Professor Michael Morris:

I have a few comments. There is a myriad of policy and a myriad of standards being developed in response to climate change. Within the standards being developed for the circular economy and the International Organization of Standardization, ISO, burning any form of biomass for combustion is not seen as circular because we do not capture the CO2. The worst thing we can do with any grown product is to burn it. That is just a general comment. On the question of whether we have considered the circularity at all, it is so manufacturing-based that it assumes that we are going to do things in exactly the same way that we have done them for the past 150 years. That has proved to be pretty damaging. Circularity should be included. A neat piece to put into it would be that it complies with the remits and the protocol set out in the safe and sustainable by design framework, which includes circularity. Should we be producing the same products as China? No, we should be producing more circular products. That is where the competitive edge is in this. I will give members an example of where circularity should not have been considered. We are obviously very reliant on photovoltaics.

All silicon comes from mines. It is not sand, despite what people try to say. It is mined in very poor environments which always worsen. We have a shortage silicon across the world. Unless we are circular in the way we treat those processes, we will not make enough silicon to meet the demands relating to photovoltaic technology. This is a very important missing piece. I do not quite know how to put it in or whether it complies with other documentation and regulation, but that needs to be a significant consideration.