Wera Hobhouse MP: Climate Timeline

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Wera Hobhouse's Climate-related Tweets, Speeches & Votes

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

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• 11 Feb 2025: Parliamentary Speech

  Those rises will heap considerable pressure on millions of people who are still feeling the pressures of inflation over the past few years. That is simply unacceptable, and it is a crisis that we cannot ignore. The effects of high energy costs extend far beyond the immediate financial burden; the cost of electricity in the UK is also holding back our efforts to decarbonise the economy and to address the climate crisis, and we must not shy away from that debate.

  At present, UK households pay roughly the same for both gas and electricity bills—around £850—despite using more than four times more gas than electricity, making electricity in the UK four times more expensive than gas. That price imbalance is not only creating financial hardship for consumers, but actively deterring them from making the switch to cleaner, more efficient heating systems. The UK currently relies on 25 million fossil fuel boilers to heat its homes, accounting for 16% of the nation’s entire CO 2 emissions. Decarbonising our heating sector is a significant opportunity for the UK to cut down on carbon emissions.

  The disparity in energy prices between gas and electricity is not just a domestic issue; it is part of a broader trend in which the UK is falling behind other nations in the transition to low-carbon heating. In the first half of 2024, gas prices in the UK were 22% below, while electricity prices were 27% above, the EU average. In fact, the UK had the highest ratio of electricity to gas unit prices in the entire EU at that time. That pricing imbalance places the UK at a competitive disadvantage in terms of decarbonisation.

  As the rest of Europe steams ahead with its effort to electrify heating, the UK is lagging behind due to our higher costs of electricity, something that not only affects individual households and businesses, but significantly undermines the UK’s position as a world leader of climate action. To achieve our statutory net zero goals, we need to make sure that the transition to clean energy is as affordable as possible for everyone. The current energy pricing structure is holding us back, and that must change.

  I welcome the Government’s inclusion of the local power plan in the Great British Energy Bill, which marks a welcome step forward for the community energy sector. The plan intends to deliver an ambitious target of 8 gW of renewable energy projects by 2030, in partnership with local authorities and communities across the country. To achieve that target, significant scale-up of local and community-owned energy will be required and we will need a support programme in place for community energy organisations in England, drawing on successful models from Scotland and Wales.

  Bath and West Community Energy, a community benefit society, has reduced carbon emissions by an average of 3,300 tonnes per year with its around 31 renewable energy projects. Let us make sure every community across the country has something like Bath and West Community Energy in its patch. As we have repeated many times, community energy reduces bills, creates local jobs and accelerates the transition to a low-carbon future.

  Home insulation is another key area to reduce energy costs, particularly in my Bath constituency, where much of the housing stock is old and in dire need of insulation. Insulation remains one of the most effective ways to reduce energy demand, lower bills and cut emissions, but the Government have significantly delayed the implementation of their warm homes grants. The scheme was not implemented this winter and will only operate from next winter. The Government must tackle the efficiencies of these schemes head-on, ensuring that residents receive retrofit measures that provide value for money and stand the test of time. The Select Committee on Energy Security and Net Zero will look into those issues tomorrow, and I hope people will listen very carefully.

  I hope the Government consider the points outlined today. We need long-term solutions that will make clean energy affordable for all, meet our net zero targets and lift the pressures on families of rising energy costs.

  Full debate: Cost of Energy

  The bottom line is that energy costs and energy prices are too high for all our constituents and businesses. It benefits us all if we bring them down, not just to get to net zero and to bring costs down for consumers, but for the general prosperity of this country. Where will we be if we cannot make the costs at which we produce things and warm our homes and so on lower than they currently are? This is the beginning of a debate and there is much more to do. I thank the Minister and all Members for their constructive contributions; I am sure we will be here again soon.

  Full debate: Cost of Energy

• 10 Dec 2024: Parliamentary Speech

  The measures announced by the Government in this Bill are welcome, in particular the removal of the 29% investment allowance except for investments on decarbonisation. This has been a Liberal Democrat policy, and I am pleased the Government have picked up on it and that it will now become a reality.

  I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. It is absolutely by putting in place the measures for transition that we will meet net zero. If we continue with business as usual and continue to listen to people who ultimately do not understand that unless we get to net zero our whole economy will suffer, then people will suffer. We will also have big, big problems with issues such as huge migration if climate change can rule unchallenged. This is why the Liberal Democrats believe the transition to net zero is important and why we need to put measures in place to make that happen. It is disappointing that the Conservatives, as the previous Government and now the Opposition, still do not understand how urgently we require climate action.

  I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. The whole argument is that we will continue to rely on oil and gas for the time being, but unless we start to change something, on the current projection we will not get to net zero as urgently as we need to. Progress has been too slow, so the longer we hesitate the more difficult it will become. The new Government have understood that urgency, and the Liberal Democrats support them in dealing with this issue with more urgency than we saw from the previous Government. I therefore repeat that we support the measures, but we would like the Government to support our new clause 2. As I said, it will show what we can raise by closing the loophole. It would by extension, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans clarified, show what has been squandered by the previous Government—money that could have been invested.

  First, on those record profits, I think all Members of the Committee agree that the record profits in the oil and gas industry in 2022 were excessive. In 2023, however, the profits for Shell, the largest oil and gas major in Europe, barely decreased from the previous year. In fact, if we take its profits from the first half of this year, Shell looks likely to eclipse even those of last year. In the first half of this year, Shell has had profits of $14 billion. Half of that went to share buybacks, which do nothing to fund the decarbonisation that is so necessary to secure the future of energy production here in the UK and around the world. Those record profits, much of which have been handed back to shareholders, are going in the opposite direction of what ordinary families and working people need. Rather than reinvest in the transitions of the future, I would argue that the Conservative party is looking at the industries of the past and clinging on to a past that is quickly fading from reality.

  The Government’s auction of 130 wind, solar and tidal energy projects in the latest round of the contracts for difference scheme points the way to the future. It points the way to the generation of 95% of the UK’s energy through green and decarbonised energy by 2030; to a transition that everyone in this Committee, and certainly everyone on the Government Benches, is looking forward to seeing in the next 10 years; and to the delivery of the local power plan, which will support local energy projects in communities such as mine. I welcome the funding of local projects such as Reading Hydro, which takes hydroelectric energy from the Thames, and the work of Reading Community Energy Society, which generates solar energy on the rooftops of the University of Reading and rooftops across my constituency. I look forward to all those projects and to the projects of the future, which is why I commend the measures that we are discussing today.

  Full debate: Finance Bill