My Lords, I had not intended to contribute to this debate but several remarks have been made which ought not to go unchallenged. I subscribe to a number of the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, but seriously question his methodology. However, that is something we can pursue more effectively outside this Room. It is extremely difficult to talk about the cost in carbon or cash of any single element of a multicomponent system without defining the system as a whole and then looking at its performance with or without the element with which one is concerned.
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On whether we are out front and alone, the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, I think, sees a glass half empty; I think that it is perhaps half full. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, drew attention to China and I endorse his comments. No fewer than a third of the objectives of the most recent five-year plan relate to low carbon, energy efficiency and renewables. The Chinese realise that, if climate change comes, as theory suggests it will, China will be one of the big losers. The Chinese Government are probably one of the most technologically aware in the world. They are quite clear that if precipitation in the Himalayas starts to fall as rain rather than as snow, they will have very serious water problems, with massive spring floods and nothing throughout the year. China has rapidly rising emissions at the moment, but it says—and I believe it—that they have to go up before they come down.
The only additional information that I can offer here is that the Carbon Trust, which some noble Lords will remember was founded by the then Government in 2001 to promote low-carbon technology and which was a victim to the bonfire of the quangos in 2010, suddenly decided that it was not going to be burnt and that it would go independent as a not-for-profit company. Since going independent, the Carbon Trust has found its revenues rising rapidly year on year, and much faster than the revenues of British companies as a whole. Much of its work comes from south-east Asia, particularly from Korea and China. To imply that the rest of the world is not interested in what we are doing here and that we are out alone is just not fair.