Oral Answers to Questions

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s interpretation of the announcements that I have made. We have set out a clear path to getting a balance between ensuring that we continue to support renewable energy and ensuring that we get the investment we need, and also that we look after people’s bills. Paris has been a great triumph; let us not knock it. Let us recognise the fact that it starts to bring other countries up to the high standards that the UK has placed on it, and that it will encourage further investment.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

On the decision to pull £1 billion from carbon capture and storage, the Prime Minister said to me at Prime Minister’s questions:

“You have to make decisions about technology that works and technology that is not working.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 1548.]

How was that assessment made, given that the competition had not yet been completed?

[Amber Rudd]

We do not rule out carbon capture and storage in the future. This Government have made substantial investments through our entrepreneur fund in early-start carbon capture and storage. We have industrialised carbon capture and storage projects operating and testing in Teesside. The fact is that the decision was made not to have a £1 billion investment. It was a difficult decision made in a difficult spending round. None the less, we recognise that carbon capture and storage will still have an important future in a low carbon economy.

[Callum McCaig]

The Prime Minister said that CCS was not working, but the Secretary of State says that it will work, so one of them is clearly wrong. In his list of technology that was working, the Prime Minister included small-scale nuclear reactors. Where is that technology working, and if it is working as the Prime Minister has claimed, why does it require £250 million of taxpayers’ money?

[Amber Rudd]

I think I can bring together some of the hon. Gentleman’s questions by highlighting the investment that we are making in innovation, which is an area in which we think there can be great steps forward in renewable energy. We can help to develop important new renewable energy technologies. For instance, in Paris, under “mission innovation”, various countries came together and agreed to double their investment in innovation, and I believe that carbon capture and storage and small modular reactors will benefit from that investment.