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Security of Supply

I shall not say anything this afternoon very different from what I have said on previous occasions on this subject, but I shall say it with greater urgency, because of present circumstances in the world, and with a greater hope that it will be taken seriously both by the Government and by my Front-Bench colleagues, who, as we heard this afternoon, are to conduct their own parallel energy review. There have been two dramatic developments in the world over the past few months that we cannot ignore. One is that although the evidence of climate change has been apparent to us anecdotally for some years, because of such things as the changes in the seasons in this country, there is now empirical evidence, based on the latest measurements, that the amount of cold water sinking in the North Atlantic, which is the mechanism for the gulf stream, is falling. That is terrifying, because if the gulf stream failed, or was reversed, in a few generations’ time this country would have a climate comparable with that of Labrador today. That is a major threat, and we have to take it seriously. We know that we are not likely to reach the 60 per cent. reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 to which we have committed ourselves—at least, not without some major new action. The second new development is the substantial rise in the price of natural gas, which has doubled over the past couple of years, coupled with the fact that we have become a net importer of natural gas. Anyone who knows anything about the energy business knows that all gas and oil fields follow a bell curve pattern: once exploitation begins, production increases quite rapidly, then there is a plateau for quite a long time, but when the field begins to run into diminishing returns, production falls sharply away. I am afraid to say that the news can only get worse on natural gas against a background of rising international prices and energy demand. Being dependent on the Netherlands and Norway is, as has been said, relatively reassuring, but once we come to find a substantial proportion of our natural gas deriving from Algeria or Russia and other such countries, we will need to be very worried.