Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 07/10/2014
Event: Ed Davey: LibDems plan to "ban electricity generation from coal by 2025"
Credit: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
People:
Mishal Husain: How deep is the Liberal Democrat commitment to the environment? An announcement at the conference today makes more money available to help homeowners fund energy-saving improvements, under the Green Deal scheme. But the leadership is also backing a plan to exempt Gatwick from its opposition to any airport expansion in the south-east of England. The Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey is here in our studio in Glasgow, good morning... And if that goes through - that move to exempt Gatwick from airport expansion - that would be a U-turn, on your stated policy.
Ed Davey: Well, our policies are more about the environment, to make sure that we are cutting climate change gases, that we are making sure we're tackling local air pollution, noise pollution, traffic congestion around airports. It's the environmental criteria that are key -
Mishal Husain: Right, your broader environment policy - I'm asking you specifically about the vote that's going to take place -
Ed Davey: No, but I'm telling you -
Mishal Husain: - in the conference today, about expansion.
Ed Davey: Because that criteria is what we apply to aircraft and airports. And when you apply it to Heathrow, it's clear Heathrow will never meet those very robust, stringent environmental criteria. And what I think the amendment is saying is that if you apply those criteria to other potential airports, then it may be - may be, not for certain - it may be that others could.
Mishal Husain: Yeah. Right, but you believe that - do you believe that these environmental criteria, then, allow for the expansion of Gatwick, in a way that you previously did not envisage?
Ed Davey: We want to see what the Davies Commission says on Gatwick, but listen - the thing about the environmental issues, is that we've shown, in government, that you can have greener energy but still have affordable energy, that you can have growth but it can still be green, that you can have cars but they can be zero-carbon cars. And what, I think, when we took at technology, we're seeing that applied to all these areas of our lives, to power generation, to cars, to flights. And it's changing the way we can do these - we can do them in a much more environmentally friendly way. And if you look at the future of flight, it is possible to imagine, with technology innovation, that we could have zero-carbon flight in the future.
Mishal Husain: Okay, that is in the future and clearly technology's advancing all the time - the point is, you have a manifesto commitment against any airport expansion in the south-east. "We will cancel plans for the third runway at Heathrow", you said, "and any expansion of other airports in the south-east". And today your leadership, the leadership that you're part of, is backing a plan that would exempt Gatwick from that. So there is a U-turn planned on airport expansion in the south-east.
Ed Davey: What we're saying is the environmental criteria we've always had may well be able to allow expansion elsewhere, given technological change -
Mishal Husain: Right, technological change is allowing a U-turn to take place, on your policy on airport expansion, that is what you're saying -
Ed Davey: That is not a U-turn on environmental criteria, that's the key point -
Mishal Husain: No, it'll be a U-turn on airport expansion, wouldn't it - you're giving a reason for it, but the point is, it would be a U-turn - you can back up why you would do that, but you can't get away from the fact that it would change a stated policy on airport expansion.
Ed Davey: Of course it would, but we'd do it for environmental reasons - I mean, let's get -
Mishal Husain: You are in favour - let's just nail this down - you are in favour, therefore, of airport expansion in the south-east, if it's Gatwick.
Ed Davey: What we're in favour of is the environmental criteria. And if they can be met - they clearly can't be met at Heathrow, that's obvious for everybody - but if it can be met elsewhere... We're not against flying, we're not against people using their cars, we're not against people actually enjoying life and the economy growing. We just want to do that in a low-carbon way - we've always said that. Let me just give you an example of that. Today -
Mishal Husain: But if you think that's possible at Gatwick, why isn't it possible at Heathrow?
Ed Davey: Because - look at all the different environmental criteria I've listed you, not just about low-carbon but noise pollution, local air pollution, traffic congestion. Heathrow will fail those, and -
Mishal Husain: You will be voting today in favour of exempting Gatwick from the policy of opposing airport expansion.
Ed Davey: The amendment, which doesn't give a green light to airport expansion, I think has a lot of attractions to it, and I'll be voting for it. But I'll also be saying today that Liberal Democrats are going to ban - if we're part of the next government - ban electricity generation from coal by 2025. Why am I able to say that? Why are the Liberal Democrats going to have the most ambitious policy to protect our climate? Because coal is the climate destroyer. Because of what we've achieved in government. We've doubled renewable electricity generation. We've more than doubled renewable electricity investment. We've shown you can go green with new technologies. And I think that's the future - going green with new technology.
Mishal Husain: Ed Davey, thank you very much.