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Climate Change Bill [Lords]

I have to be frank with my right hon. Friend—without carbon capture and storage, we will not meet our targets. If we cannot decarbonise the electricity sector in the UK and elsewhere in the world, the chances of being able to meet our CO2 targets in the next couple of decades are very slim. It is by no means the only policy tool at our disposal, but it is one that we cannot afford to throw away. He is right to say that the costs will be considerable—hundreds of millions of pounds, and perhaps even billions of pounds—but this policy would be a good use of the auctioned ETS credits that will accrue in 2012, recycling them back into the energy sector to fund research and development and innovation for UK plc. Unfortunately, the Government are sitting on their hands and have no credible policy not only on implementing CCS, but for funding or developing it. I contrast the vagueness of the Government's unambitious policy—we can hope that that might change with the new Department and there will be an announcement in due course—with the clear policies articulated in June by the Leader of the Opposition, when he announced that the Conservative party in government would introduce an EPS standard for all electricity generated in the UK.