Energy: Hydrogen

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Viscount is of course referring to the different kinds of hydrogen, referred to as green and blue hydrogen. We take the view that both will be needed to meet the UK’s potential hydrogen demand by 2050. Blue hydrogen has a role to play in producing cost-effective low-carbon hydrogen at scale, but of course we will need to use carbon-capture technology along with it.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, as taxpayers we spend a lot of money paying renewable energy sources—solar, and particularly wind—not to produce when we do not need that energy. That is something we renewable energy advocates all feel slightly embarrassed about. Is this not a way to ensure that this never happens in future and that the surplus electricity generated at those peak times is used for the electrolysis method? That would ensure we were a hydrogen economy. Also, when are we going to get the energy White Paper?

Emissions: Housing

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to publish (1) a route map, and (2) a plan of action, to insulate the United Kingdom’s existing housing stock in order to meet the net-zero emissions target by 2050, and if so, when.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con) [V]]

Yes, the Government plan to publish a heat and buildings strategy in due course, which will set out the immediate action that we will take to reduce emissions from buildings, including the deployment of energy-efficiency measures and low-carbon heating as part of the ambitious programme of work required to enable the mass transition to low-carbon heat and set us on a path to meeting our net-zero 2050 emissions target.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply. Can he be more precise on “in due course”? This is an important part of building back better and is absolutely essential to our net-zero target for 2050.

[Lord Callanan [V]]

I note the noble Lord’s impatience but cannot go much further, beyond saying that we aim to get the strategy out this year.

Housing Insulation

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to insulate existing housing in order to contribute to (1) ending fuel poverty, and (2) achieving net zero carbon emissions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the energy company obligation is our main domestic energy efficiency policy. It is worth £640 million a year and is focused on fuel poverty. This year, we will announce further policies to upgrade the energy performance of our homes, which will address fuel poverty and support the transition to net zero.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, to his new position as Minister for Energy. It is estimated that, if we had each of the 29 million households in this country with an energy performance certificate rating of A or B—which we would like to—we would save something like the energy from six Hinkley Points and abolish fuel poverty at a stroke. Does he feel that that is a good policy and focus?

[Lord Callanan]

I thank the noble Lord for his good wishes. It is nice to answer questions on something other than EU withdrawal for a change. I take on board the noble Lord’s concerns. He makes a very good point. As I said, we will be announcing further policies in this field in the Budget and in the forthcoming energy White Paper. He will understand that I cannot predict what might be announced at those times.

Electricity Capacity (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will ask the Minister some questions, and I express some surprise that, in his presentation to the House, he did not mention demand-side response, which was the subject of an intervention I made on a previous occasion, and the reason why the state aid ruling was made by the European court. As it is absolutely at the centre of the reason why this matter has not been settled and the UK Government’s proposals were rejected, the Minister owes the House a little more detail about that, particularly because, as I understand it—he made the point himself—all the paperwork in front of us today is conditional on implementation on receiving state aid approval from the EU. At the moment, that is still outstanding.

That arose from an action taken at the European Court back in 2015 by a small company called Tempus Energy, which claimed that the system was discriminatory against those who sought to reduce electricity consumption as opposed to increase electricity generation. The outcome of that was that its claim led to the UK’s scheme being sent back for a rethink.

The way it is supposed to work is that firms bid into the auction at the price they need, either to keep existing plants open to generate electricity or to create new capacity from scratch. It does not deal adequately with the situation of companies which have come forward with a commercial proposition that they will reduce overall electricity consumption. That is surprising because, in fact, overall electricity consumption is falling, not rising. The Government itself recently took account of that, having for a long time somewhat denied the relevance of it to the whole question.

Having said all that, it is surprising that the Minister has not referred to the ECJ judgment, in particular to paragraphs 203 to 207 of it, and paragraphs 27(e) and 69 of the official guidance put in support of that judgment. Has the Minister read those paragraphs, and if he has, does he think that the plain and ordinary meaning of them could in any way be construed as a simple technical reprise as opposed to an outright rejection? How certain is he that the judgment of the European Court was not, as the Minister in the House of Commons alleged it to be,

“a challenge to the nature of the UK capacity market mechanism itself”?—[Official Report, Commons, 19/11/18; col. 1090WS.]

It seems that it is not very easy to make that stand up, and as regards our taking a decision today, it needs at least a little amplification and clarification.

The allegation put to the European Court was that our UK system was discriminating against those who had a commercial appetite to reduce electricity consumption as opposed to having proposals to provide generation. I hope the Minister will say that is not true and contradict the advice I have been given that, the way the system is designed at the moment, those who want to reduce consumption—the capacity supply industry—have to make sure they have a payback period in 12 months, whereas those on the demand side are given 15 years. That inequality is leading to discrimination, which means that DSR is extremely difficult to bring within the scope of the support that these regulations are intended to provide.

I hope the Minister will be able to give us some reassurances about the amount he has read and the legal interpretation of it he has, as well as something about demand-side response and getting that playing field level for all those who want to contribute to carbon reduction in the UK via the electricity market.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I know the Minister always likes to hear optimism and congratulations on energy policy from these Benches. I will start with that, in that I am pleased that renewables—I understand the caveat about unsubsidised renewables—will be able to bid for the capacity market in future. The irony, somewhat, is that the form of renewables that costs the least and is most likely to be unsubsidised—onshore wind—has been banned by the Government. I think others will speak about that area later in this debate.

The capacity market came into operation in about 2014, which to us in this House probably sounds like yesterday, but in the development of the energy market—decarbonisation and the way in which variability, storage technology and all those other areas have moved forward—there has been a big change. The question we should come back to—as well as many of my noble friend Lord Stunell’s excellently made points—is: where do we need to go with the capacity market at this stage?

In this statutory instrument we have more of the same, to catch up with what we have not been able to do because of the European Court of Justice decision. I suggest that the capacity market, which was essential back when the Energy Act put it into place, is more questionable at the moment. I ask the Minister: what has the cost of the capacity market been to date? In recent years, what percentage of annual electricity consumption has the capacity market contributed? I am trying to get an idea of the scale of this instrument’s use and how important it has been. One thing is quite obvious: I understand that there has been an auction during this period of standstill. Given that there is no panic about this, do we need this capacity at all?

I repeat my noble friend’s points about demand-side management. It has been a characteristic of energy policy that we have always prioritised supply and capital investment, following demand, rather than trying to reduce demand and looking at the demand side rather than the supply side of the equation. Will we be in a position where demand-side response—the aggregators and that side of the industry, so important to our future —is able to compete not just in the one-year bids but in the three- and four-year bids? Will that now be the case? Where are we on storage? I believe that it is still not included as a sector that can bid for the capacity market. I hope that I am wrong on that, but I would be interested to hear that from the Minister.

So my real question is: how does the Minister see the capacity market moving in the future? I would love to see in the new energy White Paper—I hope the Minister will tell us this evening when it will be published—onshore wind coming back on to the system.

In terms of this particular statutory instrument, yes, it does the business, but we need a far more strategic approach to this part of the market than we have at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord also asked how the capacity market supported DSR. The purpose of the market is to ensure security of supply by giving capacity providers the right incentives to be on the system to deliver energy where needed. It is, as I have made clear, including with the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, a number of times, technologically neutral.

[Lord Teverson]

I understand entirely the argument that a number of years are required for physical capacity to build what was originally the coalition Government’s hope that gas would come online. But what I do not understand is this: by having that exclusively for supply side, a whole area of the capacity market is denied by demand response. By the time you come around to the short-term one-year deals, where demand response can come in, you have already filled a major proportion of the capacity market. It therefore discriminates against that sector—or do I completely misunderstand this?

[Lord Henley]

I might have to write in greater detail, but both T-1 and T-4—the short term and longer term—deal with the point about discrimination. I might be wrong, but I will think about that and come back to the noble Lord.

Carbon Budgets

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not accept the noble Baroness’s premise that we are cheating; we are following international rules on this matter. If we wanted to change in the manner that she suggests, which might be a way ahead, it would be worth doing only if we had international agreement from all sides.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, in its report at the beginning of May the Committee on Climate Change made it clear that we had to “ramp up” our efforts in saving and getting carbon out of our economy quite substantially. It particularly criticised the Government’s target of ceasing the sales of diesel and petrol vehicles in 2040. Should we not get real here and say that if we are to meet our targets that date has to be brought forward, as many other nations have done, to 2030?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we have ramped up what we are doing; that is why, last week, we brought forward the order that moved us to a legally binding target of net zero by 2050, in line with the advice from the climate change committee. The committee made no suggestion that we should get rid of petrol and diesel cars by 2040, a very substantial change which would cause major problems for the whole automotive industry. I believe that the target we have set is about right.

Renewable Energy

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on his forensic and deep analysis in opening the debate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, who gave us that very exact background on the subject.

I have an interest in that I live in Cornwall—in fact, the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Berkeley, do as well. If the Minister is down our way some time and goes to the north coast, where the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, lives—I live nearer the south coast—and visits Newquay or any of the other beaches along there he will see surfers at all times of year. I think the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is actually an accomplished surfer. I see him shaking his head—the rest of my speech will be true, rather than fake news. The Minister will see through the surfers the power of wave. I know this debate is more about tidal energy than wave, but we see it in practical action.

The background that many noble Lords have mentioned is the need to decarbonise our economy, as is laid out in the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy, with which I am sure the Minister is totally au fait. I was particularly struck when the Committee on Climate Change presented its report at the beginning of last month on meeting the zero-carbon target in the UK by 2050. What struck me in the presentation by Chris Stark, its chief executive, was his point that, for the UK to meet that target—we hope the Government will accept that recommendation, although I know that the Minister will not be able to do so today—we have to do everything concurrently. In the past, even I have thought of going down the power sector route first, transport second, heating third and land use and agriculture fourth. We have to do that all together, as I have said in the House before.

Even I think on occasion that we have solved the power sector, so we need to get on with the rest of it—particularly heating, which is difficult. But the fact is that we have not yet solved the power sector. Last year, I think that only 49.6% of our electricity was generated by low-carbon, non-fossil fuel sources, which includes nuclear. We still have the real challenge of getting past that first base in decarbonising our economy. Even in that area, we have a big issue with nuclear at the moment, which is one of the low-carbon technologies. Nuclear power is fundamental to the Government’s clean growth strategy; we have Hinkley C, which I visited about a year ago to see how it was developing. However, we now know that further projects there, whether they are supposed to be delivered by Hitachi or Toshiba, are not going to happen. I cannot see a way that they will happen. Indeed, even if those companies were able to deliver, through finance or public support, we know that the National Infrastructure Commission has now said that there should be no more than one nuclear power station in connection with that programme. We therefore have a challenge: how do we reach decarbonisation just of the power and energy sector in time for us to meet those decarbonisation targets?

I welcome the Government’s continued emphasis on offshore wind—I wish they would get on with onshore wind as well, which is even cheaper, but they are not doing that. We have to look at other sources as well. As many speakers have said, our marine energy resource is larger off our shores than almost anywhere else in the world. The question therefore comes back to exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, is asking: how do we get that to happen?

There are other benefits to some of these schemes. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about some of the issues with barrages. I certainly have never advocated, and never will, the full Severn barrage, which would be ecologically and commercially the wrong thing to do. However, we have much more subtle and sensitive ways to achieve this now, such as through other forms of tidal lagoon and tidal stream. Even on tidal lagoons, we have potential benefits such as flood control and leisure, and maybe other smaller benefits. We know from other renewable technologies that we have to get them going, and test and adjust them to make sure that ecologically they are right—we need to be sensitive about that to make sure that they are right as regards water movement, silting, and so on. However, we know that, on the whole, those factors can be overcome, and that as time goes on those cost curves come down. We have proved that in other renewable technologies—not so much in low-carbon nuclear, where the cost curve has tended to go the other way—but there must be that potential with regard to the shores of the United Kingdom and tidal and wave energy.

I say that costs can come down, which is why it is so important for the Government to enable this country to get to first base to start to see how these technologies work. We on these Benches are as concerned about value to the taxpayer as anybody else, but we know that we can achieve lower prices if we roll these out.

My question for the Minister is exactly the same as that asked by almost every other Member of the House so far. We have a fantastic resource, which we know in our hearts can be successful in the future and provide us with the leadership that my noble friend pointed out we did not get on wind turbines. How do we make it happen?

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a trustee of the Green Purposes Company that holds a special share in the Green Investment Bank. It is a delight to take part in a debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, given his key role in this House and in Parliament when the Climate Change Act was finally approved just over a decade ago in 2008. It makes me wonder whether determination and enthusiasm about this issue runs on a 10-year cycle. I hope that it does not and that it will be a bit more consistent over the next 10 years. I want also particularly to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on his work on the Committee on Climate Change. Along with a number of other noble Lords, I was privileged to be at the presentation of the report this morning. We were asked by the chief executive, Chris Stark, to read the whole document because it is comprehensive and it will do us good. That is quite a big ask for us these days, but it is good. Having said that, one of the things about this debate is that it generates passion, which there needs to be, along with some attitude. I was a little disappointed with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, when he attacked my noble friend Lady Featherstone. Believe me: you are both on the same side on this issue, and I am sure that that is true for this subject more generally, as it was back in 2008.

It is important not only that we agree but that we call government to account, because that is what Parliament and this Chamber is partly about. It is impossible not to, as my noble friend did, mention the car crash at the time of regime change in 2015. Then, frankly, onshore wind disappeared, carbon capture and storage ended, and there was the vandalism of stopping the zero carbon homes initiative. Not only that, the Department of Energy and Climate Change was abolished, which illustrated all too well where we were. The person who instigated that is no longer in the Government and in fact is no longer in Parliament; he edits the local evening rag in London and is doing a great job there. But what that says to me is that if there is one thing the Government need do on climate change—be it the current Government or whatever we have in the future—it is to get the Treasury on board. We have to make sure that more than anyone else, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the standard bearer for climate change and this particular crisis. For the past four years we have been resting on our laurels because of those changes. While I do not for a moment question the authentic wish and determination of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, Claire Perry MP and Greg Clark MP to implement this policy, more needs to happen.

The outcome of resting on our laurels is that the Committee on Climate Change now says that we will not meet our fourth and fifth carbon budgets even as they are at the moment; that is, aiming for an 80% reduction by 2050. The fourth budget will start in 2023, which is only four years ahead. I have only one question for the Minister. I cannot ask him whether the Government will commit to meeting the aims set out in the report published this morning because that is not reasonable. The Government first have to consider it. However, can he tell us what actions the Government will take to meet their current commitments to the fourth and fifth carbon budgets? At the moment we have had a lot of very good and worthy pieces of paper. We have had a number of strategies, including the Resources and Waste Strategy, the Clean Growth Strategy, the 25-year environment plan, and the Road to Zero Strategy, but what is the outcome of those?

Let us look at some of the major emitting sectors. On power generation, yes, the past Administrations of this country have done very well. We now have a hole in terms of nuclear, given that the Toshiba and Hitachi stations do not look like they will go ahead. However, the one thing I give absolute credit to the Government for is carrying on with contracts for difference for offshore wind. A further 900 turbines are going to be delivered under the present plans. That is excellent but it is not going to do everything, so we need to improve in that area.

Heating, mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, is a big issue. We have got nowhere on that and we are still discussing it. I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, brought up transport. We are seeing emissions rise through use of white vans for mail order deliveries. While I have not looked at the sales, I have checked the stock of electric vehicles. What percentage of our total stock of motor transport is electric? It is 0.2%: one-fifth of 1% of vehicles on our roads are electric, so we still have a huge distance to go. Sir John Armitt of the National Infrastructure Commission reminded us only last week that we absolutely must have a working infrastructure of charging points. That will give people the courage to buy electric vehicles because they will know that they can drive them anywhere. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, said, we do not have that at the moment.

I turn to agriculture and land use. The NFU has now committed to zero carbon by 2040, although that is quite sketchy. But, again, we are seeing no real action. Our peatland areas are of concern to me. They act as one of our biggest carbon sinks, but we still have a voluntary code governing the use of peat in horticultural compost. That use is actually going up rather than coming down. We need mandatory controls on that. I am delighted that Claire Perry has said that we should have carbon capture and storage schemes operating by 2030, but we have already been told by other experts that as things stand in the sector, it will not happen commercially.

The new chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, Chris Stark, told us earlier that in the past the plan was to do all of these things serially, working through the major sectors one after the other. We now have to do them all at the same time and that is going to be a challenge, but it is doable with our current technology. I want to congratulate the Committee on Climate Change on not factoring in future technologies. The report is on existing technologies and, taking the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about bringing the date forward, I hope that, when that technology changes, the date is brought forward. It certainly needs to be.

I have perhaps sounded a little pessimistic. As I did in the debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in the Moses Room only a month ago—which was rather less well attended—I will go through some of the huge benefits we get from meeting these targets. One is clean air, which is already a rising political issue. Another is better health. We are going to have higher and better-skilled employment and, I believe, strong and robust economic growth in this sector. We will also have a circular economy—it is not just about carbon emissions—in which we use the resources of our planet again, circulate them and make that sustainable. By following this new trajectory of zero carbon by 2050, we as a nation take back that leadership on climate change that I believe we have partly—only partly—lost over the last four years.

I have really enjoyed this debate. What I really like about it is the passion, the attitude and the fact that we are agreed; there are no climate change deniers here today, as the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, mentioned. We now know that this is the truth. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches might want to call the Government to account, but we are desperate to join Members of all other parties and none in this House to work towards the solution and achieve zero carbon emissions in 2050.

Fuel Poverty

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I suspect it is a benefit of which a large number of Members of this House are in receipt—I see one or two indicating that they are not. I note what my noble friend said. It is a very good suggestion, and I will ensure that my right honourable friend the Chancellor is made aware of it.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister is absolutely right to mention the private rented sector. One year ago, the minimum energy efficiency standards regulations came into force, which meant that properties could not be rented unless their EPC was E or above. However, properties are still being advertised that do not meet that criterion. What are the Government doing to ensure that local authorities apply those regulations and fuel poverty is reduced in that sector?

[Lord Henley]

The noble Lord is right: it is for local authorities to do that, but he will also remember that we brought forward further regulations this year, which he and I debated in this House, whereby we increased the obligation on landlords in how much they should be expected to spend to raise houses in the private rented sector to, I think, at least band E. I forget the precise level that they have to be at.

Climate

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has rightly asked us whether we see this as an emergency, and I put my hand up and say, “It absolutely is”. With this particular emergency, as with many national emergencies, there are lots of down sides in that there are all sorts of negative consequences to war, threats or security. Today, however, I want to go through all the positive things that come out of genuinely calling this an emergency.

First, even in conventional terms, we have economic growth. As we saw during the 2008 recession, the green sector was one that grew in 2017—those are the most recent figures. GDP growth rose by some 1.8%, but economic growth in the green sector was something like 7%. There are more or less 250,000 jobs just in the green growth and energy efficiency sector.

Clean air is one of the consequences of decarbonisation; King’s College London estimates that in recent years there have been some 36,000 premature deaths per annum because of dirty air. There are 2.5 million households still in fuel poverty, yet through proper efficiency programmes and the housing stock, we could eventually reduce that to zero. That would also help winter deaths, of which there are some 50,000 per annum. Indeed, with heatwaves these days, it is estimated that in the last couple of years there have been some 600 to 900 deaths due to excess heat. Obviously, figures have been far higher on the continent, which may show what is still to come.

We can reduce fuel bills, not just by increasing the energy efficiency of the housing stock, but by renewable energy now being cheaper than fossil fuels. Because of all this increased welfare, I hope we can increase national welfare but also reduce costs on the National Health Service. By doing all this, we are making a major move towards a circular economy, which means that the planet can start to exist within its own finite resources.

To come back to climate finance, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, rightly mentioned the decline of venture capital and the restriction on it in this sector. I was interested to hear those figures. Having said that, a huge amount of money wishes to invest, and it is about finding those opportunities; maybe government, through the public sector, can help that to happen. France has produced sovereign bonds, which have been at coupon rates that are less than standard ones. All this would also provide the UK with climate leadership again, which we are starting to miss.

I will ask the Minister only the following question. On 2 May, the climate change committee will produce its report on what we should do to achieve only a 1.5 degree centigrade increase—reckless though even that is. Will the Government accept the committee’s recommendations, whatever they are?

Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Amendment and Power to Modify) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Grand Committee

To conclude, the Government are committed to supporting the development of CCUS. To meet this commitment, it is imperative that we ensure we have a fully functioning regime for the safe and permanent storage of carbon dioxide in the UK. The amendments proposed by this statutory instrument do just that. They are an appropriate use of the powers of the withdrawal Act and form an important component in fulfilling our commitment to ensuring that the UK has the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, when I read this, particularly the Explanatory Memorandum, I started to feel it was an exercise in irony. Despite all the urgency of the potential Brexit, here we have a situation where it will probably be necessary to pass this legislation by 29 March 2029, given the current government decarbonisation strategy.

In 2017, as the Minister will probably remember, the Public Accounts Committee in the other place pointed out that the Government had wasted some £168 million on CCS projects—including £100 million on the one cancelled by George Osborne in the 2015 Budget—with no progress whatever.

Having said that, I agree with Claire Perry, the Minister responsible for the clean growth strategy. In the CCUS Cost Challenge Taskforce report, she said that,

“we want to have the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s”—

as long as the pricing is right.

The Minister mentioned the Acorn project. I agree that there may be some necessity to do this, but it reflects the rather tragic trajectory of government action. The fact that this core part of the clean growth strategy will not be implemented until the 2030s is most unfortunate.

The clean growth strategy called for a new CCS council—or CCUS as it is called nowadays. Has that been established and is it operating now?

As the Minister knows, I am interested in areas of international agreement, such as the Ospar Convention, which prevents the deposit of waste in marine areas of the north-east Atlantic. I seem to recall that the Government got an allowance through the Ospar Convention process for CCUS—it is seen as disposal of waste at sea, even though it is under the sea—potentially in the North Sea. The UK and the European Union are signatories of this. I am interested to understand whether the UK itself has enough permits under the convention, or a derogation in our own right to be able to continue this, rather than it being done in agreement with the European Union, with it as the signatory. Will we need any treaty revisions or further derogations from the Ospar Convention to move this forward once we are out of the European Union?

In a way, I am glad that BEIS has given this some priority—perhaps it is a sign of movement at last. I look forward to seeing those future plans for CCUS. We do of course have Drax, but I do not think it requires any geological resolution of storage, which this SI is all about.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for moving this statutory instrument. I have just one question. He said that there has been consultation with only the Oil and Gas Authority, which presumably is the regulator in this instance. Page 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that it will apply to,

“activities that are undertaken by small businesses”.

Was a conscious decision taken not to consult widely with the industry, and, if so, what was the reason for that? Obviously the regulator will have a view, but those who work in the industry might have an alternative view.