Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said ““if shipping becomes heavily regulated””; I can assure him that shipping is already heavily regulated and becomes more so by the week. What I cannot understand about the amendment is that international aviation and shipping includes the movement of passengers by sea and air, so I cannot see any great difference between this and the previous amendment. The problem with Europe, which has been mentioned, is that shipping is very much an international business. Any moves made locally in local areas are bound to complicate the international situation. I have worked on and off for many years for the Port of Los Angeles in California. Los Angeles and its neighbouring port, Long Beach, are in the vanguard of trying to cut down emissions connected with the ports and all traffic movements in and out of them. As I said in Committee, they have started a system whereby ships plug into shore power when they are in port. This is fine where shore power is provided mainly by nuclear or hydroelectric sources. Obviously, if the power is provided by coal-fired power stations it does not help very much. They also recently tried to bring in a local regulation whereby ships have to reduce their sulphur emissions within 15 miles of the port. That regulation was thrown out on appeal, with a higher court saying that that was the responsibility of the Federal Government and that local people should not be doing this kind of thing. That brings me back to what I was saying about shipping being an international business. As I said on the earlier amendment, the International Maritime Organisation is looking with some urgency at this problem. There is no one-size-fits-all as regards shipping and this is causing the problem. On emissions within Europe, we already have two areas where ships have to cut down the sulphur content in their engines—one in the Baltic and a new one which has just come into operation in the North Sea and the English Channel. So already things are happening. It would be a great mistake, as the Minister said earlier, for shipping to be brought in now before some kind of international agreement can be reached.