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Energy Bill

I should have made it clear that I was talking about two different technologies. The main use of this will of course be with coal. As I was saying, the IEA has pointed out the huge reserves and the indication that they will be burnt over the next 20 to 30 years, come what may. To do that without CCS would jettison any idea of achieving the targets. The figures from ConocoPhillips I quoted earlier were based on its presumption of what it would be doing with the combined heat and power plant at Immingham. One must recognise that Governments must make choices. Anyone who has been in government recognises that, and they are not easy choices. One cannot do everything. However, there is a price to pay for the Government's decision. It will be seen to pay off only if the winner of the competition produces workable technology that can be sold in other countries. I am told that the Government are shortly to announce the candidates for the competition, and that it will be a further 12 months before a decision can be taken on which candidates should go ahead and, as it were, do the demonstration plant. There is another aspect that I would like to touch on. What are the Government going to pay for in that competition? As I understand it, and I have seen the original presentation by Mr Hutton, they will pay for the CCS plant, for the transport of the sequestrated CO2 and then for the storage of the sequestrated CO2. I have been asking in Questions for Written Answer what plans the Government have for establishing some sort of a CO2 grid. Is this going to become a widely used technology? Some of the scenarios that the ConocoPhillips people have been talking about would involve a significant grid, whereby people producing CO2 can discharge it into the grid and it can then be transported offshore and go into the oil fields. As was said earlier, the depleted oil and gas fields seem to be the best possible location. The plant that the Government are going to support will presumably have a pipeline to meet the needs of that particular plant. It is not like an electricity grid, where once you put it in it is there and can take a substantial expansion. This will be a pipe for that plant. How far are the Government going to recognise that, if the technology is going to take off, from the start there needs to be the beginnings of a CO2 grid? Otherwise, it is not going to work. This final point, which has been made to me not least by Dr Chapman, the chief executive of the CCSA, is that there is a feeling in the industry that the Government, having now announced their competition, are simply now going to sit back and wait for the results. What I am being told is that there is at the moment no incentive for anyone else to do anything about it. When the Prime Ministers met at the European Council in the spring of last year, they produced the requirement, under ““Energy Technologies””, which, "““urges Member States and the Commission to work towards strengthening R&D and developing the necessary technical, economic and regulatory framework to bring environmentally safe carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to deployment with new fossil-fuel power plants … welcomes the Commission's intention to establish a mechanism to stimulate the construction and operation by 2015 of up to 12 demonstration plants””." The problem everyone else sees with that is that it may be an admirable aspiration, but the Community has done absolutely nothing to bring it about. Individual countries, like our own, are moving ahead with the demonstration project, and I applaud that. At the same time, under the previous paragraph, where is the economic framework to which other countries are going to be able to look to see where this all begins? The Bill provides a regulatory framework, which is certainly important, but there is no financial framework. That is what is lacking. If we are really to see carbon capture and storage move ahead, there has got to be a more positive approach to providing incentives and encouragement to companies to do the work. That may involve a lot of companies with different sorts of technologies that can then be put together. That is what we are lacking in this area. ““We have a demonstration plant; let us wait and see what happens””; that is the feeling that there is. I do not find that very satisfactory.