Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Lord Teverson

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I shall not detain the House very long. I am not sure that the amendment as written is precisely right, but the important principle that comes out of it—I come back to what I said briefly at Second Reading—is that, at the end of the day, the UK economy has to crowd out coal by other generating fuels. Before the election, the Prime Minister, the then Deputy Prime Minister and the then leader of the Opposition together bravely pledged that coal should come out of UK generating capacity. For whatever reason, after the election only one of those people is left in office—the Prime Minister—so on his shoulders rests that responsibility as our Prime Minister to achieve that pledge.

I do not see a great deal of movement from the Government in fulfilling it. It needs to be addressed and this amendment goes some way towards that. But it is a much larger issue which we could solve so easily, probably by using an active emissions performance standard rather than one that is fixed, as it is at the moment, in primary legislation. I hope that the Government—indeed, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office—will bring forward proposals to deliver this. In Scotland, they talk about vows; I see this as a vow that is fundamental to our climate change obligation not just to the UK but to the rest of the world.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, once again very briefly, could the Minister also make some comment in his response about what the cost to the consumer will be of electricity which is generated by plant under contracts under the capacity mechanism?

Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Access to Infrastructure) Regulations 2011

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Lord Teverson

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, again I do not know what else one could do. There seems to be an outbreak of common sense; we are implementing a European directive, which I see this as primarily, to ensure that pipeline and CCS companies do as we scold our children to do—to share, rather than keep things to themselves.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, he mentioned a long track record of facility sharing in the oil and gas industries, which there clearly already is, but I suspect that those provisions did not perhaps come in until a lot of the structures in those industries had got going. In this case, it is a new industry and I presume that we do not have any carbon dioxide pipelines going extensive distances. Clearly, they do within existing industrial plants but I wonder whether we might get into a sort of games theory where no one builds the first one because the first mover, in this instance, is the one who has to find all the finance and raise all the money, which is not inconsiderable. All the businesses coming afterwards will have to do is show that independent authority that it would make sense to share, so they miss the whole hurdle that the first people had to get over. I wonder whether that distorts the market somehow, but I am sure that the Minister will have an eloquent reply on that. Otherwise, this is good legislation.

Finally, I take this opportunity to ask the Minister where we are in terms of CCS and when we might see the network of carbon dioxide pipelines under—I was going to say across—our countryside. Where are we on the four schemes that the Government are promoting?

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I, too, will ask the Minister one or two questions, perhaps going a bit beyond the immediate area covered by the statutory instrument. However, I will start with that. Do the Government anticipate that the transport of carbon dioxide will be through an entirely new set of pipelines, or will existing pipelines, in particular those used for natural gas, be used when fields dry up? Is it also possible that a given pipeline might have some form of dual use? Are we talking about an entirely separate infrastructure or about an infrastructure that will be available for both uses?

Can the Minister confirm where the expected storage sites will be, and what state of provenance they have? Are we talking simply of oil and gas fields under the North Sea, or are there other geological structures in which it is anticipated that carbon dioxide might be stored? Given that we are talking about a very long timescale for storage, what evidence exists that the carbon dioxide will not escape, through cracks or whatever?

The impact assessment states, on page 8:

“As the main method of de-carbonising fossil fuel power generation, it will be important that CCS, should it prove viable at a commercial scale”.

That is phrased in the subjunctive conditional. It raises the question: what happens if it is proved that CCS is not viable on a commercial scale? On the previous page, the assessment states:

“CCS is not currently commercial without subsidy”.

It would be helpful to have some idea of what level of subsidy the Government consider may be needed to provide CCS. This is important because, if the Government stick with their position of having no more coal-fired power stations without CCS, and if CCS adds so much to the cost that we do not have coal-fired power stations, we then have to ask what form of electricity generation we will use.

I understand that over the past year our coal-fired power stations have been used more than was expected because they proved cheaper, with the price of gas going up. This has shortened the permitted life of some of our existing coal-fired stations. If we cannot go forward with any coal-fired stations because CCS does not prove to be commercially viable, does this not contain a hidden further increase in electricity prices if we cannot rely on any use of coal generation? Perhaps the Minister could put on the record some comments in response to those questions.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bishop of Chester and Lord Teverson

Monday 31st January 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, when the Minister does indeed bring the tablets down the mountain at the end of this short debate, I wonder if he could put on record what the Government anticipate will be the average capital and installation cost, which will be an additional burden on the energy consumer.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a short comment on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. Of all the things that the Minister has or has not done, the one thing that he has not done is to come back on amendments and say that they are not exactly right and will not therefore work. I have never heard him make that particular response, to put the record straight.