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Draft National Policy Statement for Fossil Fuel Electricity Generating Infrastructure (EN-2)

My Lords, I take the point that we may need to clarify the NPS. That is the benefit of these debates. The advice that I have received is that it should be possible to set out plans for how CCS should be applied, although we recognise that the plans may have to be updated in light of the experience of the first demonstration project. My department’s guidelines to CCR, published in November, give detailed advice on how developers should present appropriate evidence of technical and economic feasibility. They allow for the impossibility of being absolutely certain now about what the future developments will be. I will take this back, because it is an important point. What we want is clarity. I do not want to create a situation where developers are uncertain. I accept that a strong point has been made. On the question of CCS in general, a number of noble Lords have pointed to various projects throughout the world. I am always being told that the UK is falling behind other countries. One can always point to projects, but what has not been established is a whole-chain process on the scale that we intend to adopt. That is the importance of what we are doing. An important part of that is the independent evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and technical aspects of CCS on the scale that we propose. That is vital. It answers the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, who asked whether CCS was competitive. That will be shown through this process. If we look at the IEA’s projections for the use of coal in 2040-50, as far as I can see there is no chance of meeting any emissions targets, or any pledges that countries have made in the accord, without carbon capture and storage technology working, because coal will continue to be a prime source of energy. I understand that coal is available in 70 countries in the world. That is what makes it so important, and it has huge potential for this country’s export capacity, if we can pull it off. I know that noble Lords feel that progress has been slow. The noble Baroness is always berating me on these matters. I know that the competition has taken time, but we have had to do this very carefully. It is a very complex procurement. The next stage is to fund bidders to undertake detailed design work and then the successful project once this is complete. We are doing this as fast as we can, and we will of course learn the lessons from the first competition when it comes to the second, third and fourth projects. It is very important that we do that. We have to recognise that there are many challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, asked why carbon storage would be licensed only for offshore. We considered all the storage options very carefully, but we have decided that the best option at present would be the use of offshore storage, which is why we have gone down that route. One of the issues is public acceptability, although I fully recognise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about the theoretical possibility of onshore storage. I do not disagree with him.