Carbon Capture and Storage (Scotland)

Debate between Ian Swales and Gordon Banks

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) on securing this debate, which is extremely important to Fife and central Scotland, as well as to the UK in general. I am disappointed with the Longannet decision. It affects my constituency, which borders that of my hon. Friend more or less at Longannet, very much. Many of my constituents work at Longannet and I would have had high hopes of many more of them finding employment in a successful carbon and capture storage plant there, but we are where we are.

It is vital that we have a balanced energy policy. We have to embrace renewables of all natures and there has to be a role for fossil fuels and, indeed, nuclear. We have to have a guarantee that, when we press the light switch, the light comes on. Unless we embrace all available technologies to ensure that that happens, we will find ourselves socially and economically challenged.

We need to determine—we can only do this through full-scale trials—whether carbon capture and storage is a real option for future economic prosperity, as well as for dealing with the knock-on environmental issues, which are the driving factor. It is equally important to determine what a successful CCS programme—developed and branded in the UK—could deliver to the UK economy in terms of revenue and the skills of our constituents.

The Scottish Government did not do anything in relation to the Longannet decision. There was a lot of hot air from the First Minister, and it is hot air that we are trying to stop. It would have been much more constructive for the Scottish Government to have done something to facilitate the development of Longannet. Did the Minister have any discussions of that nature with the First Minister?

In an intervention, I made the point that, with coal-fired power stations in the UK and throughout the world—an increasing number are coming online in countries such as China—CCS is the real gain and the holy grail. We need to focus our minds on it in the UK, while bearing it in mind that both the public and private sectors have limited resources to invest. I will come to that in a moment.

Can the Minister confirm the expected release date of the CCS roadmap, because that is absolutely vital for the private sector embracing the challenge of this technology and seeing the Government as a partner in this? Unless the Government play their part, we cannot expect the private sector to play its part. That in itself will create jobs, technology and developmental skills that I hope we can build on and in some way export. CCS could create 13,000 jobs in Scotland and 14,000 jobs elsewhere in the UK. By 2025, the sector could be worth more than £10 billion a year to the economy, which, in addition to the environmental impact, makes CCS a bit of a no-brainer. We have touched on how many times we have been left behind.

[Ian Swales]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if CCS is worth £10 billion to the economy, those who will benefit have an incentive to help to get things going? It does not seem to make sense to rely only on Government funding.

[Gordon Banks]

The hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct, but what the private sector needs is for the Government to show a willing lead. What happened at Longannet could be construed as not demonstrating that. The Government need to step up to the plate here and throw the gauntlet down to the private sector.

As I was saying, how many times have we been left behind and missed the boat in the UK in terms of various different technologies? The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) talked about wind technology. It is a crying shame that we are where we are with wind technology. We are largely importing the technology and the equipment to build turbines. That really has been a missed opportunity. Although CCS may be costly—I will come back to that matter—it is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.

We need something from the Government to show that they are embracing CCS and that demonstrates to the private sector how serious they are. The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) raised the point about CCS being expensive. Yes, it is. There are no cheap or quick fixes to our energy position, but we have to consider what the fixes are and CCS is potentially one of them. Governments in Holyrood and Westminster need to step up to the plate, and I am not sure they are doing that.