Q268 Mr. Dave Anderson: I want to pick up on the point that Charles raised about basic raw materials and, in particular, copper. If we are going to have, as I understand it in the North-East, 7,000 off-shore wind turbines, we are going to upgrade the whole of the National Grid, we are going to have millions of vehicles which will need electric motors and we want to electrify even more on a rail basis, all of which are good things to want to do, have we got sufficient supplies of copper in the world to do this on a global basis?

Mr Archer: I do not know the answer to the copper question. I would agree with the point that Julia made that lithium does not seem to be a problem, but some of the rare-earth metals which are used in windings in motors and things like that have been identified as a potential issue. I am afraid I cannot comment on copper.

Professor King: Copper certainly has not been identified as an issue, and, of course, there are alternatives for copper in some areas of application where it is currently used. Some of the major cabling and things can be dealt with in other ways, so it is not one that anybody in the industry is finding as an issue, but, like Greg, I cannot give you an absolute answer on that.

Paddy Tipping: We have talked a lot about biofuels already. Anne Main is going to pursue this.

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Q293 Mr. Dave Anderson: This is a social question. We have talked mainly about ships and planes, but what about the associate things? Is there any work being done in airports and ports and are you involved in that, about reducing their emissions and their pollutants?

Mr Ashdown: From the shipping side, obviously the ship-to-shore interface is an important part and yes, work is going on. A lot of our member companies are involved in something called 'virtual arrival' which changes the way that ships are forced to arrive in port in order to meet their charterer's requirements, so it allows you to set a virtual arrival time rather than a specific arrival time. This reduces port congestion and it also reduces the ship's speed en route to that port, all of which have a beneficial environmental impact. There are other opportunities out there, for instance, increasing port capacity in this country would reduce port congestion, again speeding up port turnaround times. That would be helpful and it would avoid wasted hours in the fairways to ports where of course ships are still burning their engines because they are effectively still out at sea, although waiting to come into port, so yes, the relationship between the port and the ship is an important element of reducing overall emissions.

Mr Brownrigg: Perhaps I could just add briefly to that to say that we are currently beginning to work in much greater closeness with the port sectors on a whole range of issues under a maritime services cluster, Maritime UK, and the environment, including emissions, is clearly one area of focus, but it is rather early days for that yet.

Mr Wiltshire: Aviation came together, as we did, five years ago, recognising the fact that airports, air traffic control and airlines need to work closely together, and perhaps, Ian, you can update us on that.

Mr Jopson: NATS, the UK air traffic service provider, also provides air traffic service at 15 of the largest airports in the UK. Last year, we became the first air traffic control organisation in the world to set stretching targets on our climate change performance, our CO2 performance. What that has led us to do is to benchmark the system as it is now, the airports and the rest of the air traffic network, which stretches obviously all the way over the UK land mass, but then out to half-way across the north Atlantic, so we have benchmarked that system in terms of its CO2 performance and we have set ourselves targets by area of the network, airports en route and oceanic, to reduce the fuel burn in each of those sectors, so we are working very hard and we have a target of reducing ATM, air traffic management-related, issues by ten per cent by 2020.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT