Roz Savage MP: Climate Timeline

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Roz Savage's Climate-related Tweets, Speeches & Votes

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

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• 28 Jan 2025: Parliamentary Speech

  As many hon. Members know, I have dedicated much of my life to raising awareness about our ecological and climate crises. I have met people who are set to lose their entire countries to rising seas. Let me be clear: nobody can doubt my commitment to strong action on climate change. However, there are many ways to skin the climate cat, and I do not believe that solar parks on the scale of Cottam, Cleve Hill, Longfield, Mallard Pass, Gate Burton, Sunnica and the proposed Lime Down, in my own constituency of South Cotswolds, are the best way forward.

  Like my hon. Friend, I am very keen on renewable energy. I am a Liberal Democrat, for heaven’s sake! However, I am also a pragmatist. In Washford, in my constituency, a massive solar farm is being built on particularly good agricultural land. Would my hon. Friend agree that we must be practical and put solar panels on commercial buildings and residential houses, rather than on farmland?

  I absolutely agree with the hon. Member’s points. I am not against solar energy—far from it—but we need to be smart about how we implement it and all the associated infrastructure. Why not require all new homes to be fitted with solar panels, as proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) in his sunshine Bill? Why not use the vast roof spaces of warehouses, public buildings and car parks? These are sensible, minimally intrusive ways to contribute to our net zero goals.

  I will confess that before being elected to this place, I spent 10 years in renewable energy finance. It is a common claim from certain activists and newspapers that we should put solar on commercial buildings. I do not disagree with that. The problem is the economics of it do not stand up from a finance perspective. Until the Government step in to guarantee a minimum amount of value for export, rooftop solar will never stack up. Neither will carport solar. That is why investors will always go for utility-scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we actually want to see a catalyst, if we want to see a change, if we want to see farmers growing crops and not solar panels, the Government need to step in and regulate the market?

  Full debate: Solar Farms: Agricultural Land

• 24 Jan 2025: Parliamentary Speech

  The Bill would create a joined-up strategy for the UK to tackle the interconnected climate and nature crises together. It is the only proposed or actual piece of legislation to create the link between the UK’s responses to climate change and nature loss. We cannot solve one without tackling the other. We risk making each crisis worse if they are tackled in silos, so the Bill supports a whole-of-Government approach to prevent the issues becoming siloed. Everything in nature is connected with everything else in nature, but sadly not everything in Government is connected with everything else in Government, but it needs to be. Housing, transport and even health are inter-related with climate and nature, so we need a strategy that transcends departmental boundaries.

  The CAN Bill would enshrine international commitments made by the UK into national legislation to cut emissions and to restore nature by 2030, as outlined in the global biodiversity framework. The Bill would bring the UK public along with that agenda via a climate and nature assembly, which is key to ensuring that all voices from across our country are heard, enabling workers to transition to low-carbon jobs and ensuring vulnerable communities are protected. It provides for a fair and just transition that does not come at the expense of the rest of the world. For centuries Britian prospered by exploiting resources overseas: animal, vegetable, mineral and human. The Bill requires the accounting for our environmental footprint to be honest, taking into account the carbon emissions and impacts on nature that are incurred overseas in producing the goods and services that we enjoy. It is disingenuous to offshore most of our manufacturing, and then congratulate ourselves for having reduced our environmental impact.

  The key stewards of our landscape for hundreds of years have been our farmers: no one has done more to make our countryside as beautiful as it is or has a bigger stake in protecting its health for the future. Does my hon. Friend agree that the path to net zero and sustainable local food production lies through our farming community, with the support provided by the Bill? If we are to get the best from our farmers, it is time to use rather more carrots and fewer sticks.

  I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Reports by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that nature-friendly farming schemes can be a major pathway for first halting, and then reversing, the decline in species abundance, as well as delivering the majority of habitat creation needed to meet the UK Government’s nature and climate targets.

  I shall move on briefly to the climate. While two sectors in climate—power and greenhouse gas removals—are on course to meet or even exceed the required emissions reductions, significant challenges remain in agriculture and land use, transport, and heat and building.

  Transport has the biggest gap of all sectors between confirmed policy and the emissions reductions needed. We need to improve public transport, reduce bus fares, increase provision for walking and cycling, and decarbonise the freight sector.

  Much more needs to be done on buildings and clean heat, too. In the Budget, the Chancellor pledged an initial £3.4 billion towards household energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation, but the current warm homes plan falls short of the pace and scale needed. A strong future homes standard needs to be introduced this year, mandating technologies such as solar photovoltaic, as per the New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill—the sunshine Bill—introduced by my Gloucestershire neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson).

  I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman that the right thing to do is to be much more intelligent in our use of water, which will reduce the demand for clean water and reduce run-off from rainfall, which is becoming increasingly heavy as climate change kicks in.

  Thirdly, on my journeys I saw the human face of climate change. When I stopped at the Republic of Kiribati on my way across the Pacific, I had a lengthy conversation with the President. With only one point of land more than 6 feet above sea level, his island nation faces existential risk. Later that year, I saw him at COP15 in Copenhagen, just as the talks had fallen apart. Fifteen years later, we are still not on track to save the Republic of Kiribati. How would we feel if our island nation—where we were born, where we had grown up and where our ancestors were buried—was about to disappear beneath the waves?

  Full debate: Climate and Nature Bill

• 17 Jan 2025: Parliamentary Speech

  There are good ways and less good ways to meet our international commitments on carbon emissions and climate change. A less good way, as has already been mentioned by many hon. Members, is to cover large tracts of our countryside in solar panels without the agreement or co-operation of local communities.

  We need to meet our environmental goals in collaboration with people, not in opposition to them. My Climate and Nature Bill, which I will introduce next week, emphasises the need for public engagement on our journey to net zero. That journey will not be easy and will only be made more difficult if people feel that net zero is something that is being imposed on them, by corporate interests or Government, without respect for the wishes of nearby residents. Where ground-mounted solar may be necessary, let us make it small scale and community led.

  Generating energy at the source reduces the strain on the national grid, improves overall energy resilience and reduces the need for long, wasteful grid connections or ranks of electricity pylons marching across our countryside. Retrofitting solar panels to houses is costly and disruptive; it is so much more efficient and effective to install solar at the time of building. In Europe, they get this. The EU solar standard requires solar panels on new and existing public, commercial and residential buildings. The EU’s goal is to increase the use of renewable energy and reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels, and it is working.

  Full debate: New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill