ISIS Energy Report Gets Cross Party Support

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ISIS Energy Report Gets Cross Party Support

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Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:47:45 +0100

 

 

 

 

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ISIS Press Release 14/06/06

 

Parliament Launch of Which Energy?

 

ISIS Energy Report Gets Cross Party Support

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Tim Yeo MP Shadow Secretary of State for Public Services,

Health and Education, and Chair of cross-party Environmental

Audit Committee, welcomes and praises ISIS Energy Report

 

ISIS report leads the way Welcome to the launch of the Which

Energy? report. It's good to see so many of you here and I

know that a lot of you have come from quite far-flung places

around the country so I am grateful for the effort that you

made.

 

This report is extremely stimulating and could hardly be

more timely. I agree with a great deal, although, I have to

say, not all of the views expressed in it. But I shall let

other people debate that today.

 

My committee, The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has

also published its own report on most of the same energy

issues last month. The conclusions are available on the

(EAC) website and worth reading. It was an interesting

exercise trying to reconcile the polarised positions of the

individual committee members. We produced a unanimous

report after only a moderate amount of agony and we managed

to set up some benchmarks by which the Governments own

review can be judged and criteria for how choices can be

made in the drive for more low carbon electricity

generation.

 

We're all hanging on the Governments own review. I'm not

being partisan here, but I fear that the review seems to

have somewhat been pre-empted by the Prime Ministers speech

to the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) last week.

There is cross party support on that point, I reckon!

 

However, what everyone does agree on is the importance of

the topic. There can be no solution to threat of Climate

Change without big changes in the way we produce and consume

energy.

 

No doubt about Climate Change I first became interested in

Climate Change in my second stint at the Department of

Environment (DOE) as a Minister of State in the early 1990s.

And, even then, I suspected that many scientists

deliberately underplayed both the scale and the urgency of

the threat of Climate Change, for fear of being mocked. They

wanted to approach it cautiously because so many people did

not believe in the concept at that stage. Today, nobody

disputes the fact that climate is changing, and few doubt

that the pace of change is much faster than we previously

believed. But what we have failed to do is to translate that

acceptance of the fact of Climate Change into the actions

that will avert the politically catastrophic consequences of

Climate Change.

 

For example, only yesterday the EAC took evidence from the

aviation industry, in the context of our enquiry as to how

to reduce carbon emissions from transport. They confirmed

that they cannot foresee any time in the next half century

when carbon emissions from aviation transport will actually

start to fall. In fact they have projected a continuous

rise of emissions over the next 50 years. No government in

the world that I have identified has yet recognised the need

to act to check that remorseless growth.

 

In Europe all we have is a lot of waffle about bringing the

aviation industry into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) –

a process which will require years of the most tortuous

negotiation and unlikely to have any measurable effect on

the growth of those emissions for at least a decade.

 

If you look at road transport, it's now possible to drive

cars whose impact and emissions are only a tiny fraction of

those produced by conventional vehicles. But the

incentives that we put up to try to encourage people to do

so are so ludicrously timid that the result is that hardly

anyone is actually using the vehicles, even with the

technology that is available.

 

Here in Britain we're building thousands of homes every

month whose energy standards are way below those now

routinely achieved in other countries. And yet again the

Government resolutely blocks any attempts to introduce real

incentives for builders, or tenants or homebuyers actually

to insist on higher standards.

 

At least, on the energy front, there is a serious debate now

taking place. I think that there a really big danger,

however, and perhaps a danger that the PM is deliberately

fanning, that if we make a big decision about nuclear,

whatever that decision is, that somehow diverts attention

from the far more important areas that we should be

examining. Because the box would have been ticked - that we

have sorted the energy policy, so we can move on to

something else.

 

No single solution to Climate Change That's why I

particularly welcome the ISIS report, which recognises there

is no silver bullet, no single solution to the challenge, or

how we achieve sustainability in the energy sector. The

approach has to be a multifaceted one.

 

Let me start with one plea, yet again, for even more

priority to be given to the purest and most unarguable

solution to the energy problem, and that is to use less of

it.

 

Energy efficiency still has an enormous role to play, yet

too often it is merely the subject of lip service from

politicians, both national and local, businesses and

consumers. But even the Climate Change deniers cannot argue

against more investment in energy efficiency.

 

Turning to the report itself, it covers a wide range of

subjects, and I welcome that. It is very rightly hardheaded

about biofuels. And, that itself, is a reminder that in all

our efforts to generate more low carbon electricity, we must

set prejudice and ideology aside, and concentrate on the

hard facts. Examine the life cycle impact of different

forms of electricity generation.

 

Waste - an unexploited resource The section on wastes is

another very important area with considerable unexploited

potential. The EAC visited Sweden last week and saw in Malmo

the significant progress being made in biogas vehicle use.

 

I particularly welcome the report's references to food as

well. Again, we're all now paying lip service to the need to

source more of what we eat from local producers. But very

little tangible action is taken to make that happen. And,

as a direct read across from there to aviation, if you fly

food all around the world on the basis that you do not have

to meet any of the costs of the environmental damage caused

by the flights, then of course, the competitive market place

is distorted immediately.

 

There's lots and lots of material here and that's enough

from me.

 

Speech made at Which Energy? Launch Conference, House of

Commons, 25 May 2006, transcribed by Sam Burcher

 

Don't miss out! Order your copy of Which Energy?

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#238 £7

 

Audio CD of launch conference http://www.i-

sis.org.uk/onlinestore/av.php#241 £5

 

Both the report and audio CD http://www.i-

sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#242 £10

 

 

 

 

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