The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 25 November.
“With permission, I would like to make a Statement about the COP 30 climate summit.
The climate crisis represents the greatest long-term threat we face as a world, but the transition also represents the greatest economic opportunity of our time. At home, we are driving for clean energy and climate action, because it is right for energy security, lower bills, good jobs and growth for the British people, as well as for protecting future generations. We went to COP because, with the UK representing just 1% of annual global emissions, working with other countries to tackle the climate crisis is the only way to protect our home and way of life, and because there are huge investment and export opportunities for our country by accelerating the transition globally.
More than 190 countries participated in this COP to build on the progress made over more than three decades of global co-operation, which has seen us move from a world heading for 4 degrees centigrade or more of warming to one where national commitments put us on course for around 2.3 degrees to 2.5 degrees; from a world where no major economy had a net-zero target to one where 80% of global GDP is covered, thanks in no small part to the leadership of the UK at COP 26 in Glasgow; and from a world where a majority of energy investment was in fossil fuels to one where twice as much is invested in clean energy. The energy transition is happening, the world is moving and multilateralism is working. The forces around the world—including here in Britain—who want to deny that the climate crisis exists, or to delay the action we need to address it, are losing. But at the same time, we were conscious in Belém of the further progress that needs to be made. Our Brazilian hosts were determined to make this an ‘implementation COP’, and the negotiations served as a focal point for action. This was the first COP to be held in the Amazon, and therefore a significant focus was on protecting forests. The UK was proud to work with Brazil to help it develop the pioneering Tropical Forest Forever Facility, and work on this was moved forward at COP.
The UK was also proud to work alongside the Brazilian presidency on the global climate action agenda, which is about building coalitions of Governments, businesses, cities and civil society groups to accelerate action on issues including reducing methane emissions, phasing out coal and driving investment in clean energy. Thousands of British businesses, as well as our researchers, universities, mayors and others, were involved. The agenda is part of the unstoppable transition that is happening in the real economy, including here in Britain, where our net-zero sectors are growing three times faster than the economy as a whole, and where £52 billion of private investment has been announced in clean energy since July 2024.
Turning to the negotiations themselves, I want to put on record my thanks to the UK’s brilliant COP negotiating team, led by our chief negotiator Kate Hughes. I saw once again in Belém the huge admiration there is around the world for the talent, expertise and dedication of our Civil Service, as well as the recognition of British climate leadership, which has built up over many decades under Governments of different political parties—the foundation of our ability to stand up for Britain on the world stage.
Of course, there is a truth that we must acknowledge: these summits are hard and complex. More than 190 countries negotiating how to transform their economies and societies is never going to be easy. We did not get everything we wanted from the talks, and there were times when it appeared that there would be no agreement, but in the end an agreement was reached, and the outcome represented progress on three critical issues.
The first is about redoubling our efforts to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees. Last year, the Prime Minister announced the UK’s target to reduce emissions by at least 81% by 2035, based on the previous Government’s carbon budget. Many other countries have announced commitments over the last 12 months, including China pledging to cut its emissions for the first time, alongside the EU, Brazil and a total of 120 countries, covering three-quarters of global emissions.
However, we must do more to close the gap to 1.5 degrees. Recognising the urgency of action, it was agreed in the final COP 30 text that all countries had to play a part to keep 1.5 degrees within reach, that this required us to meet net zero as a world by or around the middle of the century, and that all countries should be encouraged to raise their targets. There will now be a forward process into COP 31 next year, so we remain focused on the urgency of this issue.
Secondly, ambition on reducing emissions goes hand in hand with finance. This is in our interests, because there is no route to global stability, growth and development without supporting developing countries to take the low-carbon path and to better protect their populations from the impacts of the climate crisis. At COP 29 in Baku last year, countries agreed that we needed to mobilise at least $300 billion per year for developing countries by 2035, and to scale up towards $1.3 trillion from all sources. COP 30 agreed to target a share of the global resources agreed last year towards a trebling of adaptation finance by 2035, to make sure that developing countries have the resilience they need.
Thirdly, we know that there is no solution to the climate crisis without action on the transition away from fossil fuels. The need for this transition was agreed by all countries at COP 28 in Dubai, including by the UK under the last Conservative Government. The Brazilian presidency put forward the idea of agreeing to a road map so that we could grapple with the difficult issues facing fossil fuel-producing countries, as well as the need for a just and fair transition.
At COP 30, we saw the emergence of a broad coalition of 83 countries from the global North and global South, backed by more than 140 global businesses and civil society groups that endorsed the idea of a road map. This turned out to be the hardest sticking point in the talks, and it could not be agreed in the final text because some countries objected, yet as a result of the momentum built, the Brazilian presidency announced at the conclusion of the COP that it would launch such a road map on fossil fuels, as well as a road map to halt and reverse global deforestation. These coalitions of the willing are important when we cannot reach universal agreement, as we have seen with the Powering Past Coal Alliance, initiated by Britain and Canada, which is now supported by 65 national Governments.
The COP 30 agreement also took important steps forward on building carbon markets, the just transition, technology transfer, and transparency on implementing commitments so that countries are properly held to account. Taken together, this package represents incremental but important progress and extends the arc of the progress we have seen over 30 years of COPs. That was particularly important this year, because the summit was a test of whether countries would continue to work together on the collective threat we face or whether, with the US stepping out of the Paris Agreement, there would be a domino effect of others departing. That has not happened. At COP 30, more than 190 countries reaffirmed their faith in the Paris Agreement, their faith in working together to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees, and their faith in multilateralism.
The message coming out of Belém was clear: whatever the challenges, clean energy and climate action are the foundations on which the global economy is being remade and rebuilt. That is good for Britain because of the economic opportunities that clean energy represents. It is good for Britain because it is the route to energy security and lower bills. And it is good for Britain because it is the only way we can keep future generations safe from the threat of climate breakdown. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on his recent appointment and welcome him to the Front Bench. The Secretary of State in the other place is fond of talking of the United Kingdom as a trailblazer. As the shadow Secretary of State in the other place outlined, we are—but for all the wrong reasons. We are the first country to voluntarily close down our own domestic energy supply and to voluntarily hike our own energy bills. We are not an example to the world: we are a warning.
Since the COP summit, it seems that the department has started to come to its senses. Monday’s termination of a liquified natural gas project in Mozambique is a welcome step. It was a typically green initiative with a well-meaning façade that was, in practice, damaging, as LNG gas emits four times more carbon than the North Sea off our very shores. These overseas initiatives are used to prop up a narrative of reduced emissions while simultaneously causing more harm to the natural world, and they encompass a whole one-third of our energy system.
Sadly, the Secretary of State’s Statement demonstrates that he has not returned from Brazil enlightened and that the department is still bound by his damaging ideology. He cites three achievements that he came back with from the summit. The first was the commitment to continue cutting global emissions towards net zero, which he said needed to be achieved by 2050. It should be noted that the Statement also acknowledged that the UK accounts for just under 1% of global emissions. That number has in fact halved in the past 20 years. Does the Minister not agree that this proves that the United Kingdom has already played its part in the net-zero drive?
Unfortunately, this COP 30 achievement will undoubtedly now be used to justify the continuation of his campaign to wreak utter havoc on the North Sea industry. The tired old clichés of a declining basin will be the response of the Government, and we have come to expect this narrative. But let us examine the human cost: 1,000 jobs per month, companies drawing back from investing and energy bills spiralling. I draw noble Lords’ attention to north of the border, where the Government are responsible for destroying what remains of Scotland’s industrial base. Alexander Dennis, Mossmorran, Grangemouth: going, going, gone. Is it time to accept that we need to face the root cause of this deindustrialisation, namely high energy costs and the effects of government green diktats?
My Lords, I start by welcoming the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead. I pay tribute to his experience and look forward to working opposite him going forward.
COP is 30 years old and multilateralism, as frustrating as it can be, remains the only practical means of protecting our shared home, planet Earth, and progressing our joint efforts to ensure the survival of future human generations. Here in the UK, the Met Office’s State of the UK Climate in 2024 report confirmed that the UK is warming at approximately 0.25 degrees per decade, with the past three years ranking among the five warmest since records began in 1884. While some continue to deny the existence of climate change, last year in the UK we had the worst-ever wildfire season and the second-worst harvest on record.
Our world is warming faster than we can change our carbon-based ways, and even more extreme weather is inevitable. I thank Brazil, the Secretary of State, the UK negotiating team and all those who worked tirelessly to keep the COP process alive. It is testimony to global co-operation that, despite the challenges, 194 parties united to adopt the text, confirming that the global transition towards low emissions and climate-resilient development is irreversible.
It is important to acknowledge that collective progress since the Paris Agreement has bent the emissions curve, moving projected warming from over 4 degrees Celsius to the 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius range. However, we cannot celebrate incremental progress when the future of our planet remains in jeopardy.
The final text acknowledged that the collective progress is
“not sufficient to achieve the temperature goal”
and that the carbon budget consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is now small and being rapidly depleted. The COP text acknowledges that there is likely to be an “overshoot” of the 1.5 degrees Celsius, the extent and duration of which we must work collectively to limit. This is a stark warning and my concern is that Governments have failed to grasp the urgency of the climate emergency.
My Lords, the climate crisis is the greatest long-term challenge we face, but, equally, the transition to clean energy is the greatest economic opportunity of our time. Emissions from energy being some 70% of emissions overall means that the path to clean energy is an essential part of tackling the climate crisis, not just in the UK but across the world. At home, our commitment to clean energy is about energy security, lower bills and good jobs. Globally, with the UK responsible for just 1% of emissions, working with other nations is the only way to protect our way of life and seize the opportunities of a green economy.
We are reflecting today on the outcomes of the COP 30 conference in Belém. More than 190 countries met in Belém, where the Brazilian-framed COP 30 focused on implementation. The UK worked with Brazil and partners to put forests at the heart of the agenda and supported global coalitions to cut methane, phase out coal and accelerate clean energy investment. The negotiations were tough, but progress was made on three critical fronts, and they will be reflected in some of the further questions that I think will follow from the Statement this evening.
The first goal is keeping 1.5degrees Celsius within reach. Countries reaffirmed their commitment to 1.5 degrees Celsius global net zero by mid-century and encouraged countries to raise their targets where needed to support this. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, underlined, we are quite a way from that, and some of the more faint-hearted among us may think that it is a target we cannot reach now. I accept that it is very difficult, but the signs are good that there are some possibilities to moving further towards making that target achievable, such as new commitments from China, for example, in its NDC coming into the COP at this stage. China has pledged to cut its emissions significantly for the first time. Indeed, 120 countries so far have come forward with 2035 NDC, with large numbers coming up in the next year, including India, which is an important actor in this realm.
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The second achievement that the Secretary of State trumpets is a commission to reduce emissions through working with the finance industry. Again, this achievement will not benefit the British people. Investment will not be channelled into reducing bills. The Government’s team returned from Brazil with a pledge to scale up funding for developing countries to $1.3 trillion. It is internationalism at the expense of the British people.
The Statement mentioned nothing of the £60 billion investment required to build energy infrastructure in our own country to meet the Government’s artificially hastened 2030 net-zero target for the electricity grid, and nothing of the £3 billion annual government policy cost to turn off the wind farms.
There was nothing on the investment desperately needed in our nuclear sector. Cutting emissions is a noble aim, but the Government are undertaking it in a haphazard and ideologically blinkered manner, all to the detriment of the British people.
Thirdly, there is the announcement of not one but two road maps: one to cut fossil fuels and one to cut deforestation. The Government already have a road map to cut fossil fuels. In fact, John Fingleton’s nuclear report was published last Monday. The Government seemed to have accepted the recommendations on Monday, but let us see if that translates into a policy U-turn. Will the Minister outline to the House the timetable for the implementation of the Fingleton recommendations in legislative terms?
I offer the same argument for the deforestation road map. One of the primary drivers of nature depletion in the UK is a sprawl of solar and wind farms across our countryside. If the Government want to put a halt to deforestation, it could begin at home. This unfortunately means moving away from the endless expansion of solar. The Government cannot have it both ways. Once again, they need to build more nuclear.
This summit and the Secretary of State’s Statement will, unfortunately, do nothing to help British people with the exorbitant cost of energy, where our industrial energy prices are seven times those of China and four times those of the US. Even if wholesale energy prices halve in the next five years, electricity bills will still be £200 higher per household. That is the direct cost of government policy. No number of multilateral commitments will ease that burden. Only a radically different approach to energy and a comprehensive plan for cheap energy will take us forward.
Any delay in action will push millions of vulnerable people further into poverty and lead to climate breakdown. Urgency must be met with decisive global leadership, yet the UK Government’s commitment to this leadership has been undermined by a lack of financial support. While the negotiations resulted in ambitious financial targets, such as the call to scale up financing to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2025 and the reward target to scale up and at least triple adaptation finance by 2035, the UK’s financial contributions failed to materialise.
The UK was acknowledged for working with Brazil to help it develop the pioneering Tropical Forest Forever Facility. This vital fund aims to prevent deforestation, yet while that fund secured $9.5 billion in commitments and was endorsed by 53 countries, the UK Government did not contribute. I note that the Secretary of State said in the other place:
“We have not ruled out contributing to investing in the TFFF in future”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/25; col. 247.]
We hope this is the case. Will the Minister say what non-financial contributions the Government are able to make?
We remain concerned about the UK’s official development assistance and the cuts to those programmes. They are vital programmes helping those on the front line of climate change to adapt. Global leadership could see the UK as part of the chair of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, working alongside Brazil, and using remote monitoring to help detect methane leaks and using our world-leading oil and gas expertise to help fix them.
The Government rightly acknowledge that the transition away from fossil fuels is critical, and that it was
“the hardest sticking point in the talks”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/25; col. 241.]
Despite a broad coalition of 83 countries backing a road map away from fossil fuels, the final text tragically contained no explicit reference to the phase-out. At home, we welcome the commitment to no new oil exploration in the North Sea. More must be done to bring about energy market reforms, reduce energy bills and insulate our homes urgently. Many parliamentarians, including me, attended the National Emergency Briefing on the climate and nature crisis last week, which called for an emergency-style Marshall plan. I call on the Government to engage with and take heed of these calls for urgent, sustained action.
Secondly, there is finance for developing nations, building on the COP 29 pledge to mobilise $300 billion annually and scale towards $1.3 trillion from all sources. COP 30 agreed to pursue efforts to treble adaptation finance by 2035 within the climate finance goal agreed last year, ensuring that vulnerable nations have the resilience they need. The UK was active in that area.
Thirdly, and I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Offord, is going to like this very much, there is the transition away from fossil fuels. While a universal road map could not be agreed, 83 countries and 140 organisations endorsed the concept that Brazil will launch road maps on fossil fuels and deforestation, showing that coalitions of the willing can drive progress even where unanimity is elusive. The UK very much welcomed that coalition of the willing and will work closely with the Brazilians to move that commitment forward, even though it was not the final communiqué as far as the COP itself was concerned.
The mutirão agreement advanced carbon markets, gender, technology, technology transfer and transparency. Importantly, more than 190 countries reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement and multilateral action. That is essential right now as far as the crisis we are in is concerned.
I shall now briefly answer some of the points raised by noble Lords this evening. Perhaps before I do that, I could just express, as a newcomer to this place, my extreme disappointment—almost distress—about the abrupt turn that the party opposite has taken on its commitments on climate change and all that is associated with it. I certainly recollect in my time in the other place working closely with many thoroughly dedicated Members on the Conservative side in bringing forward what Britain was going to do about climate change and how we would go forward together to achieve those goals. Indeed, I was a member of the committee that brought in the net-zero target as far as UK emissions are concerned. Noble Lords will recall that that was when the noble Baroness, Lady May, was Prime Minister. Indeed, she is one of the noble Lords who have, in effect, denounced this pivot away from action and support for net zero as a target for the UK and serious action on climate change. I am afraid that the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Offord, thoroughly reflected that pivot and simply did not address the issues at COP and what we need to do together as far as those issues are concerned.
The Government’s commitment on North Sea gas and net zero is clear. Our commitment to clean energy is about delivering energy security, lower bills and good jobs—400,000 new clean energy jobs by 2030. So this is not a threat but an opportunity as far as a low-carbon future is concerned. Indeed, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine illustrates the cost of relying on fossil fuels. Globally, twice as much is now invested in clean energy as in fossil fuels. Globally, renewables have this year overtaken coal as the largest source of electricity. The economics have shifted and the direction of travel is clear, and it is distressing to hear the party opposite going in precisely the opposite direction. I hope that wisdom will prevail in the longer term and that we will be back together with a consensus on where we go on climate change in the future.
I also remind the noble Lord, Lord Offord, that on nuclear the Government have committed £63 billion in capital funding for clean energy, climate and nature, including nuclear, putting the UK on a path to clean power by 2030, bringing bills down in the long term, creating thousands of good jobs for our country and tackling the climate change crisis.
In relation to the comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on 1.5 degrees, as I have mentioned, we need great ambition—of course we do—but we should also recognise the progress that has been made since the Paris Agreement. The final text agreed on action to take in the form of the Belém Mission to 1.5 and the Global Implementation Accelerator, as well as countries’ commitments to net zero that can be built on. In respect of Brazil’s new fund for forests, the UK has played a big role in helping to support Brazil to design the TFFF. We have a difficult fiscal situation in this country. We have absolutely not ruled out—I stress that—contributing to it in the future. We are determined that the fund succeeds and will continue to work with Brazil to help ensure that it does.
The message from Belém is clear: clean energy and climate action are the foundations on which the global economy is being rebuilt. They are good for Britain because they deliver jobs, investment and energy security. They lower bills for families and businesses, and they are the only way to protect future generations from the threat of climate breakdown.