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Energy Bill

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, from whom I learn something new every time he speaks. I am most grateful to him. I, too, want to talk overwhelmingly about carbon capture and storage, initially in the context of the region where I live—Yorkshire—but I shall widen the discussion to the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and others. The Government seem to have two reasons for their almost experiments with carbon capture and storage. The first is the declared desire for coal to contribute significantly to the mix of the energy security of this country. The second is the recognition that coal-fired generation will be absolutely vast in India, China and other countries for years to come. New technologies have export potential. The IEA in its World Energy Outlook 2008 quoted figures of coal production rising from less than 4,500 million tonnes of coal equivalent to something over 7,000 million tonnes of coal equivalent by 2030. I can well see that the Government may have in mind that that is a very attractive market, even if they do not have their heart and soul in what will happen with coal-fired generation in this country. I shall turn to that in a moment. In the Yorkshire region, there is a cluster of carbon dioxide emitters. They do not comprise just coal, although mention has been made of the three big coal-fired generators, Ferrybridge, Eggborough and Drax. Incidentally, I think that they are cooling towers rather than heating towers; they might blow up if they were heating towers. In total, the emitters in Yorkshire emit around 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. That is equivalent to about half the carbon dioxide emissions generated by all UK households, so a very large amount of carbon dioxide emissions are generated in the Yorkshire and Humber region. However, only half of that comes from coal-fired power stations. Fifteen million tonnes come from gas-fired stations; 2.5 million tonnes come from oil-fired stations; between 5 million and 7 million tonnes come from the Corus steelworks at Scunthorpe, depending on its operating capacity; more than 1 million tonnes come from a glassworks; and 1 million tonnes come from a cement works. I say all this because, if carbon capture and storage is to mean something in the long run, it must deal with more than just coal. It is not just a question of coal in the United Kingdom. In the Yorkshire and Humber region, a large amount of carbon dioxide is being pumped into the system from around 12 major sources. Off the coast of Humber, in the southern part of the North Sea gas fields, there is a whole range of potential storage sites. The Yorkshire region demonstrates exactly that if you put together a carbon capture pipeline transport and storage system, it makes sense to do it in a place that will have a strategic long-term likelihood of success. One thing that bothers me somewhat about the current situation is that this experiment with four carbon capture schemes does not seem to fit into a strategy. Trials may take place in different parts of the country but, in a large region with a substantial number of emitters, the construction of a pipeline system and a storage network that serves all of them would make a great deal of sense. Although the Bill can encompass gas-fired power stations, that is not the Government’s intention, as the Minister said. It would be helpful if the Minister could reassure me on my next point. I wonder whether emissions from cement, gas and other things come under BIS or DECC. Are DECC and BIS talking about a strategy that makes sense across the board? My instinct is that DECC is concerned with climate change and has certain ideas about energy generation but other types of emissions may fall under other parts of government. Looking at the trial scheme in the long term, if you develop a pipeline system that goes out to sea and into a storage system, it will be extremely expensive for a single source of carbon emission—a coal-fired power station—to meet the whole cost of a pipeline going out to the coast and into that storage system. The capacity of such a system would be very small. If, on the other hand, you intended to have a series of these linked together over a period, you would put in a completely different size of pipeline. The diameter of a pipeline to serve a single emitter would be about 12 inches. If you put in a pipeline that over time could link in with a series of emitters, it would be 48 inches. Is this issue being considered? If you are to put in a pipeline that can serve all the coal-fired power stations in the Yorkshire and Humber region, it is no good putting in a 12-inch pipeline because over time you will have to put in another 12-inch pipeline, which would clearly be silly. Has the Minister given any thought to this?