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Energy White Paper

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. On the question of the dash for gas, I agree with him that we need a diverse energy mix and that we should not be over-reliant on any one particular form of supply. Gas currently generates approximately a third of our electricity, as does coal, but this can vary. When we encountered tightness in energy supplies a couple of winters ago, the amount of electricity generated by coal rose by 50 per cent, but as a result we found that CO2 emissions went up. We have to have a diverse energy mix both to ensure security of supply and reduce CO2 emissions. One of the ways of doing that is to develop carbon capture and storage. However, a number of issues arise with CCS. Several countries are already using parts of the available CCS technology. The Norwegians, for example, already store gas offshore, and the energy sector has often used the injection of gas to enhance the exploitation of oil and gas fields. There are regulatory issues in this area, such as the London and OSPAR conventions, which need to be amended to ensure that we can store gas under the North Sea. While the London agreement has been amended, the OSPAR agreement has not, so there are legal issues to consider. But the main point is that no one in the world has put all the different elements of the technology together and shown that they can work on a commercial scale, and that is really the task of this programme.