Climate Change Act 2008 (2020 Target, Credit Limit and Definitions) Order 2009

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt this fireside chat and move on to the order. From these Benches, we could get to at least six; that might be between the two noble Lords opposite. A more general point is that the work of the Committee on Climate Change has been excellent; it has been highly respected by those on all sides of the House. I thank it for its work and for the work that it will have to do in the future. Of course, a number of noble Lords from this House are involved there. Before I go on to the order, I shall pick up on one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. It particularly concerned me when he said that here in the northern hemisphere, anyway, or here in Britain, we are not going to be affected for at least another couple of decades, or a hundred years, or whatever. To me, that is to misunderstand utterly the problem of global warming, in that whether or not it is man-made, if it is happening then there is no way that northern communities will be isolated from migration flows from the inundation in developing nations, or from the changes in ecology and biodiversity that happen with rapid climate change, or from interruptions to trade routes and energy and food security. All of those areas will disrupt global systems and flows which, whether they are of capital, commodities or people, will very quickly be affected. We will not be able to put up a wall and say, "We’re safe; sorry about the rest of you, but we’re enjoying global warming for the next 200 years and we’ll worry about it after that". That is not an option; it is a very dangerous thought. I welcome the fact that the order encompasses all of the greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, which much broadens it out. I know that that came from the Committee on Climate Change; it is a major step forward. I welcome the fact that there are budgets and that they stick pretty well to targets that are, at least, challenging—although on these Benches we believe that we would need quickly to achieve and move toward the larger, intended targets. A particular area that has interested me, and which was a topic of great debate on the Climate Change Bill, is that of international credits and how they are treated. While I again welcome the fact that the limit on those credits is to be zero, I regret that it is only for the first period—which now goes up only to 2012—and that, even now, we cannot extend that to the next two periods, as it is such an important area. Will the Minister clarify—I did not understand this from the order and it may be that I have not read or understood its meaning properly—whether he specifically said that the Government themselves would not purchase EU ETS units in order to offset? The order says that it outlaws clean development mechanism units, but that since the EU ETS operates, those units should be counted. I disagree with that to some degree, but I shall come on to that in a minute. Will the Minister confirm that the Government themselves will not buy EU ETS units—or EUAs, as they are called—so as to close that carbon gap in terms of targets? First, it would be an abuse of how that system works and, secondly, it would be a way in which members of the EU ETS in other parts of Europe might purchase clean development mechanism units that enabled them to sell EUAs to us in Britain. That would effectively make it a carbon-credit laundering system, if one was not careful. I am sure that is not the Government’s intention, but I should be pleased to receive an assurance that the Government will not be counting EU ETS credits toward their own carbon budget. As the Minister said, it will be interesting to see the Government’s report setting out exactly how these targets are to be met. I agree entirely with the noble Lord that we should include air travel and shipping as soon as possible. It is great to have a definition and I should like to hear from the Minister when he now believes these areas will be brought in. One of the main concerns about shipping was that of international definitions. Has progress been made on those, and similarly in terms of airlines? We know that aviation is going to be included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2011, but surely there is still scope to include it in our target now. We welcome the order generally, although we would like to see the credits brought down to zero for all three periods. But the core of the argument in terms of targets and action towards combating climate change is that in themselves targets are fine, but what is needed is action to ensure that we have the sort of effect on carbon emissions that we require. At a time when the European trading scheme is to some extent floundering again in that we have a slow uptake of renewables and are very dependent on wind, that energy saving has not yet moved forward significantly, that there has been little practical progress on carbon capture and storage and a perhaps understandable hesitation about biofuels, the challenge lies not this order but in the Government’s programme and the programme across Europe to make sure that changes in energy use and how we conserve energy enable us to meet these targets.