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Electricity Market Reform

The Minister has to take some credit for making another stab at market reform. It is not the first one for 20 years; there were two in the late 1990s—the NETA and BETTA reforms—so he is wrong to say that nothing has taken place in this matter. However, those reforms are now out of date. We need reassurance for investors and I think that, to an extent, we will get that from this document. However, I am not sure whether the social dimension and the cost to the consumer will necessarily be given equal weight. The emission performance standards rely heavily on carbon capture and storage being realised—taken out of the laboratory, on to the factory floor, produced and then adapted for use in power stations with turbines in excess of 400 megawatts—but that seems to be a long way away. I worry that, come 2015 when we have the large plant directive, we will deny ourselves access to coal-fired power stations and will not have CCS available by that time. We could, therefore, well have a dash for gas on the scale that we had in the 1990s, with all the price implications that the Minister has already stated. When does the Minister expect carbon capture and storage to be available to British power generators, and particularly to the coal-fired industries? Unless we get that assurance, this will be, in large measure, a pipe-dream of the Government. I say that more in sorrow than in anger. We need to have a clearer indication of when we are likely to get carbon capture and storage. My inclination is that it will not come before 2020 at the earliest.