Carbon Budget Delivery Plan: High Court Ruling

Baroness Boycott Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is precisely an example of what the Government can do by putting their money where their mouth is. Some £6 billion has been put into that scheme up until 2025, and that will go a long way to tackling the greenhouse gas emissions from housing, which is one of the most difficult areas to tackle. Alongside that, the Government are working on building regulations and other measures to ensure that new and existing housing is compliant.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, the Government, and many Governments around the world, are pinning an enormous amount of their strategies on carbon capture and storage. There are currently just 41 CCS plants operating globally and they account for 0.1% of annual global emissions. When Exxon tried to use that as an argument last week in the United States, the technology was described as going “at a snail’s pace”. We have none in this country. We have four clusters that have been identified, but as yet no plans have been made; yet if you look at the net-zero strategy, carbon capture and storage is playing a really large part. Can the Minister update the House on where we are with this and whether he is actually confident?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

This is a matter on which my colleague, my noble friend Lord Callanan, will have the facts at his fingertips. I will make sure that he or I contact the noble Baroness for the details of how carbon capture and storage will deliver and can be a major source of decarbonising our energy system.