My Lords, I am a member of the Committee on Climate Change and was a member of the committee of both Houses that helped draft the legislation. I want to inject a fact or two into the discussion. The first thing the Committee on Climate Change did was to ask, “How much carbon, looking to 2050, do we think the world can have put into the atmosphere without exceeding a dangerous level of climate change?”. On that basis, we then divided that total by an estimate of the population of Britain in 2050. I would be the first to admit that that second figure is a little uncertain but that was the basis of the ambition that we set and of the overall target that was given for our goal for the end of 2050. We then put the committee together and asked, “Feasibly, how do we think we can get there?”. It was decided—I think sensibly—that the first thing to do was to decarbonise power. Once you do that, you can begin to do other, more difficult things. When looking at decadal timescales, you can look at the possibility of having surface transport primarily done by electricity and that will be okay if we decarbonise the power supply.
We then set intermediate goals. One of them was to come as close as we can by 2030 to decarbonising the energy source through renewables and other things. It was seen that the trajectory to that from 2010, which was when we were talking, was still going to involve coal and gas—gas more efficiently than coal. One thing that the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, and I agree
on is that, given that we have to make that trajectory to 2030 and we will still have to use carbon-producing products to generate the energy, shale gas might be the best intermediate way to get there.
To get there, we also need industry to see that we are committed to getting there, to get it in turn preparing and talking of massive investment, but on the premise that there will be support and continuing commitment to those goals. This is primary legislation and the goals that have been accepted by the Government are legally binding, and I am in the habit of asking, on the Committee on Climate Change and elsewhere, “What does legally binding mean?”. I have not yet had a satisfactory answer. In so far as that phrase means something to some people, we have a legally binding interim target of decarbonising electricity by 2030.
That is why at the draft stage of the Bill the Committee on Climate Change recommended that it include not a vague statement of aspiration but the explicit wording essentially equivalent to that of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. In some sense, you could say we are legally committed to it but it would make common sense to vote for that amendment, as it is consistent with the history and where the facts lie. There are no two ways about it.