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Energy Bill

From the United States, and elsewhere. It does not take genius to see that there is something wrong with this picture. I thought that this Bill could have been the place where that nettle was grasped. What is to be done? Open-cast digging can be successful on a relatively small scale and in a short timeframe, and can sometimes work for the long-term good of some bits of land, but when practised on the massive scale that we have seen recently in parts of the north-east it causes major environmental damage. In any case, it is impossible for the considerable seams of coal that are under the North Sea—you cannot dig there—and even when you have got it out you are still left with the challenge of clean use. The alternative of deep mining, the old-fashioned sort, even with the technology that would now be available, is still a dangerous business and the disposal of waste remains a problem. I suspect—this is not a party point; it covers all bases—that we have seen nothing done now for 20 years because the appalling social cost of the miners’ strike in the 1980s has meant that successive Governments have not wanted to go anywhere near the use of our own coal resources; it would scare everyone silly. However, quite apart from the long-term social deprivation still suffered by many of the old mining communities—I know that there have been wonderful regeneration projects, but the deprivation levels remain shocking; I was visiting some of the old mining towns the weekend before last and it is still appalling that people are living in those conditions—to ignore our existing energy resources because of the bad social experiences of a previous generation looks like cutting off our noses to spite our faces. The other wider reason for pursuing better uses of existing resources is the urgent need in other parts of the world, China and India being the obvious examples, to develop the appropriate technologies. If we could develop that technology ourselves and then export it, we would not only profit ourselves but be in a position to help other countries meet their future carbon needs as well. The particular irony of all this is that two of the universities in my region, Newcastle and Durham, have been working on precisely this UCG technology. They should now be given the chance and, equally importantly, the funding to develop pilot projects to show what can be done. If with this Bill we can set up four CCS demonstration projects, why should we not also set up four or more underground gasification projects? This proposal is not new. As long ago as April 2003, the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, spoke about possible collaboration with the USA’s FutureGen project and advocated gasification projects, but nothing has been done. There have been more recent exchanges as well. The questions pile up, and perhaps they could be addressed in the present Bill: what has happened to all those projects that have been talked and written about and had initial research done on? Why did they need foreign investment—in one case, Russian money? When the Government pour billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into projects that many taxpayers oppose, why should the future use of our energy resources be dependent on individual entrepreneurs backed by foreign investors? Of course, nobody wants to go back to the spiralling costs of the past when the public purse was treated, so to speak, as a bottomless pit in its own right, but at a time when other Governments, like Germany’s, have been heavily subsidising their coal industries, why should our Government not take a lead in investing in the future use of our own resources, for the benefit of our own communities? Setting up and installing gasification is, obviously, expensive, but it does not put at risk human lives or the countryside and it does not pollute the atmosphere. When the real costs of not doing it are taken into account—continuing to import foreign coal, the CCS technology on the surface, the communities that were dependent on coal and are still now suffering—there is a very strong case for proceeding. I raised these and similar questions in your Lordships’ House in January 2007 and followed them up with a letter to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. In his reply to me of 13 March 2007, he spoke at length in his inimitable style of the present energy policy, and agreed that the DTI’s old Cleaner Fossil Fuels Programme had carried out an assessment of UCG. This showed, he said, that UCG had advanced to a stage where it was economically comparable with conventional mining. But, he went on, it would need to be deployed in combination with CCS to make any significant contribution to carbon abatement. I am not an expert, but I suspect that those who are would challenge that statement. In any case, the question is how to use our own resources. The UK strategy, said the noble Lord, did not see UCG as a specific technology to pursue but intended to keep a watching brief on it. Well, we have been watching this brief for many years now and nothing has happened. It is time to get on with it. Without knowing the details, it is hard to comment on the noble Lord’s further statement that the joining fee for the FutureGen project was not thought to be a cost-effective use of public funds, but, when the future use of our own resources is at stake, a strong case can and should be made for it. I and many others around the old mining areas would greatly welcome it if the present Bill could eventually include this kind of project. As may be obvious, I am neither an industrialist nor an economist. However, I live in the midst of a proud but somewhat battered old mining community, which still believes doggedly that the coal under its land ought to be used, and used wisely, not least to provide fresh employment. My predecessor but one, David Jenkins, known to many noble Lords, famously stood by the mining communities in the 1980s. My predecessor of a century of more ago, BF Westcott, actually settled the miners’ strike in the mid-1890s, including, in a remarkable exercise of episcopal power, sending a messenger to the railway station late in the negotiations, telling them to hold the London train because his Lordship had not yet finished his work. Sadly, I no longer have that power, nor indeed the mineral rights themselves, but I stand with and speak on behalf of the region that I love and serve when I express the hope that the Bill might include proposals for the future use of our own resources and of all available technologies, and that the UCG option, already being developed in the universities of the region, should now be given a chance to prove itself in action.