Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Featherstone Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Lords Chamber

We must support the OGA’s crucial mission to protect our domestic energy mix and to support jobs. This can be achieved only through supporting the OGA’s principal objective—to maximise economic recovery. I hope I have provided noble Lords with clear and strong reasons why it was right for the Commons to remove the clause, thereby restoring the principal objective to that envisaged by Sir Ian Wood in his independent review. I beg to move.

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, it is our view on these Benches that carbon capture and storage and transportation should have been woven into the principal objective of the OGA. I hear what the Minister says, but it leaves me some concerns. Although the Government have made many arguments and given many assurances about the importance of carbon capture and storage, we on these Benches are not completely convinced.

I wish to raise with the Government some points which still give us great concern about the level of commitment to carbon capture and storage and indeed about their ability to deliver on our legally binding targets. If CCS is not going to be integral to the principal objective and functions of the OGA, we might have had more confidence and assurance if Her Majesty’s Government had agreed to an earlier amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, to which my noble friend Lord Teverson added his name, which would have required the Government to undertake and develop a national strategy for carbon capture and storage. CCS is such a vital part of decarbonisation for the period when carbon is still being produced that we have grave concerns in this regard.

On Report in this House, the Minister made great efforts to assure the House of the Government’s commitment to carbon capture and storage and about the money invested—£130 million since 2011 to support research, development and innovations to foster the next generation of CCS technologies. In Committee, the Minister assured us:

“It is not as though no work is happening on carbon capture and storage. We are committed to a competition with up to £1 billion capital—that is current, and we will make an announcement on it early in 2016”.—[Official Report, 7/9/15; col. 1230.]

That was on 7 September 2015. On 25 November 2015, Her Majesty’s Government cancelled that £1 billion Conservative manifesto pledge, as was stated in this House.

I simply say to the Minister that actions speak louder than words, so perhaps he will understand that we on these Benches would like to trust the Government’s words, but they have made it somewhat difficult. Time will, of course, tell, but I remind the Minister that carbon capture and storage is a vital component of our ability to meet our carbon emissions targets. The establishment of the OGA was an opportunity to embed proper regard and action on transportation and storage. That is now an opportunity lost.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not delay the House unduly, and I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests as the new president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association. I have some very big boots to fill in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh.

I do not want to replay what has happened to development proposals for carbon capture and storage, I say to the Minister only that there are great opportunities with it, but investors and the industry now need reassurance from the Government. There are interesting developments, not least within our regions. The Dutch are increasing their interest in carbon capture and storage. As we come to the closing stages of the Bill, I ask the Minister to regroup on the issue, to give us back some reassurance and to look to the positive opportunities that lie ahead. Britain can lead in this technology, but it will take some commitment from the Government and the industry. The key thing needed at the moment is reassurance to the industry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I agree that carbon capture is one of the keys to the future of energy and climate policy, because, if it can be done commercially and successfully, it will allow us to continue burning fossil fuels but in ways where the carbon is extracted. This is the case for continuing with fossil fuels, and perhaps slightly undermines the case of those who want to abolish fossil fuels altogether, because the whole point is that you can carry on if you have the technology.

Through your Lordships, I ask the noble Baroness who just spoke from the Liberal Democrat Benches whether they have thought about alternative and cheaper carbon removal technologies. There is carbon capture utilisation, which is developing in all sorts of new areas. It is beginning to look as though it can undermine the vast costs of piping carbon away into the North Sea. As we heard from the Minister, that would set back the problems in the North Sea, which are enormous and one hesitates to add any burdens to them, however important one may think the technology. So if there are cheaper ways of going forward, surely we should be going those ways.

That makes sense of what I understand from my noble friend to be the Government’s strategy, which is that the experimental efforts with carbon capture and storage in its full glory, with piping, transmission, finding places in the North Sea and overcoming all the vast technical and cost problems, can be replaced by something rather more imaginative. We may be moving in the right direction. My question is whether the Liberal Democrats have thought about those alternatives before pressing something which will obviously hurt the oil and gas industry in the North Sea at a time when it is already hurt very considerably.

[Baroness Featherstone]

I am happy to answer the noble Lord’s question. The Liberal Democrats keep an open mind on all technologies which can advance our climate change agenda. However, in Peterhead, for example, projects were well advanced and should have been continued.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt, but at this stage of the Bill noble Lords are not allowed to speak more than once.