No, I have not finished. It is true that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a warming effect. How big a warming effect, as the noble Viscount said, is disputed among scientists, and the consensus is moving to a much lower effect than was previously thought. However, the sun has a much greater warming effect and I have not heard anyone referring to the sun’s rays as dirty. Therefore, can we get away from all this clean/dirty nonsense, which is emotive rubbish and has no place in a proper parliamentary, or any other, debate?
Did the noble Baroness wish to intervene? No, she has thought better of it.
One of the curiosities of this Government in this area is that we have not one energy policy, but two. This Bill represents one of them. Calling it an energy Bill is somewhat misleading; it should have been called a decarbonisation Bill, or maybe an anti-energy Bill. Nevertheless, ostensibly it is an energy Bill. That policy is out of date, if it ever was in date. The draft was produced in 2010 and the gestation goes back to the previous Administration in the era when the Climate Change Act was passed. That is one energy policy.
I will quote the other energy policy. In his comprehensive spending review Statement, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that we,
“will put Britain at the forefront of exploiting shale gas”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/6/13; col. 310.]
A week earlier, at a European Council meeting, the Prime Minister, my right honourable friend David Cameron, said that we must make,
“the most of indigenous resources such as shale gas”.
Perhaps it is a consequence of coalition government that you have two separate energy policies. However, the other energy policy and the one in the Bill are in complete conflict. The purpose of this Bill is, through long-term contracts for difference of 15 years or even more, to lock this country into high-cost renewable energy and nuclear energy. That will leave very little space for shale gas, although, as my noble friend Lord Ridley pointed out, it is now clear that we have enormous reserves in this country. Having indigenous reserves is particularly important and, because of liquefaction, the cost of transporting gas across the ocean adds considerably to the cost of the gas.
We cannot have it both ways. We either go for shale gas, which is cheap, or we lock ourselves into high-cost energy. That is what worries me. The only way in which you can make sense of these two conflicting energy policies is if you think that the purpose of developing our resources of indigenous shale gas—we cannot use it here because of this Bill—is for it to be exported to our competitors so that they can have the
benefit of the cheap energy that we are forgoing. That is the only way in which you can reconcile the two policies. Of course, it is complete rubbish, complete nonsense. It is the economics and the politics of the mad house.
Finally, I come to the amendment about the target in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on which I think that he is a little naive. As my noble friend Lord Howell said, just putting in this target does not give any guarantee to energy companies in the slightest, because things can change. No Parliament can bind its successor. As I said earlier, the Germans and the Spanish are changing all their subsidies and support for renewable energy. No businessman believes that this target means anything. It is true that the contracts for difference, which are legally binding, will bind us and lock us in. That concerns me, but this target is neither here nor there.
Since it is neither here nor there, I am very much tempted to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for a good reason. This Bill is absurd and unworkable, but some people may not have realised quite how absurd and unworkable it is. Voting to include his amendment will make the full absurdity and unworkability of the Bill clearer. Nevertheless, I shall do my best to resist the temptation.
5.45 pm