Please see below my lecture at All Souls College, Oxford, titled ‘The Long Road to Net Zero’:

Slide 1

Solutions to CO 2 output  have to be multilateral  not unilateral. With the exception of China, no country is big enough to make a difference to world output by its own actions without buy in from others.

Reducing  CO 2 substantially will only be possible if people want the new green products and services. It cannot be delivered by bans, subsidies and taxes.

Current net zero policies rely heavily on making the use of fossil fuels dearer running the danger of increasing inequalities and allowing the rich to buy themselves pardons for continuing use of fossil fuels.

Slide 2

From UN Report October 2021:

 

Total estimated Green House Gas emissions       2025    54.7 Gt    58% above 1990 level

2030    54.9Gt     58.7% above 1990 level    15.9% above 2010

UN says GHG emissions need to be 43% lower than 2010 by 2030 to hit 1.5 degree C increase, or 25% lower to hit 2 degrees.

This decade will see a further increase in the amount of CO2 generated by the world economy with an increase in the annual use of fossil fuels.

The main producers will be China, India and other emerging economies. The USA and the EU accounting for a quarter of current CO 2 will reduce their output a bit.

Slide 3- The Scale of the Problem

 

Slide 4 –  The main sources of CO2

China         30.65%  10,670,000m tonnes

USA           13.5%     4,700,000m tonnes

EU              9%          2,600,000m tonnes

Germany   2%          644m tonnes

Russia       4.5%       1,580,000m tonnes

UK              1%          329m tonnes

Slide 5

Sources of energy for China

Coal – 57%

Oil – 20%

Gas – 8%

Main fossil fuels total – 85%

Sources of energy for USA

Oil – 37%

Gas – 32%

Coal – 11%

Main fossil fuels total – 80%

Sources of energy for EU

Oil – 37%

Gas – 25%

Coal – 11%

Main fossil fuels total – 73%

Slide 6 – Gas – a transition fuel?

Natural gas versus coal

EU designation

Mixing hydrogen with natural gas

Blue and green hydrogen

Slide 7 – How do you power homes and factories when the wind does not blow or blows too hard?

The dangers of over reliance on wind energy – the UK has days when wind only supplies 2% electricity

Need for electricity storage

Pump storage systems

Green hydrogen as an energy store

Battery storage

Time shifting of power use

Slide 8 – Carbon accounting

Is it sensible to shift from a petrol to an electric car?

Total carbon generated by manufacture of new vehicle and destruction of old vehicle.

Over what time period do you amortise that excess carbon

What mileage would you need to do each year to make the vehicle switch worthwhile?

How do you guarantee that your battery is only recharged with renewable power?

Slide 9

Carbon accounting

Putting in a heat pump

CO2 produced in manufacture of equipment and installation

Nature of the electricity to fuel the heat pump system

Need for heating and immersion heating back up to secure sufficient temperature to water and air ?

Slide 10

Carbon accounting for wind energy

The carbon dioxide produced during fabrication and installation of the turbines and towers

The carbon dioxide generated for replacement turbines and parts

The carbon dioxide generated for the stand by power capacity needed

The carbon dioxide produced when stand by generation is used during low or high wind periods

Slide 11 – What would make the green products fly off the shelves?

Cars –  range, refuelling and recharging, cost, style

Heating systems – Average temperatures, cost,  degree of intrusion

Diets – taste and appearance of alternatives to meat/ social acceptability

Slide 12  

Technologies for the 2030s and 2040s

Green hydrogen for storage of renewable power

Green hydrogen to drive internal combustion engines

Nuclear power and small nuclear reactors

Nuclear fusion?

Large battery storage

More use of water power and pump storage

Hydrogen for home heating and industrial processes

 

NATO were right. The Intelligence reports, shared widely with the public, pointed to a major invasion of Ukraine. Putin assembled the majority of his country’s substantial military forces around the borders of Ukraine for a purpose. We had to await the ending of the winter Olympics and the interviewing of a succession of western leaders, presumably to reassure him that NATO would not go to war. Only now has Putin decided to set some aims for his violent mission. He says he wants Ukraine to change its government to become a neutral state that would effectively be a puppet of Russia. If he does not get his way easily he may well turn to complete conquest to enforce his will.

Putin has revealed the strategic weakness of the European position. Short of energy, reliant on Russian gas, the Europeans gave the Minsk Agreement and a possible new settlement their best efforts. It was in  vain. Putin did not want to see Ukraine remodel its constitution as a single state looking towards the West. He  ripped up what remained of Minsk by recognising the rebel states as independent countries.

The UK is right to work with our US and European allies in NATO to do the best we can in  a grave situation. What this must  now do is make the UK take some hard and good decisions about our future national security. It should start with a National Security Council review of our energy supply with a view to re establishing self sufficiency as soon as possible. It needs to include a further military review to expand our forces. We could spend the extra tax we collect on producing more of our own oil and gas to pay for a larger military. It needs further work on our cyber defences, on protecting our networks for utilities and better defence of core technologies and industrial competences. We have been too free with our best ideas, and too careless about keeping domestic production and intellectual property in core areas like steel, special metals, ceramics, electronic chips and the rest.

Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): Has the Minister made sure that all future contracts are properly set up and policed at the beginning, so that the Government know what they are buying?

Eddie Hughes (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities and Local Government): My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but we leave those decisions to councils that are commissioning locally. I guess it is up to us to try to ensure appropriate standards against which such accommodation is measured and then to give them the necessary powers to enforce that. Personally, I think that councils already have a considerable number of powers. I am not disagreeing with Opposition Members about what powers are required; I am just saying that I would like to see the existing powers used to the absolute max before we necessarily go reaching for others. If people feel they do not have the necessary powers, I would consider it not inappropriate for the Government to legislate, but we need to consider that carefully.

We are committed to finding the right approach to this issue, and we invested £5 million in a number of pilots in recent months to support the worst-affected areas, including Birmingham, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bristol and Hull. Through the injection of those funds, we have been working with local authorities to test approaches to improving the quality of this type of accommodation. We chose these specific areas partly because of the existing commitment to tackle these issues, and I pay tribute to the local authorities, which have worked collegiately and collaboratively with us during the pilots.

To take Bristol as an example, it has been conducting thorough assessments of new schemes and providers for some time. The council was able to use its funding to complete its work in summer last year. Meanwhile, Hull’s supported accommodation review team was implemented in 2019, and the council has already shown a strong commitment to making the changes needed to solve the problems besetting exempt accommodation. Through the pilot, it was able to fund a large part of its programme and to take its approach to that programme one step further. As the House would expect, we know that the need stretches beyond these pilot areas and that local authorities in other parts of the country want to invest in tackling these problems, too.

Tomorrow I will give my lecture at All Souls College Oxford on net zero policies at 11 am.

If you would like to attend in person or by on line link please contact the College at   https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/event/long-road-net-zero

President Biden suffered a major reversal when he left Afghanistan with too much haste and secrecy, failing to inform or win over his allies to his chosen course of action. Afghanistan soon fell to the Taliban once US forces had gone, reversing the hard won gains of many years of strife and loss of life in a few days.

He has been more willing to consult NATO allies over Ukraine, and has warned Mr Putin of serious adverse consequences if he presses ahead with an invasion. The President and the US intelligence and military services have kept the whole world advised of Russian troop and weapon deployments near to Ukraine and have forecast early invasions. They seek to win the information war and to make it more difficult for Russia to seek to occupy Ukraine.  President Biden did let slip the view that the retaliation would not be so tough were Mr Putin to make a limited incursion into Ukraine. Although his staff did their best to correct this and he himself changed his words, it looks as if Mr Putin decided the US President meant what he had let slip. So Russia has made a more limited incursion than a direct invasion with massed forces aiming at the capture of Kiev and the toppling of the Ukrainian government by force.  The US has led a response based on targeted sanctions against individuals and certain banks, whilst stressing there would be much worse to come for Russia if she plans a bigger military attack.

The USA is still concerned about a further Russian attack using the large firepower Mr Putin has assembled. It is possible that Russia will foment the strife and tensions within the two provinces that she has now recognised as independent, seeking to drag Ukraine into a war in the east. It is is also likely Russia will look at how to destabilise the government of Ukraine, adding political pressures to military challenges created in Donbas. What is clear is the Franco-German initiative to reach a diplomatic peace through creating two self governing provinces within Ukraine is now badly damaged by pre emptive Russian action. What do you think the USA should do next?

 

Update   Russia has decided to bomb  military installations and provoke a wider internal  war. Putin says he will not invade and occupy Ukraine but clearly plans  to use his military resources to effect regime change and  create  a more submissive Ukraine. His military actions are expanding, inviting Ukrainian retaliation which he might then use to give him the  excuse as he sees it to widen his use of Russian forces. NATO will condemn these unprovoked  aggressions but will not commit its own forces to the fight.

 

During our time in the EEC/EU our merchant fleet and our fishing fleet suffered a bad decline. The ECJ striking down an Act of Parliament designed to promote our maritime activities did not help. The Common Fisheries Policy invited many more foreign fishing boats in to plunder our fishing grounds. The EU then imposed ever stricter quotas on U.K. fishing boats to reduce the impact of over fishing. A vicious circle was created denuding many of our great fishing ports of most of the trawlers that used to put to sea to fish our waters.

Rebuilding our fishing fleet should be an urgent priority. During the so called transition period we should be tougher on fishing by banning all the super trawlers of over 100 m in Length to help our fish stocks to rebuild. The government should work with private sector to put together boat finance, crew training and permits to fish to rebuild our lost fleet.

We should also reform the licensing, flagging and tax arrangements to make it more attractive for vessels to register in the U.K. Creating a larger flagged merchant fleet would stimulate more bunkering, victualling, repairs and refits in U.K. docks and yards. The MOD and other government buyers of vessels should usually buy from UK sources, to boost our shipbuilding capability. This could stimulate more private sector orders and construction. Some of our seaside towns need revival as they miss many of the maritime activities that used to be part of their commercial life.

Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): It is great news that our freedoms are being restored, so will the Prime Minister now bring the same focus and Government innovation shown on this topic to vanquish the cost of living crisis so that more people have enough money to enjoy the freedoms?

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister: You bet!

I reproduce below my latest article for Conservative Home

 

Let me have another go at explaining to the Government why they must remove the National Insurance tax rise, and cut VAT, before the full cost of living squeeze hits in April.

I have no wish to see the country damaged yet again by a foolish Treasury orthodoxy, aided by a Central Bank lurching from being too loose and inflationary to being too tough.

It is too late now to head off the round of inflation they have helped create. They both need to recognise that growth will  bring the deficit down and the belated ending of money printing will start to slow inflation after April/May without further action. The hit to real incomes ahead will also slow the economy.

I have seen Treasury theory do so much damage over my lifetime. I urged John Major not to push the UK into the inevitable boom bust that the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was bound to deliver. He went ahead, triggering an  inflation followed by a bust which collapsed house prices and took down many small businesses. It  cast the Conservatives out of office for 13 years.

I watched as Gordon Brown helped generate a Treasury orthodoxy that decided to correct a credit bubble they had created by a disastrous aggressive curtailment of cash and credit. This bankrupted large banks and brought on the predictable great recession. On the back of that, Labour have been out of office for 11 years so far.

Today inflation is too high. Tomorrow it will be higher, when the full energy price rises add to bills. Wage growth so far is below inflation. The cost of living squeeze will hit confidence and limit many people’s ability to spend on discretionary items, given the big rise  in the cost of the basics of food, energy and the mortgage.

Some say the inflation is the result of supply-side shortages brought on by Covid, international supply chain disruptions, and the general shortage of gas in Europe. Others point to the way the Bank of England continued creating extra money, buying up bonds, and keeping interest rates around zero long after the initial pandemic shutdown.

They were right to produce a strong positive response to offset the economic damage done by the health policies in 2020, but wrong to continue money printing in the later months of last year as recovery was well set.

Whichever explanation you prefer, it all points to a coming sharp decline in the pace of growth, a big reduction in consumer spending outside the basics, and a peak or surge in inflation. It does not look like a wage/price spiral setting in given the deflationary impact of the huge energy price rises and the consequences of the most severe advanced country monetary tightening on offer.

The Bank of England has stopped all money printing, has raised interest rates  and is even thinking of money shrinking whilst the ECB plans a further €40bn a month and the Bank of Japan carries on buying as many bonds as it takes to keep the ten year rate of interest near zero. Even the Fed, with a much bigger inflation problem than the others, is still unwisely printing more money this month. The Bank of England should give its tightening time to work before considering too much action.

The Treasury have one main argument against my proposal that we should cancel the extra National Insurance, end VAT on fuel, and cancel VAT on green products to make it cheaper to save energy at home: they say the deficit is too high so they need to hike taxes to reduce the amount we need to borrow.

I agree with them that the UK has to get the huge deficit down from the necessarily high levels to get us through lockdown. The Treasury said they could live with a deficit of £233.9bn this year. I thought that was too high, but also argued it was a very unlikely outcome in the  budget debate.

Now the Treasury thinks the deficit will come in at £183bn, £50bn lower. It is currently running more than £60bn lower with just three months more to report. In that case the Treasury on its own argument can easily afford to cancel the £12bn of National Insurance increase next year and forgo around £5bn of VAT revenue. It will still be reducing the deficit by a large amount compared with its assessment of what was realistic last March.

I have a strong economic reason why they need to do this. Why has the deficit fallen so much more than they thought this year? It is because the economy has grown more than they thought. It is also because the Treasury/OBR model of the economy underestimates just how much extra tax revenue they will collect if the economy grows faster.

By the same token, if they insist on slowing the economy too much this spring they will collect less tax revenue than they thought. They could end up with a bigger deficit from too tough a squeeze. If people spend less on non essentials because they are squeezed, there will be less VAT. There will also be fewer service sector jobs so less income tax. There will be less profits tax from non energy businesses.

I do not want the Government to fall for Treasury austerity economics again and plunge us into another slowdown – which will lead to more self defeating cries from the Treasury for higher taxes and lower spending. Of course we need to get inflation down. The Bank has now taken some necessary action to start to do that in the second half of this year.

The single biggest problem is the price of energy. The Government needs to get on with licencing and encouraging more domestic production of oil and gas, and more domestic capacity for reliable electricity supply. This is the way to address the chronic domestic shortage and to start to unwind the foolish dependence to sky-high priced imports from a continent even more short of energy than we are.

Vote Leave did not highlight borders and immigration policy during the campaign, aware of how it would be wrongly caricatured by Remain. Nonetheless others did regularly raise the issue, and many Leave voters liked the idea of controlling numbers of migrants welcomed to the Uk once we had left the EU. The general idea of a points based economic migrant policy where the UK decided how many people to invite and which skill sets would be most welcome gained general support amongst the Leave  majority. There was a strong feeling that the EU economic model of allowing many people in to take low paid jobs in the UK keeping downwards pressure on wages was a bad one.

Most of us agreed that  the UK should continue once out to offer refuge to those fleeing danger from evil regimes along with other advanced countries, doing our bit to alleviate these ills. Unfinished business from our time in the EU is the persistence of people trafficking and smuggling across the Channel. The old routes using lorries across the narrow straits are now better controlled, only for the trade to develop more reliance on small boats.

The government is putting in a points based system and is out to limit low skills and no skills migration from the safe countries of the EU, something we were not allowed to do as members pledged to free movement. It is important this policy is not damaged by frequent abuse of the sea route by economic  migrants arriving without permission. Their lives are placed at risk by the business organisers of unsafe boat trips who violate our migration laws but also break EU laws over sea voyage safety and regulation, over  taxation of business profits, and standards of employment.

Ministers have made clear their wish to stop this evil trade in people. Border Force say they will not turn back the small boats to France to show this is a futile trade in  the way Australia stopped it for safety reasons. In which case it is surely a fair challenge to Border Force to ask them how they do intend to stop it if they do not like the Minister’s instruction. It is their job to close down these illegal acts, to protect the lives of the trafficked and to enforce the law on both sides of the Channel against unsafe and illegal travel.

A big Brexit win can be higher wages for low skilled jobs with fewer economic migrants and more investment to help workers recruited locally.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday 25^th February at 11.00 Rt Hon Sir John Redwood D.Phil FCSI will give a lecture in the Old Library, All Souls College Oxford on the topic of the long  road to net zero.

 

The lecture will chart the continued dependence of the world on fossil fuels this decade. It will assess  the growing divide in approach between the UK and EU on the one hand and China, Russia and India on the other. It will ask how green are  various technologies recommended for the transition and warn  against compliant countries importing products with a high carbon content to lower their own CO2 scores. It will argue that the green revolution needs to be a popular revolution, driven by the wishes and needs of billions of consumers, just as the digital revolution has been. It will examine the way in which China and Russia might exploit their positions in industrial manufacture and oil and gas to shift the balance of world power.

To register your attendance, please visit the following weblink: https://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/event/long-road-net-zero

For those attending virtually, Microsoft Teams meeting links will be sent out 1 hour beforehand.