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Charlotte Nichols's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 16 Parliamentary debates in which Charlotte Nichols has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 27 Apr 2023: Business of the House

  13:29

  In the two years since this Government recklessly disbanded the Industrial Strategy Council, other economies with a more proactive approach to decarbonisation, artificial intelligence and automation, sciences such as genomics and cyber are fast overtaking us. Not only are we not a world leader in the technologies in which we should and could be a world leader, but we are barely even a world follower at this point. In recent weeks, countries such as Sweden have showcased to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee fully zero-carbon steel and battery gigafactories at commercial scale, on which this country has no realistic pathway even to begin work. When will we see substantial Government time for horizon scanning for an industrial strategy that is fit for the future, instead of tinkering around the edges as we get left further behind?

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• 6 Dec 2022: Sustainable Energy Generation: Burning Trees

  09:43

  Drax burns 27 million trees a year. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy plans to burn 120 million trees a year by 2050. That is far more than the amount of chicken waste that will be burned and will take much longer to replace. By comparison, the New Forest has 46 million trees; that shows the scale of the importation the process requires. It will add to the carbon cost before the wood is even burned. The wood itself is especially harmful: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that burning wood creates 18% more CO 2 than burning coal.

  We increasingly recognise the damage that centuries of deforestation have done to our planet, environment and biodiversity. The Government’s net zero strategy envisages a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage technology that depends both on burned trees regrowing immediately and on the carbon released being captured from Drax’s chimneys. If both were possible, accountants could tally these as negative emissions, but the calculations do not adequately weigh the costs of deforestation and transport or the opportunity cost of other energy alternatives. It is foolish to lean on an energy source that depends on the mass importation of raw materials from thousands of miles away, especially when doing so is likely to drive up the commodity price of the wood involved.

  Our energy and environmental needs are great, while our resources are limited. Rather than relying on a monopoly supplier of this polluting and expensive technology, we should promote reforestation, not just replenishment, and invest in truly green energy sources such as nuclear, hydrogen and other renewables. Will the Minister commit to ending the double bookkeeping of the carbon savings of biomass? Will he confirm that if the numbers do not add up, biomass will not be part of the green taxonomy and Drax’s contract will not be renewed?

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• 9 Mar 2022: Bus Service Improvement Plans: North-west England

  09:35

  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and absolutely agree that greening our transport infrastructure is a really important part both of meeting our climate objectives as a country and of ensuring that people have good-quality services they can rely on. I am proud of the fact that in Warrington we have bid to become one of the country’s first all-electric bus towns. Hydrogen for transport also has a really important part to play. With a lot of hydrogen production taking place across the north-west and in the Liverpool city region in particular, it is something that we are very excited about locally. I know that hydrogen trains are being manufactured in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). We are excited to be leading in the north-west and hope this can be rolled out more widely.

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  09:39

  From Greater Manchester to Lancaster, places bypassed by good public transport for far too long have been demanding real change. They put forward an ambitious blueprint to use buses to connect people to jobs, families and opportunities, and tackle the climate crisis in the process. Despite the challenges, they have plans to completely overhaul and reregulate the bus network as part of the bus service improvement plan. It was supposed to be about improved accessibility across the network, including level access from train to platform, and it is part of the work that is beginning on networks of cycling and walking routes across our region.

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• 10 Jan 2022: Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

  As our energy bills rocket in the months to come, as a result of huge volatility in the international gas markets, we will be reminded yet again of the importance of the diversification, sovereignty, security and constancy of our power supplies, which Labour’s amendments address. Ensuring that there is a further generation of nuclear plants is the best way to address that as well as to be environmentally sustainable as we seek net zero.

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• 21 Jun 2021: Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

  17:52

  The Government’s White Paper has not only nothing on the natural environment, but almost nothing on affordable rent or on net zero. It does not address wider infrastructure such as transport, retail or leisure, and simply puts developers in the driving seat of their cranes and diggers and gives them a green light to do what they like. I am not opposed to house building. Indeed, probably the largest volume of casework that I deal with relates to the lack of appropriate housing, especially affordable housing for large families and for constituents of my age looking to get on to the housing ladder.

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• 18 May 2021: 10-point Plan: Six Months On

  Thousands of my constituents work in the nuclear sector, which only this week has seen students from Warrington University Technical College beginning prestigious degree apprenticeships at Sellafield in Warrington—proof that the sector is a vital partner in the skills and levelling-up agendas, meeting our decarbonisation goals and creating high-quality green jobs. The Government have rightly concluded that we need much more nuclear power in the mix to reach net zero. However, under their watch, three large-scale nuclear projects have been abandoned due to the lack of a financing mechanism, which the Government claim to have been working on for four years. Why is nuclear financing more complicated than nuclear science?

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• 14 Apr 2021: Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces

  Ministers say that money is better spent on new technologies. Shiny new tech may be exciting, but leaving aside their repeated failures to deliver over the past decade and to have a procurement policy for defence spending that supports British jobs, tech cannot counter all challenges. In addition to the military threats that we have heard discussed today, in recent years we have needed our armed forces and their expertise as we have coped with increasing floods caused by climate change, and, yes, the covid pandemic as well. Are these strategic threats that Ministers think are either less likely in future or can be addressed with new kit? The first duty of Government is keeping their citizens safe, and reducing our capabilities by this level does the exact opposite.

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• 25 Mar 2021: UK Steel Production: Greensill Capital

  Last year, the Government spent £4.8 billion on subsidies for wind power, yet almost no wind farms use UK steel. Those orders would be a boon to the struggling steel industry, but the Department does not even include renewable energy products in its annual list of orders that went to domestic suppliers. In January, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), said that the Government would consider reporting the share of UK steel used in offshore wind projects

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• 4 Mar 2021: Business of the House

  As a member of the BEIS Committee, I was alarmed by press reports overnight that the Business Secretary has, without consultation, axed the Industrial Strategy Council, and that the industrial strategy has been cancelled as a footnote to the Budget, at a time when an industrial strategy could not be more vital, as we rise to meet the challenges of rebuilding after covid, the climate emergency and the post-Brexit landscape, particularly in such regions as the north-west. Can the Leader of the House please advise when the Business Secretary will make a statement to the House for scrutiny of such an important change in policy direction, rather than Parliament finding out about it, which seems to be a recurring theme, through the media?

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• 28 Jan 2021: Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

  This year, Holocaust Memorial Day and today’s debate coincide with the Jewish festival of Tu Bishvat. It is one of four “new years” within the Jewish calendar, marking the birthday of trees for the purposes of the mitzvot relating to farming practices and the permissibility of the fruits of those trees for eating or bringing to Jerusalem as a tithe. In contemporary Judaism, and in the context of increased awareness around ecological issues and the climate emergency, the festival is having something of a renaissance, with millions of trees planted every year and lively debates within our community about what we can learn from our traditions of sustainable farming practices and respect for the divinity of the natural world. In the context of Holocaust Memorial Day, there are some deeper lessons we can take from Tu Bishvat into our reflection, as we honour the lives of those murdered in the holocaust and subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur, and into action as we resolve to make “never again” about more than just platitudes.

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• 21 Jan 2021: Business of the House

  Storm Christoph has brought with it widespread and severe flooding across Warrington North, with many residents having to be evacuated and devastating damage to homes. It has been heartbreaking to receive photos and videos from inside constituents’ homes in the worst-affected areas. I pay tribute to the work of the emergency services and Warrington Borough Council, which have been working throughout the night to keep residents safe. Given that flooding is likely to become an increasing issue due to the climate emergency and the fragmentation and continuing underfunding of risk management authorities with responsibility for flooding, can the Leader of the House please arrange for the House to debate the impact of Storm Christoph, which affects so many constituencies of hon. and right hon. Members across the House, and how we can build resilience to end the misery of persistent flooding in our communities?

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• 17 Nov 2020: National Security and Investment Bill

  It has taken more than four years for the Government to bring forward the proposals in the Bill to allay those fears. In that time, the nuclear sector, which offers both reliable low-carbon energy and high-skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs, has suffered paralysis. Our fleet of nuclear power stations is ageing and needs renewing. The Government promised an energy White Paper in summer 2019, which has been delayed and delayed ever since. In that time, we have seen Hitachi withdraw from its planned investment in a nuclear plant at Wylfa because of the Government’s hesitation in agreeing a funding agreement. The whole sector, and thousands of people in quality jobs, including almost 4,500 civil nuclear workers in my constituency, are still waiting to hear a clear plan and direction from the Government. We must not lose those jobs, and the planet cannot afford stalling over this green energy sector.

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• 10 Sep 2020: Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee

  If we are to meet net zero, including targets on the electrification of transport and the decarbonisation of heating, either by electricity or by hydrogen produced by electricity, as the citizens assembly highlighted, we will need a lot of power, but not all of this can come from intermittent renewables. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time for the Government to get serious and set out plans for all the low-carbon generation we will need, including nuclear, which provides high-skilled jobs for his constituents and mine?

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• 23 Jun 2020: Trade Bill (Sixth sitting)

  Very quickly, the provisions in the amendment could prove to be some of the most significant debated today, particularly proposed new paragraph (e) regarding antibiotics. We have seen that antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest threats—perhaps even an existential threat—facing humanity. It is as significant as the climate crisis. As we have seen with coronavirus, it would wreak not just a public health impact but an economic impact on our country.

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• 18 Jun 2020: Trade Bill (Fourth sitting)

  Just to pick up on that point, it is important to consider employment multipliers in public procurement around renewables. I am concerned that as the balance of renewables in our energy mix has increased substantially over the past 10 years, which is fantastic news for the UK’s commitment to decarbonisation, the number of green jobs has actually significantly reduced. The Office for National Statistics estimates that about 40,000 green jobs have been lost during a period in which the renewable output in our energy mix trebled. A big part of that is procurement, because as we are investing more in wind technology, a lot of this is coming in from Korea, Denmark and Holland. Meanwhile, companies such as Appledore and BiFab, whose shipyards manufacture things such as jackets for wind turbines, are lying empty because the Government are not procuring them from these places. I just really want to pick up on my hon. Friend’s point about the need to lock in this legislation going forward to ensure that, as we meet our climate change objectives, we are also meeting our economic and jobs objectives, too.

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• 15 Jan 2020: A Green Industrial Revolution

  16:57

  Let me turn to my own new role. Every Member of this House has a solemn duty to their constituents, and it is a duty that has rarely been so important, as we stand on the precipice of environmental catastrophe. I am proud that Labour-led Warrington Borough Council has declared a climate emergency, and I will be working with it to deliver a green industrial revolution that puts power, in its most literal sense, into the hands of our community. We have a long-standing science and engineering base in the town. Indeed, it is not uncommon to run into nuclear physicists at the pub. Warrington is strategically located to benefit from developments in the wider region in hydrogen gas and tidal power, among other sources of zero and low-carbon energy, so a real, green northern powerhouse is right at the top of my agenda, building on my work on a just transition with the trade union GMB prior to entering Parliament.

  There is a tired adage that we do not make anything in this country any more, but while Warrington has a proud industrial heritage that earned it its nickname “The Wire”, it is not about being nostalgic about some halcyon days past. Warrington has a proud industrial future too. We manufacture a fifth of the world’s gin in Warrington North at the G&J distillery, which has been going since 1761, and there is a really thriving local craft gin scene with local businesses like the 3 Pugs distillery started in Orford. But if gin is not your thing, don’t worry—we also have fantastic breweries like Burtonwood Brewery and the Coach House Brewing Company, and many fantastic pubs to enjoy their beers in. But it is not just about booze. According to Make UK, there are 255 manufacturers in Warrington North. The future of manufacturing in Britain depends on the cost and security of energy as we decarbonise, making today’s debate very important.

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate