Greg Smith

Greg Smith

Conservative — Mid Buckinghamshire

Speaking in the House of Commons on 24 January 2025

Debate

Climate and Nature Bill

Contribution

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. On his first point, all I will say is: not in Mid Buckinghamshire. They tried, but they got 25% of the vote. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s serious point, I do not see anything in the Bill that challenges the zero emission vehicle mandate. The ZEV mandate is obsessed with testing at tailpipe rather than whole-system analysis, which gets in the way of developing synthetic fuels and greenlighting the great innovators in this country and worldwide to get on with developing that technology. If we put a synthetic fuel through an internal combustion engine, there is still carbon at tailpipe, but it is the same volume of carbon that will be recaptured through atmospheric carbon capture to make the next lot of fuel. It is carbon neutral. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will enable those great innovators to move ahead and get—as some of them claim they can—cost parity with the fossil fuel equivalent within a decade.

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