• Timeline
• Votes
• Speeches
• Tweets
• Contact

Alec Shelbrooke's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 21 Parliamentary debates in which Alec Shelbrooke has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 7 Jan 2026: Rural Communities

  I want to touch briefly on how good agricultural land is being taken over by solar farms. I am fed up to the back teeth of listening to Ministers say, “We must no longer be reliant on petrochemical dictators to control our energy.” China is a dictatorship, and it controls 90% of the processed materials for renewable energy. I would have a huge amount of respect for the Minister if, in her summing up, she admitted that the dictatorship of China is no better than some of the dictatorships of the petrochemical states. We are just transferring the problem from one region to another. Ministers should not pretend that they are any different.

  [Source]

• 16 Oct 2025: Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

  That brings me to the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), who has a genuine interest and expertise. He gave a wide ranging and important speech and made an important point about the ocean being one of the biggest solutions to climate change. He is indeed right that the European economic zones are a legacy from the days when we owned half the world. One of the great achievements of the last Conservative Government is the work we did on the blue belt and on ensuring that we protected important marine environments. I do not know whether he will expand on this in later debates, but I noticed that he did not appear to be fully supportive of giving up on the fisheries from the EU with the EU reset. I wonder whether he may have things to add to that debate at another time, but perhaps now is not the time and place. However, he does make an important point that we can only do what we have to do as a country if we have the ability to do it in those waters.

  I had the pleasure back in May of being part of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to Svalbard. The University Centre in Svalbard has dozens of countries, universities, academic institutions and hundreds of nationalities studying that region, climate change and the effect it has on the Arctic, and the effects on ecosystems. It is absolutely vital, as we see the geopolitical tensions forming in areas where they have not been before, that we have those strong protections in place.

  [Source]

  I will not be drawn quite into that trap about releasing Joint Intelligence reports. However, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, because there is no doubt that we are talking about sovereign security if we do not get this right, and that applies to all countries around the world. If we allow climate change and not the protection of valuable ecosystems, as has been described by many hon. and right hon. Members across the House, it is all of us who will suffer.

  [Source]

• 14 Oct 2025: COP30: Food System Transformation

  17:14

  I will discuss climate change and what we need to do on renewables, but we must also recognise that, although there are appropriate places to put solar farms, it is not appropriate to put them on good-quality farming land. I am constantly fighting solar farms on farming land in the Vale of York in my constituency that is very productive but is now being sold off for solar farms. There has to be a balance between what we are trying to achieve in moving to renewable energy and what we have to achieve in sustainable farming.

  [Source]

  17:17

  Saying that net zero is hard to achieve is very different from saying that we are chucking out all ideas about climate change. It is a false target, but it needs to be worked towards. I participated in every aspect of the Energy Bill, so I am not just saying all this off the back of my hand. One thing I mentioned throughout that process is that it is important to take people with us, because this has to be a joint effort if we are to achieve the objectives that we want to achieve.

  [Source]

  17:17

  In the time I have left, I will ask the Minister a few questions. First, the Deputy Prime Minister made no reference to food systems or food security when he was at the UN Security Council on 29 September, so can the Minister confirm whether the Government have a specific agenda on this point at COP30? If so, are we partnering with other countries in that endeavour?

  Returning to the situation in Ukraine, has the Minister raised concerns with Brazil, the host of COP30, about the fact that it is still buying significant quantities of Russian oil? Has the UK officially asked Brazil to wean itself off Russian oil? Has it offered alternative solutions? If not, will he do so ahead of COP30? Finally, Brazil is purchasing millions of tonnes of fertilisers from Russia. Will the Minister equally be raising those points?

  [Source]

• 5 Jun 2025: Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations

  15:51

  The hon. Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) was focusing on some of the planning issues, and that is where I want to go, too. When we look at this debate overall, what we are talking about is a lack of statutory guidance. I want to get on the record immediately that this is not a debate of “Forget net zero and forget about renewables.” That is not the debate, and we are not deniers along that road, but there are serious concerns. The leader of my party has raised those concerns and immediately been accused of being anti net zero. We have to take the concerns seriously, because, as the hon. Member for Horsham outlined, there are changes, slowly but surely, in the materials being used. Nickel manganese, for example, has a vaporisation point of 900ºC. These fires can burn easily over 1,000ºC. I want to focus my attention on the fallout.

  [Source]

• 4 Mar 2025: Market Towns: Cultural Heritage

  A range of policies, whether it is taxation on farms, which contribute directly to the ecosystem of local communities, or net zero contributions that make premises impossible to rehire, will have the effect of hollowing out vital parts of the community. All those issues need to be addressed.

  [Source]

• 13 Jan 2025: Gas Storage Levels

  The Minister has several times mentioned energy security, and has said that the drive to net zero will make us more energy-secure, but now that Europe has learned the lesson of taking fossil fuels from Russia, we will take our renewable resources from China, which manufactures and processes the vast of majority of the materials needed. What contingency plans has the Minister made in case China decides to get into a trade war with the UK on renewables, or to cut off supply? The threats that could come from China are exactly the same as those that came from Russia about fossil fuels.

  [Source]

• 16 Dec 2024: United Front Work Department

  The west certainly learned a lesson about energy supplies and where they come from when Russia invaded. To build on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) said, I want to press the Minister on solar and renewables. The Government have an agenda to push this country quickly towards renewable energy, yet China manufactures and processes a lot of the materials that we need for it. Before we accelerate towards that goal, will the Minister undertake an assessment of the risk to our energy supply? That is a crucial piece of our national security.

  [Source]

• 29 Oct 2024: Zero Emission Vans

  16:50

  I know we can all agree that vans play an integral role in our economy, and if the UK is to decarbonise successfully, vans will need to play a central part. Any measures in service of this welcome transition must offer a pragmatic and reasonable way forward, which the hon. Lady outlined so well. It is key to remember that too speedy a transition to electric vehicles can present challenges that we may not yet be ready to address.

  It is probably no surprise that I want to draw attention, first, to the measures taken by the last Conservative Government and the manner in which they did so. They spent over £2 billion to transition the UK to zero emission vehicle use, and as of November 2023, the plug-in van grant alone had supported over 40,000 electric vans and HGVs across the UK. The previous Government also acknowledged the challenges presented by battery warranty requirements and amended battery warranty capacities, which was a welcome move. In 2023, the Department for Transport took the welcome step of announcing that the additional five-hour training requirement for drivers would be removed, and that it would make changes to towing allowances for electric vans weighing up to 4.25 tonnes. Again, the hon. Lady touched on some of the very important issues facing the industry.

  The industry and drivers would appreciate more certainty about what measures the Government intend to retain and what action they intend to undertake. I hope that the Minister will offer some specificity. I also hope that the Government will commit to engaging with the industry on a range of issues, including MOT testing and drivers’ hours to further understand how the Government can pragmatically remove barriers to aid decarbonisation for fleets.

  [Source]

• 18 Jul 2024: Foreign Affairs and Defence

  14:22

  Climate change has already been mentioned today. An undeniable fact in that connection is the opening up of the High North and the north-east passage. Another undeniable fact is that the Russians have been rebuilding and revamping bases along their northern shoreline, and yet another undeniable fact is that the Ukraine war that Vladimir Putin illegally started, thinking he would be able to walk in and dominate that country in a very short space of time, has decimated his economy in the long run. Going to war will always decimate an economy, but this war has decimated Russia’s military, costing it a huge number of military personnel, and has made Putin reliant on other countries, such as China. It is notable that before the Ukraine war Chinese vessels never really went into the High North, but they do now because Russia lets them in.

  [Source]

• 5 Sep 2023: Energy Bill [Lords]

  16:19

  One of the issues that I wanted to expand on is about some of the alternatives. We keep talking about electric vehicles moving down, but hydrogen combustion vehicles offer a real opportunity to move forward. We also talk about net zero, but this has now moved to zero-emission vehicles. That rules out hydrogen combustion, so again, we are going down a rabbit hole of just having electric vehicles, but an electric vehicle is not a zero-emission vehicle. If it was, the underground would have the cleanest air in London, and it does not, because there are a lot of particulates around it.

  [Source]

• 20 Jun 2023: Energy Bill [Lords] (Thirteenth sitting)

  15:14

  I have spoken before in the House about taking the public with us, which is really important. Some very interesting polling in The Sun newspaper today showed that 65% of people agree with the idea of net zero. That was the only positive outcome; all the other aspects of it were rejected. One of the reasons for that is the speed at which things need to happen, which creates a real burden on people. I will touch on a few themes that have been mentioned. The issue surrounding the coalmine, as the Minister described, is about coking coal for making steel. We know that almost all of what we need to achieve in the renewables sector—indeed, in anything that involves manufacturing—relies on huge quantities of steel.

  A huge amount has been said about the decarbonisation of that process, which, as the Minister pointed out, cannot be an entire decarbonisation, for chemical reasons. Electric arc furnaces have one key word in them: electric. So far, we have talked about using electricity to make steel, the expansion of electric vehicles and charging those vehicles, and the generation of hydrogen, which also involves electricity. We do not actually have the capacity at the moment to generate all the electricity we need, and that leaves us with an interesting choice. Throughout humanity’s history, there are three things that it fears more than anything else: dark, cold and hunger.

  [Source]

  15:19

  I keep coming back to the fundamental idea that we have to take the public with us. We are trying to accelerate very quickly, and I am sure there is not a single Member in this Committee or the House who does not want us to decarbonise as much as we can. One of the reasons I mentioned Germany is that I am frustrated that we are doing a lot, and yet just over the channel there are countries that are not pursuing the agenda that we are pursuing because they say, “We’ve got to keep the lights on and do x, y and z,” following the energy decisions that they have made.

  [Source]

  15:22

  I am sure we all agree on decarbonisation objectives, but clauses such as clause 270 and the tying of hands will lead to unforeseen circumstances. Looking at the Bill as a whole, I see a lot that we want to achieve but I am not sure that we will be able to do so within the given timeframe.

  [Source]

• 13 Jun 2023: Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Ninth sitting)

  14:13

  The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about energy security and the ability for outside players—certainly, if we consider this from a Chinese perspective—to take control. On energy security, does he share my concern about the fact that 98% of the materials used in renewable energy come directly out of China? Does that not in itself represent a similar security risk to the one he is outlining?

  [Source]

• 6 Jun 2023: Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)

  10:40

  I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for what was almost a warm-up act to introduce me to the stage. I agreed with every word: we do have to take the public with us, and a movement is building in the country against net zero and an increase in bills. There are many issues, as he has outlined.

  [Source]

  10:52

  These are important areas. We must not be blind to the fact that the public are losing faith in the climate agenda overall. There are many reasons why that may be happening. It may well be just algorithms on social media that draw certain people together, but we cannot be blind to the fact that there is a growing movement against net zero. There is a growing movement in this House to talk about having a referendum on whether we want to achieve net zero. Some colleagues are now pushing that forward.

  [Source]

• 23 May 2023: Energy Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

  11:08

  To draw on the hon. Gentleman’s comments about unknown knowns and so on, we have to be careful at this early stage that we do not regulate to the point that we choke off innovation and research. A complaint is often made at several levels about how difficult it can sometimes be in this country for innovators and entrepreneurs to move forward without getting tied up in huge amounts of red tape. Given the global competition that exists in the field of climate change, environment and green energy, we want to have a competitive advantage.

  We all talk about the huge potential investment in the green economy, about the green investment bank and about the massive changes that have taken place in the Treasury in recent years. Of course, we talk about having a smooth transition when there is a potential change of Government. That is why the Bill is so important and why I pushed to be on this Committee. The Bill is a major change that will stand this country—and indeed the world, if we can export some of the technology—in good stead in terms of achieving the better society we are trying to achieve on climate change. It is important that we go down this road, but let us not make the provisions so restrictive that we choke off the innovation at which this country excels.

  [Source]

• 9 May 2023: Energy Bill [Lords]

  I want to bring my right hon. Friend back to his comments about energy security. The Bill outlines lots of ways in which that will be achieved, but he will be aware that the vast majority of materials needed for renewable energy are processed in China. Are we not therefore in danger of creating the same situation with renewables as we had with fossil fuels and Russia, and what assessment has he made of energy security in those particular areas?

  [Source]

  19:53

  Much has been said about energy security and trying to get away from the situations we face with Russian gas, fossil fuels and so on, but I am concerned that we are moving into another area of energy dependence on another autocracy or dictatorship, China. I raised this point with the Secretary of State earlier, and he focused on uranium, but that was not what I was getting at. China has sucked up the processing of many of the materials in the world that are needed to make renewable energy. According to statistics put forward by Morgan Stanley, China refines 59% of the world’s lithium, 80% of the cobalt, 69% of nickel sulphate, 95% of magnesium, 100% of spherical graphite, 69% of synthetic graphite, as well as producing 70% of battery cells, 78% of cathodes and 91% of anodes.

  Every hon. Member in this Chamber wants to move towards a net zero society, but if we do not do so sustainably, taking the public with us, we will find that harder and harder to do, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth outlined with regard to the buying of gas boilers making the situation worse. Recognising that the supply of the rare earth elements that are needed may provide hostages to fortune with countries such as China, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to look into how the Government can help companies to research and develop hydrogen combustion.

  [Source]

• 13 Mar 2023: Integrated Review Refresh

  16:19

  I very much welcome the review that my right hon. Friend has announced today. He spoke about the relevance of the critical minerals strategy. May I highlight something for him to take back to other Departments that work alongside his? We all recognise the lessons to be learned from our reliance on Russian minerals, and how we have had to change that, but 95% of the elements used in renewable energy—solar panels or whatever—are processed in China. We cannot escape the science, but we can ask other Departments to diversify how we do renewables. Will my right hon. Friend take back to other Departments the message that we need to look at investing in and working on things like hydrogen combustion, so that we are not entirely reliant on minerals coming out of China?

  [Source]

• 6 Jul 2022: NATO Accession: Sweden and Finland

  13:08

  Of course this is a hugely welcome announcement and one of the more significant moments in the history of the NATO alliance, not least because Sweden and Finland bring a huge military contribution to the alliance, so this cannot in any way be seen as a one-way street. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as important as it is to talk about hardware—Finland and Sweden are able to supply several icebreakers, with climate change and the high north’s opening up—cyber-defence is one of the biggest issues? It is very difficult to identify where cyber-attacks come from. It would probably be quite easy to make one appear to come from this place, and who would we retaliate against? Does she agree that the offer that Finland and Sweden can make to the NATO alliance is vital, but also that the position and power we have in this country to help to stop cyber-attacks and defend those nations is equally important in this long-lasting, world-beating defence alliance?

  [Source]

• 14 Jul 2021: Upholding COP26 Commitments

  What steps he plans to take to help ensure that all COP26 parties uphold the commitments of that conference.

  [Source]

• 1 Jul 2019: Department for International Development

  Does my right hon. Friend agree that we come back to the problem of public perception of international aid? When we tackle climate change, disease and terrorism, that has a direct benefit to this country. Although it may be thought that diseases are thousands of miles away, they are only one plane journey away. Does my right hon. Friend share my frustration that we do not do enough to explain how taking world-leading responsibility directly benefits the UK?

  [Source]

  18:01

  I wonder if the Minister can develop the following point in summing up. At the climate change lobby on Wednesday, I was asked a question by some of my constituents and I did some research at the Library. The statement made is not actually correct, but I will come on to that. It was said that 90% of our development projects use fossil fuels. I went to the Library and asked some questions, and I will read out two sections from the reply, which I think the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby) might recognise:

  I ask the Minister to go away and look at where we can perhaps shift the balance in the middle to lower income countries, because clearly we want to make a big impact on climate change. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) said that in trying to make a difference in the world we can reduce our carbon emissions but that that is a small drop in terms of what happens; however, we have the ability in the international development budget to have a far greater reach than to just those changes we do here in climate change. The Minister may not be able to answer that point from the Dispatch Box tonight, so I ask her to go away and see whether a balance can be struck to get more renewables into those projects and move away from fossil fuels, because ultimately that will give far more sustainability to the ongoing energy needs of those countries than just bringing in what is rapidly becoming a very old technology.

  The one message I would like to send tonight is that this is not just about giving away our money to poor countries; this is an investment in our own country and in the world, and therefore in the futures of our children and ongoing generations, and that it all adds to our bigger security picture, our bigger climate change picture and our bigger moral duty, which allows us to lead this world in a way that not many countries can.

  [Source]

• 27 Nov 2013: Cost of Living

  Sadly, proposals were completely lacking in the shadow Chief Secretary’s speech. There was a constant barrage on what the Government had, he thought, got wrong, but no recognition of the fact that if we are going to tackle the cost of living crisis, we must tackle its root causes. The cost of living is going up because energy prices are high, and that has nothing to do with the six energy companies—there were 14 when the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, but there were only six by the time he left that office, so it is a bit rich of him to come across saying that it is terrible. The inescapable truth is that the price of oil is not going to come down.

  [Source]

• 14 May 2013: Cost of Living

  13:38

  Does my right hon. Friend agree that, whether or not people are sceptical about climate change, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and carbon is equally as important to energy security as it is to climate change? This policy is very important in making sure that we have energy security in this country.

  [Source]

  15:55

  My hon. Friend is eloquently putting the case for those who doubt that global warming is down to climate change, and I am sure that many support his views, but does he agree that moving to a more renewable energy environment is important for energy security as much as anything else?

  [Source]

See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate