be the greenest Government ever, which is I think part of the coalition agreement that my hon. Friend signed up to. We also want to ensure that the decarbonisation targets that we set will put the UK economy at the forefront of green jobs and investment.

  I am afraid that I will not give way, because I am coming to a close. The primary issue is that when the Energy Bill returns to the Floor of the House, I hope that the Minister will give us an opportunity to reflect properly on the economic case for the early setting of a decarbonisation target.

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• 28 Jun 2012: Green Economy

  15:27

  So far, speakers have not much reflected on why it is necessary for us to pursue a low-carbon future—apart, that is, from the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who is no longer in his place—and have accepted that policy as a given. As a responsible and significant country that wishes to lead the way internationally—for example, at the recent Rio+20 summit —we should be setting the standards in responding to the challenges facing the globe. The recent Stern report set out the significant impact that rapid climate change will have on people and their lifestyles around the globe, and on the world’s economy, including this country’s economy, if we fail properly to get on top of the problem.

  I am glad that that is now seen as the relatively unarguable fact of the matter. Although there are some who advance the case—I will not say that it is a respectable case, but I respect the fact that they argue it—of the climate change deniers, who are the modern equivalent of the flat earth society, on a relatively un-peer reviewed and un-scientific basis, it is good that this Government, the previous Government and Members of this House generally take a reasonable approach to the challenges that we face.

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• 13 Jun 2012: Sustainable Communities

  14:30

  It is worth moving away from the conceptual to the practical and to look at ways the 2007 Act can enable local communities to introduce initiatives. I thought to list the kinds of scheme that I hope local communities will feel encouraged to propose for their areas. It is not a restrictive list, but simply a stimulus for other people’s creativity. It includes proposals to require full planning permission before any facility, such as a shop or a pub, is demolished; empower licensing authorities to decide and to set a cap on the number of bookmakers premises, for example, that are allowed to open up in a particular neighbourhood, town or local parade; introduce automatic statutory allotment status for appropriate sites after an agreed period, which, because of the difficulties of managing the limitation on allotments, should apply to both local authority and privately owned sites; create a mechanism, either through legislation or a framework, that legally binds energy suppliers and generators to partner local authorities, or other local partners, to accelerate community-wide renewable energy programmes; establish local appeal boards to determine planning appeals on minor applications; and place a tax on the purchase of plastic bags by retailers to reduce local waste and improve the community’s environment.

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• 8 Mar 2012: Oral Answers to Questions

  May I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing his new position? He said that wind is the most efficient form of renewable energy, but what will the Government do to ensure that communities benefit from new wind energy projects?

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• 26 Oct 2011: Environmental Protection and Green Growth

  18:07

  I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) on her contribution. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on securing this debate, but this subject does not lend itself to the kind of partisan debate that she was hoping for. Frankly, what we should be doing in this Chamber is forming a cross-party alliance of those who agree with this agenda. There are philistines on both sides of the House who do not agree with it—the climate change deniers and those who believe that environmental policies get in the way of economic development. There are also people on both sides of the Chamber who want to engage in a more consensual debate.

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• 19 Oct 2011: Energy Prices

  17:42

  In debates such as this we always hear from the climate change deniers—the environmental equivalent of deficit deniers. The balance of opinion in peer-reviewed science is clear, however: if we do not address this issue, there will be significant economic costs and impacts for future generations. We must deal with it; we cannot simply close our eyes.

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• 7 Jul 2011: Oral Answers to Questions

  T2. As Ministers will know, Cornwall has ambitions to become the green peninsula in the UK through renewable energy and therefore warmly welcomes the Government’s proposed marine energy park. What progress has been made on that, what timetable has been set and will Ministers ensure that the park provides the vital stimulus so that the wave hub can get going off the north coast of my constituency? ( 64290 )

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• 16 Dec 2010: Oral Answers to Questions

  Now that the wave hub plug is in place off the north coast of my constituency—a very exciting project that scales up for the first time wave energy—what will the Minister do to ensure that it is a great success? In Scotland, ROCs provide a far better return for projects. Will he work with me to ensure that this project is a great success and adds to renewable energy?

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate