House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Carbon budgets Third Report of Session 2009–10 Volume II Oral and written evidence Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 5 January 2010 HC 228-II Incorporating HC 616-i to -iv, Session 2008–09 Published on 14 January 2010 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Environmental Audit Committee The Environmental Audit Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to consider to what extent the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development; to audit their performance against such targets as may be set for them by Her Majesty’s Ministers; and to report thereon to the House. Current membership Mr Tim Yeo MP (Conservative, South Suffolk) (Chairman) Gregory Barker MP (Conservative, Bexhill and Battle) Mr Martin Caton MP (Labour, Gower) Colin Challen MP (Labour, Morley and Rothwell) Mr David Chaytor MP (Labour, Bury North) Martin Horwood MP (Liberal Democrat, Cheltenham) Mr Nick Hurd MP (Conservative, Ruislip Northwood) Rt Hon Jane Kennedy MP (Labour, Liverpool Wavertree) Mark Lazarowicz MP (Labour/Co-operative, Edinburgh North and Leith) Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger MP (Conservative, Bridgewater) Mr Shahid Malik MP (Labour, Dewsbury) Mrs Linda Riordan MP (Labour, Halifax) Mr Graham Stuart MP (Conservative, Beverley & Holderness) Jo Swinson MP (Liberal Democrat, East Dunbartonshire) Dr Desmond Turner MP (Labour, Brighton, Kempton) Joan Walley MP (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent North) Powers The constitution and powers are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally Standing Order No. 152A. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including substantive press notices) are on the Internet at: www.parliament.uk/eacom/ A list of Reports of the Committee from the current Parliament is at the back of this volume. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are: Gordon Clarke (Clerk), Simon Fiander (Second Clerk), Tim Bryant (Committee Specialist), Edward White (Committee Specialist), James Bowman (Senior Committee Assistant), Susan Ramsay (Committee Assistant) and Steven Everett (Sandwich Student). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to The Clerk, Environmental Audit Committee, Committee Office, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general inquiries is: 020 7219 6150; the Committee’s e-mail address is: [email protected] Witnesses Tuesday 9 June 2009 Page Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Member, and Mr David Kennedy, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change Ev 1 Mr Aubrey Meyer, Co-founder, and Mr Terry O’Connell, Director of Corporate Relations, Global Commons Institute Ev 34 Tuesday 23 June 2009 Professor Kevin Anderson, Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Ev 42 Professor John Mitchell OBE, Director of Climate Science, and Dr Jason Lowe, Head of Mitigation Advice, Met Office Ev 55 Tuesday 14 July 2009 Professor Sir David King, Director, and Dr Cameron Hepburn, Senior Research Fellow, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and Dr Myles Allen, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, Department of Ev 66 Physics, University of Oxford Professor Paul Ekins, Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, Kings Ev 76 College London Professor David MacKay, Professor of Natural Philosophy, University of Ev 86 Cambridge Tuesday 27 October 2009 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, a Member of the House of Lords, Chairman, and Mr David Kennedy, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change Ev 90 Rt Hon Edward Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and Mr James Hughes, Head of Carbon Budgets Team, Department of Energy and Climate Change Ev 107 List of written evidence Page 1 Actuarial Profession’s Resource and Environment Group Ev 122 2 Association of Conservation of Energy (ACE) Ev 127 3 Aviation Environment Federation Ev 124 4 Committee on Climate Change (CCC) Ev 13: Ev 99 5 Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) Ev 100: Ev 104: Ev 117 6 EEF Ev 128 7 Friends of the Earth Ev 131: Ev 134: Ev 136 8 Global Commons Institute Ev 14: Ev 39 9 Institution of Mechanical Engineers Ev 136 10 Met Office Ev 53: Ev 62 11 National Physical Laboratory Ev 138 12 Professor David MacKay, University of Cambridge Ev 81 13 Professor Paul Ekins, Kings College London Ev 75 List of unprinted evidence The following memorandum has been reported to the House, but to save printing costs it has not been printed and copies have been placed in the House of Commons Library, where they may be inspected by Members. Other copies are in the Parliamentary Archives, and are available to the public for inspection. Requests for inspection should be addressed to The Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament, London SW1A 0PW (tel. 020 7219 3074). Opening hours are from 9.30 am to 5.00 pm on Mondays to Fridays. Further memorandum from Aubrey Meyer, The Global Commons Institute Processed: 12-01-2010 02:51:28 Page Layout: COENEW [SO] PPSysB Job: 435373 Unit: PAG1 Environmental Audit Committee: Evidence Ev 1 Oral evidence Taken before the Environmental Audit Committee on Tuesday 9 June 2009 Members present Mr Tim Yeo, in the Chair Mr Martin Caton Dr Desmond Turner Colin Challen Joan Walley Mark Lazarowicz Witnesses: Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Member, and Mr David Kennedy, Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Good morning, and thank you very the top, and there may be thresholds in the system much for coming in. We are very grateful for your somewhere near there, but we certainly do not know time. Just so that we can try and pace this, we have they are at exactly 2.0, so we took the attitude that quite a lot we would like to talk to you about and we we wanted, in probability terms, to keep the 50-50 have about an hour and a quarter as we have another point as close to two degrees as we could. We also witness, so we will proceed as briskly as we can, then looked at something else, the chance of dealing with the issues in a thorough way. Could I reaching four degrees above pre-industrial levels, start by asking if you feel that the budgets and and I think sometimes, when we speak about four targets which the Government now has, whether degrees, we think, “Oh well, everywhere could they are actually consistent with the aim of avoiding manage four degrees”, but it really becomes an index dangerous climate change. of how far we have gone along the road. If you think Mr Kennedy: Perhaps we can answer that in two about the regional changes and perhaps even global stages. First of all, we recommended targets which, changes that would correspond to that four degrees, we thought, were consistent with avoiding there is no doubt that that would be a world where dangerous climate change, and that is the 80% in life, as we know it, could not be pursued. We wanted 2050 of all greenhouse gases, including aviation and the chances of going there to be of the order of 1% shipping, and we recommended, what we called, an or less, so we wanted the 50-50 point to be two “interim target” of 34% emissions reductions in 2020 degrees and, if it could have been less, we would have rising to 42% if there is a global deal, as being said “Fine”, but we did not think pragmatically that consistent with that 80% longer-term goal, so that is that was possible at this stage, so those are the two what, we thought, would make us avoid the risk of criteria, the 50-50 point close to two degrees and dangerous climate change. The Government has then a very, very low chance of getting to that four- accepted all of those recommendations, so, as you degree world. This led us to the sort of idea then that know, the 80% is already in the Climate Change Act the global emissions should peak before 2020 and the 34% which, we said, should go into the preferably, but certainly by 2020 and drop around legislation prior to a global deal has been accepted 4% per annum after that, that is for global emissions, in DECC, and Ed Miliband announced that and it and down to about a 50% global cut by 2050 and, is going through the House at the moment under the then going from that global cut of 50% by 2050, we aYrmative resolution procedure. The other thing had to say, “What does that mean for the UK?” and that we recommended as well was that the 34% we said that the only way you can envisage that is should be achieved through domestic emissions that this is a per capita emission allowance at that reductions, not the purchase of credits, and again the stage of something over two tonnes of CO2 per advice has been accepted there. The last thing is that, person and that means an 80% cut for the UK. The if you look at the narrative to the secondary way we decided is that that was the 2050 point, but legislation, we have recommended a set of options then, on the way to that, we took account of the EU for reducing emissions to meet the budgets, whether targets of approaching 2050 consistent with this that is energy eYciency improvements, electric cars global emission curve and what was actually or renewables in the power sector, and the narrative technically possible, and we came up with the earlier in there very much reflects what, we suggested, are targets, so we believe what we have is consistent with the appropriate set of measures to reduce emissions.