I welcome Lords amendment 105, as we need to close the Government’s loophole that would exempt existing coal-fired power stations from the emissions performance standard if they fit equipment to meet air pollution standards.
However, even if we vote today to put common sense and climate science above the special pleading of the coal lobby, the EPS will not be strong enough. The Energy and Climate Change Committee has called the EPS “at best pointless” and the Committee on Climate Change warns that allowing unabated gas-fired generation right through to 2045 carries a huge risk that there will be far too much gas at the expense of low-carbon investment, which would bulldoze the Government’s climate objectives. It is therefore a shame that the Lords amendment does not go further and that the official Opposition are not yet accepting the need to leave existing coal reserves in the ground, unlike their sister parties in places such as Norway, whose Labour party this month proposed banning the country’s $800 billion sovereign wealth fund from coal investments. I have some reservations about the level of the EPS, but none the less I firmly support the amendment as a step in the right direction.
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The coalition’s rejection of this moderate and common-sense amendment is inconsistent with tackling climate change and with what Ministers have proclaimed in the past. It is little wonder that trust in politicians is so low. As recently as September, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change told his party:
“As the Secretary of State I’m determined to use all of my powers to make sure that Britain leads the way in sourcing the energy we need from low carbon sources.”
He has also said:
“The damage that will be done by global warming is greater than previously feared. So the need for action is greater than ever.”
On his welcome decision last month to end UK support for coal plants abroad, he explained:
“It is completely illogical for countries like the UK and the US to be decarbonising our own energy sectors while paying for coal-fired power plants to be built in other countries.”
The Secretary of State must know that we undermine efforts to prevent dangerous climate change if we allow existing coal-fired power stations here to be exempt from emissions limits. There has been much debate this afternoon about CCS. Crucially, he has said that unless and until we get commercially viable CCS, coal has no future. I do not think an honest and equitable approach to the UK’s climate commitments gives any room for coal in the future, even with CCS, because global emissions are still too high. His position is perverse, because by rejecting the amendment he is rejecting a change that would actually help to encourage CCS. As his Lib Dem colleague Lord Teverson explained in the other place:
“Clearly and quite obviously, if unabated coal can continue exempt from the emissions performance standards, then CCS will go absolutely nowhere.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 November 2013; Vol. 749, c. 33.]
If the Secretary of State’s increasingly desperate green rhetoric meant anything at all, he would have introduced an amendment to tighten the emissions limit and the time scale of the EPS to align it with 2030 power sector decarbonisation. He would be arguing passionately that we need a clear signal that we simply cannot have, and do not need, dirty, centralised, inefficient coal generation in an energy system fit for the future. Yet instead he appears to have taken up the challenge of putting “coal back into Coalition”—that was the mantra of his previous energy Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who declared that to be his ambition last March.
The Government have access to the world-leading scientists and experts on climate change and on low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels. They know that the global carbon budget means that the majority of existing coal oil and gas reserves are unburnable. They also know that the UK could have an incredibly successful economy based largely on renewable energy instead—if only they would stop pretending that the dirty power incumbents are part of the solution.
Finally, let us not forget that five years ago this Prime Minister explained the importance of a comprehensive EPS when he announced Tory plans for it before the election. He said:
“All existing coal-fired power stations should be retro-fitted with CCS, and all future coal-fired power stations should be built with CCS. If we don't do this, we will not meet our carbon emissions targets.”
Those were the words of the Prime Minister barely three years ago, so I hope that the Government will remember those wiser remarks, accept this small but positive change to the EPS and withdraw their opposition to this very sensible amendment.