I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Instead, we must shift our economy away from its dependence on fossil fuels and build a new low-carbon economy. But the hard truth is that the UK is now falling behind with green growth. Research by Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows that investment in renewable energy was half in 2011 what it was in 2009. Unless there is a remarkable upturn in the final quarter, investment will be lower this year than last year. The respected Pew Environment Group agrees. According to it, when Labour left office the UK was ranked third in the world for investment in clean energy, but today we are seventh. Figures published only last month from Ernst and Young paint the same picture. Its research on attractiveness for investment in renewable energy suggests that we have now fallen to sixth place, slipping below France, a country that generates nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear.
The challenge for this Bill was obvious: to provide a clear policy framework to encourage investment in new, clean sources of energy. We know—this is very positive—that there is money out there to be invested in renewable energy, but unlocking it requires clear signals about the long-term direction of public policy. What the Bill needed was a commitment to decarbonise the power sector by 2030, because that is not only the most cost-effective way to meet our climate obligations, but the best way to protect our economy and consumers from volatile international gas prices and to attract long-term investment in new jobs and industries.
Of course, we have the levy control framework and the EU renewable energy target, which are already in place, but both will come to an end in 2020. For firms such as Vestas, Siemens and Areva—major energy and engineering businesses with operations all over the world—investment horizons extend well beyond 2020. For a business considering opening a new plant or
factory, to justify the costs and the lead-in time they need to know what the order book will look like in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time.
So why have the Government failed to include in the Bill a commitment to decarbonise the power sector? Three reasons have been provided, so let me deal with each in turn before taking another intervention. First, the Secretary of State claimed that he did, in fact, want to set a target next year but was blocked from doing so by the Conservatives. Last month he told the Guardian:
“I wanted to set the decarbonisation target in 2013-14. The Conservatives wanted to wait”.
But the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), told the House last week that there is
“a unanimous view among DECC Ministers”—[Official Report, 13 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 437]—
on the Government’s decarbonisation policy. Both statements cannot be true.
The second reason that has been given is that it would not make sense to set a target until 2016 because that is when the fifth carbon budget, which covers 2030, is set. That is a smokescreen. The view of the Committee on Climate Change is absolutely clear: decarbonisation of the power sector by 2030 is not only crucial to the 2050 economy-wide emissions target, but the most cost-effective way of achieving it. That was its view in 2008 and that is its view today. The suggestion that for some as yet unknown reason that will not be its recommendation in 2016 is not only wrong, but disingenuous. It is disingenuous because we all know the real reason why the decision has been put off—because the coalition wants to have it both ways. The Liberal Democrats want to insist that a target is just around the corner, and the Tories do not want to have to admit that, if they were ever elected on their own, they would have no intention of setting a target to clean up Britain’s power sector by 2030.
As I said in the House last week, if I am wrong and if there are good reasons for waiting until 2016 before setting a target for 2030, there is nothing to stop the Government from setting an interim target before then. The third and fourth carbon budgets have already been agreed and they run until 2027. Why not set a target for 2027, 2025 or even 2022? There is simply no good reason for putting the decision off for another four years. Ministers have to understand that any delay in setting a target does not just fail to reflect the urgency of the situation that we face, but will make it more difficult and expensive to achieve.
The third excuse that we have been given is that we already have too many targets, but the exact opposite is true. Between 2020 and 2050, there are no more targets for cleaning up our power sector—no benchmarks or staging points along the way. For investors, there is no certainty about what contribution the Government expect renewables to provide for the overall energy mix beyond 2020. If there is no certainty, why would firms choose to invest here when plenty of other countries are competing for investment?