Carbon Capture and Storage

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, and to the hon. Members who persuaded it to do so. It is a particular pleasure to follow my co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on carbon capture and storage, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous).

My interest in the Government’s new approach to CCS in the clean growth strategy goes wider than Teesside, but I am pleased that new colleagues from our region are present, including the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill). They join the work that many of us have been doing for years to persuade the Government to get serious about CCS. I am surrounded by no fewer than five Teesside MP colleagues; 100% of us are here, and we are 100% behind the debate.

I hope my new Tees colleagues recognise that the Government’s reaffirmed commitment to CCS, two years after withdrawing £1 billion in funding, is only a small step along what will be a very long road if our country is truly to reap the benefits of carbon capture. We need more than tens of millions in investment; we need billions. We need big leaps, not tiny steps. Nevertheless, this new recognition of CCS is testimony not only to the impressive body of evidence that continues to emphasise the key role of CCS in delivering least-cost decarbonisation, but to the energy—no pun intended—and enthusiasm of the industry, which has kept up a steady drumbeat on CCS since November 2015. I pay tribute to the Carbon Capture and Storage Association for its work and for its support of the APPG.

In the clean growth strategy, the Government have recognised what the industry has been saying for years: CCS is vital to broad sections of the UK economy. Power aside, key industries such as steel, cement and refining are increasingly looking for ways to remain competitive in a low-carbon world. CCS offers the only solution for deep decarbonisation in these industries that helps to enable their sustainable future, which is crucial for regions such as the Humber, the north-west and Teesside.

[Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)]

CF Fertilisers is based in my hon. Friend’s constituency, Stockton North, but also employs people in my constituency and in Middlesbrough. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) has a long-standing commitment to carbon capture and storage, but cannot be present because of a Front-Bench commitment.

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[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. Having recently been at a meeting of the Panel of Chairs, I remind new Members that if they wish to intervene they must be present at the start of the debate. However, I know that Dr Williams spoke in the main Chamber earlier, and I realise that he cannot be in two places at once. Nevertheless, as a Clerk is sitting beside me, I thought I should point that out.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) was indeed in the main Chamber earlier. So was I; I was in the smoking debate, trying to persuade our country to give up the weed.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The company he refers to consumes the same amount of gas at its other plant in Runcorn. It is crucial that CCS be spread across the country.

[The Minister for Climate Change and Industry (Claire Perry)]

May I address that question now, in case I forget later? The hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) is right to focus on the effect on companies such as CF Fertilisers. He will be pleased to know that I had a meeting with that company yesterday. We have had conversations on several issues, but the impact of this technology on its carbon dioxide emissions and its cost base is clear.

[Alex Cunningham]

I thank the Minister for that helpful intervention. I have seen companies across the area, including those that make up the Teesside Collective, working hard to decarbonise their processes, but engineering can only do so much. The Government appear to understand that. The clean growth strategy estimates that CCS could provide almost half the required emissions reductions in energy-intensive industries, helping them all on their way.

A recent study by Summit Power gives a simple explanation as to why the first CCS projects must begin operation in the 2020s: achieving the CCS capacity needed to meet the UK’s 2050 target requires a 30-year build-out rate. Any attempts to significantly shorten that period would place unrealistic expectations on the supply chain and the construction companies. The end result would either be a failure to meet the 80% target by 2050 or the deployment of alternative low-carbon solutions that are likely to be considerably more expensive. We need the first CCS projects to begin operation in the 2020s. Although the £100 million of funding to support that work is welcome, the Government will need to do much more if we are to realise our ambitions.

The Government’s recommitment to CCS sets out an ambition to deploy it at scale during the 2030s, which throws up some interesting questions. What exactly is meant by “at scale”? Does it mean deploying the first CCS projects in the 2030s, or does it mean that the projects will be up and running in the next five to 10 years and at the required scale 10 years later? To achieve large-scale deployment of CCS in the 2030s, it will be essential to have at least one phase, if not two phases, of operational projects in the 2020s to enable learning and cost reduction.

That was just one of the messages from yesterday’s APPG meeting, where we heard about CCS progress in three fantastic projects that could be the first building blocks in the construction of a world-leading CCS industry: the Caledonia Clean Energy project, the Teesside Collective and the Liverpool-Manchester hydrogen cluster. They are all in a strong position to get work under way to deliver projects that could be expanded or replicated with relative ease.

The Department is familiar with those projects and is providing some support, but the message to Government at that meeting was clear: each of the projects is costed, demonstrates relatively low cost and, most importantly, could make something happen quickly. The projects have invested heavily in development, worked with leaders in the field and done the numbers. Their plea was for the Government to come up with a timetable for decisions.

The Teesside Collective spells out what it needs in its briefing note, which the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland alluded to. It asks for the allocation of £15 million in capture plant FEED funding to enable it to develop phase 1 of the project. It wants support for investment in a suitable CO₂ store. It states that transport and storage costs will come down through new delivery models and that it is keen to work in partnership with Government to look at a cost-effective solution. It also wants the establishment of a funding mechanism to build and operate an industrial CCS network.

Will the Minister address those pleas and let us know what decisions we can expect from her? The industry desperately needs decisions. I invite her to attend a meeting of the all-party group early in the new year so that she can outline the Government’s thinking, listen to Members’ feedback and answer their questions.

I hope I will be forgiven for being a bit more parochial now. As other hon. Members have mentioned, NEPIC has identified Teesside as a location with a particularly strong competitive advantage in the deployment and commercialisation of CCS. My Teesside constituency is home to the Teesside Collective, a consortium of industries developing the first CCS project in the UK. Teesside has the workforce and the strong engineering skills required for CCS, largely as a result of long-standing expertise in the oil and gas, energy supply, chemical and process industries.

We know from the clean growth strategy that CCS has to do more than demonstrate carbon reduction and low cost. It also has to offer a competitive opportunity for the whole of the UK. There is every reason to believe that that aim can be realised. The UK has some of the best CO₂ storage capacity in the world, a world-class oil and gas industry with the ideal skill set for CCS, and industries already located together in key regions. The economic benefits of CCS could be immense, with the Summit Power report concluding that developing it in the UK could deliver an estimated £129 billion of benefits. The clean growth strategy includes a commitment to developing a deployment pathway for CCS in 2018, but there is no detail about how that pathway will be developed or about the actions that may be included, so I hope the Minister can help us in that regard.

To make sure that, come the 2020s, the first CCS projects are operational, the Government need to implement a number of key actions in this Parliament to kick-start CCS clusters in a number of key regions. Countries such as Norway and the Netherlands have come forward with strong commitments on CCS, and it is time for us to step up and take our place among the leading group of countries that are developing this transformational technology.

I am ambitious and optimistic about the potential that exists and I am encouraged that we seem to be moving in the right direction. However, in closing I reiterate three messages: we need huge leaps to be taken, not tiny steps; the Government need to publish a timetable for the decisions needed to make real progress; and there are good, costed projects ready to go that can make our country a world leader in carbon capture and in creating and protecting countless jobs. I hope that the Minister will help us do that.

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[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Like other Members, I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) on bringing forward this debate. He promoted Teesside and highlighted the possible economic benefits of CCS, including to the energy-intensive industries located there.

I had started to wonder what the Teesside Collective was. Before I came into the Chamber, I understood that it was the consortium looking to develop the project, but it is quite clear that the name could be applied to the Members gathered in Westminster Hall, because there is no doubt that they spoke with a unified voice. It is good to hear cross-party support fighting for jobs in constituencies, and it is to be applauded.

As the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said, this is the second debate on CCS in this Chamber in a 10-month period. That shows how valuable CCS is deemed to be for climate control and emissions reduction. The debate has been somewhat more upbeat and optimistic than the debate in January, but I warn the Minister that, just like my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), I reserve the right to apply a bit of gloominess to the issue.

[Alex Cunningham]

Before the hon. Gentleman introduces further gloom to the debate, perhaps he would like to welcome, as I did yesterday, the fact that the Caledonia project in my home country is working very closely with the Tees Collective project in my adopted home. It is co-operation between projects that will capture the imagination of the Government and others and drive things forward.

[Alan Brown]

Yes, I welcome that collaboration and announcement. The hon. Gentleman made a joke about being parochial for his area and his constituency, but surprisingly I am not going to be that parochial. I would like to see all these projects develop, with local areas across the United Kingdom benefiting.

The hon. Gentleman talked about taking tiny steps forward. We need to take much bigger leaps forward—this is where I turn to the gloomy aspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey touched on—but we have taken backward steps. The Minister might not like hearing this, but it is important, and it has got us to where we are just now. Pulling the plug on the Peterhead project cost the Peterhead area 600 jobs, but it has the much wider implication that it dented investor confidence. The Government need to take action to recover that confidence and find ways to get private investment going forward.

In 2014, before the Scottish referendum, we were told by the Better Together campaign that only the broad shoulders of the United Kingdom could cope with a reduction in the oil price. Since then, we have sadly seen a reduction in the oil price, but we have not seen enough support from those broad shoulders. That is why the pulling of the project at Peterhead was a further blow to the oil and gas industry in that area of Scotland. That project could have been the perfect fillip.

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[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Surrounded as I am by what we now know is a Teesside collective, who look out on to the North sea, I cannot offer quite such a spectacular view from my constituency. I have a view on to the English channel, which is of course rather less bracing for a dip this time of year, but does not share the North sea’s potential for CCS in the future.

It was good to hear this afternoon from Members across the House about that potential, in terms of what is in Teesside—both in its own right and in conjunction with what is in the North sea. As a country, we must play a role in, among other things, making sure that after the exploitation of the North sea for oil and gas, the industry continues. That can be done by ensuring that the plant, the connections and the various other things currently in the North sea are turned around over the coming period, so that we are the leading country in Europe and the world for storing carbon as well as capturing it—perhaps offering that facility to not only our own country, but all the countries bordering the North sea and more widely.

In that context, it is interesting that that is precisely where Norway is now going. Statoil has been fairly busy recently; I met with its representatives just the other day. It was good to hear from them that although there have been setbacks in the process of getting the Norwegian project under way, it is very much still on track. The aim is to develop the Troll field, essentially as the first part of a European-wide process of storage of carbon in the North sea. They are currently looking at processes of barging captured carbon to an onshore site in Norway and then pipelining it out.

[Alex Cunningham]

The development in Norway is an illustration of why the UK needs to get on its bike and get moving. Yesterday, at the all-party parliamentary group meeting, it was revealed that the cost for projects in this country might be as low as £40 or £60 a tonne, but going to a third party might cost us £100 a tonne. That is an economic argument in favour of our own comprehensive storage.

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend has exactly anticipated, in rather more eloquent terms, what I was about to say almost immediately. The pace of the Norway project illustrates that we should get our act together as early as possible in making sure that we have the lead on the whole process in the North sea, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend mentions—cost, expediency and proximity. This unparalleled opportunity will probably not come again. If, for example, we close down all the capped wells and sites in the North sea as the oil begins to diminish, we will have lost that opportunity to be world leaders in the North sea. Action needs to be undertaken now, or in the very near future.

I endorse everything that has been said by pretty much everybody in the Chamber today about the importance of carbon capture and storage for the future. I cannot do better than describe it in the exact words of the Committee on Climate Change:

“Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is very important in meeting the 2050 target at least cost, given its potential to reduce emissions across heavy industry, the power sector and perhaps with bioenergy, as well as opening up new decarbonisation pathways (e.g. based on hydrogen).”

The committee goes on, in that report, to talk about the cost of not doing anything as far as carbon capture and storage is concerned over the coming period, which hon. Members have discussed.

The Committee on Climate Change sees carbon capture and storage as absolutely essential. That is what it said in its report, “The Fifth Carbon Budget”, which we in the UK have now adopted. It is incumbent on us to make sure that we respond to what the committee has underlined in that report—the importance of carbon capture and storage.

On that matter, I have been pleased to see that the clean growth strategy not only mentions but more than mentions what will happen with carbon capture and storage. Just a little while ago, the Minister told us in the House that the clean growth plan would be on its way shortly, with further bells and whistles. I would like to think that that mention—all three pages of it—may be a bell or whistle that she personally inserted into the clean growth plan to get a new view abroad of what we can get from carbon capture and storage, how important it is for the future and what the next pathways are.

I cannot be wholly uncritical, because certain things need to be underlined at this stage. Opening an avenue on carbon capture and storage will inevitably be seen by many people concerned about the area as springing from something that hon. Members have also mentioned this afternoon—the shameful passage in our recent history of the cancellation of the two carbon capture and storage pilot projects at the very last moment, in 2015. The cancellation of those projects was not just a tragedy and a disaster for the communities involved in them; it spread a pall of doubt and concern across the whole of the industry about whether carbon capture and storage has a future, whether it is worth investing in and whether confidence can be restored to make it go forward, as we all want. We have to tread a path back to the starting line, and I hope that, given the intentions about carbon capture and storage set out in the clean growth strategy, the Government understand what that setback has done to us and find a way to get back to the starting line. There are a lot of measures in those three pages, which suggests that that can be achieved.

I am not sure whether the £100 million—or, to be precise, up to £100 million—that has been set aside for the next phase of the development of carbon capture and storage will be remotely sufficient to get us where we want to go. I hope that, in 2018, when the Government come forward with more plans and details about how the £100 million will be spent and what will happen to it—the clean growth plan assures us that they will do that—the next stage of the road map will set out what we will put in over the next period to make carbon capture and storage work properly and ensure we reach the carbon reduction goals set out in the fifth carbon budget.

In that context, we ought to pay more attention to the excellent report on carbon capture, usage and storage by the Oxburgh commission, of which the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) was a member. Although the clean growth strategy says that that advisory group’s advice influenced the Government’s thoughts on carbon capture and storage, the report sets out the investment that is likely to be needed for carbon capture and storage over the next period, and it is substantially more than the £100 million set out in the clean growth plan. It would be helpful for the Government to provide a formal response to that report, which they have not done hitherto, to put on the record which parts of it they think are important, which parts they will try to implement at an earlier stage and which parts they will leave for later. I will leave that thought with the Minister. That would be a very positive thing to do, in the light of what was put forward in the clean growth strategy. We must be clear about the path ahead of us, and we need to learn from the report’s very good insights.

I hope the Minister notes the cross-party agreement in this Chamber about the urgency of the need to develop carbon capture and storage, about the development route we need to take, about the key role that Teesside and the North sea will play in that process, and about the need to work together to realise the carbon capture and storage goals that are so necessary on our path to carbon reduction.

[The Minister for Climate Change and Industry (Claire Perry)]

As always, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) for securing this excellent debate, to which there have been many thoughtful, detailed and factual contributions. My hon. Friend is a strong proponent both of the technology and of the area he represents. It was wonderful to hear the unanimity of views, in particular from the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who speaks so passionately on behalf of her constituency; the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), who made a very factual contribution about the importance of this technology; the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill), whose predecessor also promoted the technology; and my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who, although not from the region, represents a coastal constituency and has a long-standing interest in this issue. As always, he spoke very well on this subject.

I tweaked the tails of the hon. Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) slightly. I understand their points, but I sometimes wonder whether we do not have more solar deployment in Scotland because listening to the Scottish National party might lead us to think that the sun never shines north of the border, whereas we all know that it does very frequently. They made a fair point about the criticism that has been levelled at previous decisions, and that criticism has made me determined to find a copper-bottomed means of taking this technology forward. We all accept, and the report is clear, that it should be in our decarbonisation mix, but we need to develop it in a way that meets our triple test: it must ensure maximum decarbonisation, offer a clear route to an acceptable cost level, and help us boost the UK’s technology leadership so we grow the number of jobs in that part of the economy and our export potential.

I will try to answer all hon. Members’ questions. As always, some will not get answered, but I am sure my excellent Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), will be assiduous in capturing any that are not answered and making sure that I answer them further down the line.

[Alex Cunningham]

The Minister talked about fact-based speeches. Does she accept that the costings for the projects I alluded to are good costings and demonstrate good value for money?

[Claire Perry]

I have not reviewed those particular costings. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am never without my calculator. If there is one thing I want, it is value for money and a clear route to cost-effective deployment. Hopefully, we all want to go down that path.

It was excellent to hear cross-border, cross-party support for this technology. That is the way to boost investor confidence and ensure the clean growth strategy survives the vagaries of the political cycles. These long-term decisions benefit both us and our children and grandchildren.

All parties welcomed the clean growth strategy, and I thank their representatives for that. We are coming at this from a position of strength. We have the best decarbonisation and growth performance of the G7 economies. We are all determined to capture the enormous opportunity from the global pivot to low-carbon economies, and we want to ensure the UK’s productivity benefits from it. The strategy is broad and binding. It sets out clear targets and harnesses the power of innovation, on which we lead the world, to drive down costs and increase the pace of the roll-out of innovation. It also clearly sets out how we intend to meet some of the challenges.

Carbon capture, usage and storage is a vital part of the strategy. It is needed as a long-term strategic option so we can deliver the 2050 target at the least cost. It is crucial that we cut emissions from sectors that are hard to decarbonise. CF Fertilisers has done an excellent job in taking as much carbon as possible out of its industrial processes, but we understand that producing that vital product is carbon-intensive.

Carbon capture, usage and storage also gives us optionality. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun talked about the opportunity to decarbonise hydrogen production, and it is important that we maintain that option as we move towards our low-carbon future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland argued so well, capturing and effectively deploying this technology enhances the competitiveness and productivity of industrial regions such as Teesside, Merseyside, Grangemouth and south Wales. I do not want anyone listening to this debate to be in any doubt that, although some areas may be leading in terms of their ability to promote themselves as places to use this technology, that does not rule out other areas. We want it to be deployed effectively in all parts of the UK where there are industrial clusters.

The technology represents an export opportunity for firms such as Shell and Costain and new UK technology providers such as Carbon Clean Solution, which was funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to develop globally leading new forms of carbon sequestration for industrial processes.

Many companies are involved in the supply chain as well. I have been following with great interest the Eight Rivers plant, because it is UK-developed, completely breakthrough technology. It is funded with UK Government money deployed in Texas because of the package of incentives put around it, but the supply chain to the plant involves venerable companies such as Goodwin in Stoke-on-Trent, which is an amazing leader in high-specification metallurgy, and Heatric in Poole, Dorset. If we can capture such opportunities onshore, we bolster our onshore supply chain and, as the IEA has estimated, the global CCUS market could be substantial.

The problem, however, is this: we all accept that CCUS is important—we had some conversation on the nervousness in Norway about doing this—but while 21 CCS plants are operating at scale in the world, 16 are dependent on the revenues from enhanced oil recovery, which suggests that for only five plants on the planet has someone been able to persuade a Government or local player to subsidise the technology substantially, despite the potential of such technology. That tells me that the cost of the existing technology is too high and that there are potentially ways to deploy it more effectively.

That is why I want to change things—this is the point made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead)—and it is very much a personal commitment and something I strongly believe is exceptionally important. That is why we have put in place a much broader strategy on CCS. We want the prize of global leadership in the area: we want to be the people who break the deadlock, deploy CCS in the UK and capture the export opportunities.

We therefore have three areas in which I have set out actions under the clean growth strategy. First, we will constitute the CCUS cost challenge taskforce rapidly, because the model worked extremely well for offshore wind where we all accepted that the existing costs were too high. I take the point about risk sharing—the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun is knowledgeable about this. There is a real question as to how much risk partners were able to accept in that structure. We are keen to probe our understanding of how to get down the cost of the deployment of the technology, so the new taskforce will be constituted in the next month. It will report to me and, as with the green finance taskforce, it will be set specific challenges to come up with ways to reduce the cost.

Secondly, we will publish a deployment pathway for CCUS over the course of the next year, which will include the points made about power capture, industrial capture, and transport and storage. We want specific delivery and investment models for each of them. We will continue to progress the work we are doing with the Teesside Collective, but will also work with other initiatives in Teesside, Merseyside, south Wales and Grangemouth, because there are other opportunities to do so and to learn from.

[Alex Cunningham]

I very much welcome the commitment to a timeline over the next 12 months. That is extremely welcome, and I wanted to say it specifically, but what else will the Minister do to help build the investor confidence to ensure that we can get the investors to put the money forward to make the projects happen?

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman has pre-empted what I was going to come on to, although I am conscious of the time and that I have to leave some for my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. For example, I too am meeting Statoil today— I am doing the rounds and going straight from this debate.

I am very conscious of the opportunities to work with organisations such as the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which for the first time is deploying new funding specifically into this area. We are very keen on substantial private sector investment. We are talking for the first time to the gas turbine blade manufacturers, who have never been involved in the conversation but who clearly depend for their long-term business survival on continuing to generate power with gas.

Internationally, I want to be sure that everyone is aware that we are perceived as a technology leader. We participate in Mission Innovation and its carbon capture innovation challenge. We are already exploring collaborative working relationships with countries such as Norway, which has an excellent Energy Minister. Collectively, between our two countries, we took the hydrocarbons out from under the North sea; surely there is cost-effectiveness in co-operating to put back the CO₂ we have extracted. Given budget constraints, Norway in particular bears some interest, but there is also interest in working together in the United States, Canada and Australia.

We will therefore keep investing in our international CCUS programme and will organise and host an international global carbon capture, usage and storage conference next year to affirm that this is an area in which we want to take international leadership. We want to be the movers and shakers in this field.

As we have made hon. Members aware, we will invest in innovation to support such technology through our £100 million industry and CCUS innovation programme. We will make up to £20 million available for a CCU demonstration programme; we will support the next generation of technology; and in particular, as we talked about, we will support CCUS in some of the further out technologies, especially those to do with the removal of greenhouse gases. To ensure that that all works, I will personally chair a new CCUS council with industry to review progress and priorities.

I want hon. Members to be in no doubt that we are making a fundamental doubling down, as it were, on our commitment, but the guideline is that we must come up with a more cost-effective way of doing CCUS. We have to ensure that we produce the maximum reduction in emissions and we want to position the UK as the global technological leader in this space. That is at the heart of the clean growth strategy.

I will be delighted to attend the APPG and I am happy to have the conversation. As hon. Members should know, my door is always open. I feel that collectively—I choose the word advisedly—we are much better together on this sort of technology. The more we set aside any political differences, the more we ensure that we are perceived as a great place for investors—that would be great.

Sorry, I have one point to finish on quickly. I was asked about the response to the Public Accounts Committee. We accepted a majority of its recommendations, but we did choose to reject that one because, for one thing, it was based on outdated cost analysis. We want to convince everyone—I hope we have done—of the Government’s commitment to move forward on CCUS. I do not feel that we need to demonstrate its importance because that is already accepted.

I want absolutely and sincerely to say how impressed I am with the work of the Teesside Collective, which has made an exceptionally powerful case to be the first place to move forward with this technology. Discussions are very active, but it would be a bold Minister at my level who set out funding commitments ahead of the publication of the industrial strategy or the Budget. However, the case has been made, and made so well that—forgive my lapse into urban slang—I wonder whether “Teesside Massive” might be more appropriate than Teesside Collective. It is a powerful force, and it is wonderful to see so many colleagues from all parts of the House making the case.