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Energy: Renewables (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

My Lords, as a member of the committee that produced the report, I begin by paying tribute to our wonderful chairman. the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, for the excellent way in which he led us through a minefield. He has just given an outstanding survey of our recommendations. I shall concentrate on one issue—scientific research and development. Science has produced climate change and ultimately science will have to conquer climate change. Every year the urgency of this task becomes more apparent. Only the other day we learnt how greenhouse gas emissions from China and India had exceeded their forecast levels. There is no way in which we can preserve our way of life unless we rise to this challenge. We are now told that this requires an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, compared with 1990 levels by 2050, which is only 40 years ahead. That cannot be achieved without a major programme of basic scientific advance. It is completely unlikely that that can be done by incremental development and installation of any of the existing renewable technologies that were treated in our report. When our way of life was threatened by fascism we had the Manhattan project. When we feared Russian domination of space there was the Apollo programme. Both programmes involved many of the best minds of their generation. How can we possibly rise to the present challenge without a similar concerted scientific effort? In 2005, when the Economic Affairs Committee previously considered climate change, we reported that the international energy authority estimated that solar energy, biomass and carbon sequestration could be made competitive with oil and gas at a one-off cost of some 1 per cent of annual world GDP. We recommended consideration of a major international programme along those lines. That was four years ago. So what is the present position in this country? How much are we spending? Paragraph 90 of our report states: "““Research council spending on renewable energy projects has risen … to £30 million””," which is 1 per cent of the total spend. We are spending 1 per cent of our research effort on what by most consent is the greatest problem facing humanity. We were given that information by Research Councils UK. In its evidence there was not even a nod to the fact that this is one of the greatest problems facing mankind. This is simply an inadequate response from the scientific community and, ultimately, from the Government who can give that community its priorities. It is certainly not a response that inspires the brightest minds of a generation. Unless something is done it will not attract that kind of effort. We surely need something more serious. Obviously, the ideal would be an internationally co-ordinated effort of the kind that was discussed in our 2005 report. Following that report, in a speech in this House our current chairman suggested an international programme of research that could be funded by a carbon tax. That is still a very interesting suggestion linking the use of different energy sources to their development. To secure agreement on anything of that sort would take a long time but in the mean time we can surely rethink our own national effort. One interesting suggestion in our report is an annual international prize awarded by our Government and possibly others for the most important discovery contributing to the development of renewable energy. But the key issue for Britain is the size of our research effort. Here, as elsewhere, money tells. There are a lot of words in the Government’s reply to our urging a reconsideration of research priorities, as we do in our current report. But there are no promises; there is something that amounts almost to complacency. The single fact—the one that I started with—remains. The Government are spending 1 per cent of their scientific research budget on the world’s most pressing problem. That is simply not coming up to the mark. I urge the Minister to press his colleagues to adopt a new style of leadership in this area and a step-change in funding.