Dave Doogan MP: Climate Timeline

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Dave Doogan's Climate-related Tweets, Speeches & Votes

We've found the following climate-related tweets, speeches & votes by Dave Doogan in the last 90 days

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• 27 Nov 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  Thereafter, though, we get into serious difficulty. I will start with the Bill’s clauses 15 to 18, a further and final attack on North sea oil and gas, Scotland’s natural endowment. The UK has drawn hundreds of billions of pounds from the North sea over the course of my lifetime, the past 50 years. It is almost as though the UK is addicted to it—so much so that it is going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The Government are hiking taxes, eroding allowances and driving investment from the North sea, including precisely the businesses that we need to drive the just transition to net zero in the places where we need them. What other state would attack one of its own industries in this way? It beggars belief. It will come home to roost in spades, and it will not shift the dial one bit towards the net zero future that we are trying to get to. The oil and gas that is being displaced from the Scottish sector by this Government’s ineptitude will be replaced by oil and gas from other jurisdictions, where the tax will be paid and where, doubtless, human rights are very much worse.

  Full debate: Finance Bill

• 29 Oct 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  The Liberal Democrats have a well-worded and noble ambition on community energy, and the SNP would have been pleased to support it. One of the things missing from GB Energy is a statutory responsibility to develop and accelerate community energy at pace in a measured fashion. Referring back to my opening remarks, I am supportive of the Bill’s outline ambitions, but I am worried about the lack of detail. The more we discuss and debate the Bill, the more I am concerned that GB Energy will end up doing lots of things that nobody particularly needed it to do, because they were all done by a department within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

  He can indeed. The hon. Member may think he is being terribly smart—he is a self-professed expert in the energy market—but he will know how difficult it is for someone to penetrate the UK energy market unless they happen to be a large plc or a multinational. When the Scottish Government took forward that noble ambition, they found precisely the same barriers to entry as community energy companies and trusts. If the hon. Member wants to get excited about that situation, I suggest he takes it up with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

  Cornwall, where I am from, is set to benefit hugely from the investment from GB Energy into unblocking floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea, which will create jobs. Cornwall was post-industrial a long time ago, and we need the kind of investment that GB Energy can bring. We also have a strong local area energy plan, which is an integral part of Cornwall’s renewable energy offer. It has co-operative, community and local authority energy as part of that plan, and as a Co-operative MP I support the local power plan that the Government are proposing, which will be part of GB Energy. We could have partnerships for deep geothermal energy on council land, which would bring potential for partnerships with local authorities and others. In Cornwall we have had numerous community energy schemes, such as the one in Ladock at the end of last Labour Government, before the Conservatives cut the schemes and the feed-in tariffs. We could invest in infrastructure with GB Energy, in partnership with the Crown Estate, for the cables, the grid and, potentially, even the ports.

  The Bill offers a huge opportunity. There is so much that GB Energy can do in future as part of a developing strategy to secure clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as it says in the Bill. As its ambitions and horizons expand, in partnership with the Crown Estate and others, so too must its object and its strategy be able to expand.

  I rise to support amendments 6 and 8. The Bill was promised in order to do a number of things. First, it was to reduce the cost of energy to consumers—during the election, the Government gave a specific promise that the reduction this year would be £300 per household. As others have said, and as the Government have accepted, that will not be delivered. That is not a great start. Secondly, it was going to deliver a certain number of jobs. Thirdly, it was going to deliver sustainable and clean energy, and energy security. The Government could argue that these things are in the Bill’s strategic objectives and priorities, but they are not. I do not believe that any of those things can be achieved, given the net zero strategy that we are pursuing.

  Full debate: Great British Energy Bill

• 5 Sep 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  The Government must accept that the messaging around GB Energy was muddled at the very least during the election. It was almost as though it was rushed through as a manifesto headline, rather than resulting from the strategic development of careful, thought-out, optimised planning, but there we are. We understand that there will be limited co-production from the company, no retail arm and no public sector comparator role. It will be a provider that does not do much provision and a decider that does not make any decisions. Talk about net zero—there is zero detail in the Bill to give us an indication of what will actually happen on the ground. It was going to sell energy to the public, and then it was not. It was going to generate energy. Then it was not, and now it will again. I think we are still in that space.

  On a substantive note about the lack of detail in the Bill, it is a great pity that the Government want us to believe that clean energy means energy produced from sources other than fossil fuels. It is hard to imagine a more one-dimensional analysis and qualification than that. It is narrow and incoherent, and out of step with the science and the public. It does not really matter where or what carbon is locked into. If you burn it to release carbon dioxide in the process of making energy, then you are a carbon emitter contributing to the climate crisis. It is as simple as that. We should not be hostage to a technology where hundreds of millions of pounds in Government subsidies are used to create millions of tonnes of CO2 a year.

  I hesitate to thank the right hon. Member for his intervention— [ Laughter. ] I will need to fact check his 13 million figure—I will get back to him on that. But let us be really clear—I will touch on onshore wind in a minute—that once those trees are burned in a former coal-fired power station, the only products are CO2 and electricity, but where trees have been cleared to create onshore wind in Scotland, there is a lifetime of renewable, clean cheap energy coming out the other side, so it is a false comparator if ever I saw one. Do the Government believe that waste to energy is also clean energy? That does not seem to be what GB Energy should pursue, and I am not certain there is much support for that in the country.

  Community energy is essential to how we make our journey to net zero, but like much else there is scant detail on that. If the Government had properly consulted the community energy sector—they can probably still do that—they would know that access to consumers is one of the principal drawbacks to developing these schemes. It is disappointing that no lateral thinking is being applied on how to connect the will to create community energy with the market. Ofgem has created an environment where one can deliver an extraordinary example of community electricity generation, but trying to connect with consumers is almost impossible. GB Energy, if it is nothing else—and it does appear to be not much else—could have been part of the gig economy. It could have been the Uber of retail energy. We could have bought community energy and passed it on to the consumer base, but that is not going to happen.

  Full debate: Great British Energy Bill