Carbon Capture and Storage (Scotland)

Debate between Ian Swales and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Congratulations, Sir Roger, on your ennoblement—that is not the right word, but congratulations on your award. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) on securing the debate. It is an extremely important issue for the long-term future of our country from the point of view of both power and industry.

I have more than 25 years’ experience in the electricity and heavy process industries. The delay in carbon capture and storage implementation at Longannet is disappointing. The UK is in a great position to exploit CCS. As Lord Oxburgh, president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association recently put it:

“Experience gained in the North Sea oil and gas industry, and the abundance of offshore geological sites where CO₂ may be stored underground have allowed the UK to become one of the global leaders in CCS. Capitalising on this early leadership is vital”.

We certainly can be leaders. The same technology that has been so successful in the complicated job of extracting, storing and processing oil and gas from the North sea can be modified to put carbon dioxide back under the North sea. There is a skilled work force, and academia is already doing important support work. Professional bodies such as the Institute of Mechanical Engineers are very clear that the technology is perfectly practical, and there is a great future here if we move quickly. The global market in the technology alone is conservatively estimated at $10 billion.

A similar story could have been written some years ago about wind technology. We are one of the windiest countries in the world, but thanks to Government dithering and lack of public and private investment, we are playing catch-up and importing most of the technology and equipment. Having worked mainly in the private sector until May 2010, I am baffled at the interminable time scales I see in this job. When someone says something will take six months, my questions are: so what will happen tomorrow and the next day, and how can we shorten the critical path? I am then met by blank looks. I am sure that the giant new Tesco store being built in my constituency would not have gone from a green field to a functioning supermarket in six months with politicians and civil servants running the project. My challenge to the Minister is: how fast can we go and what is getting in the way?

We should be ambitious about CCS in the UK. It is needed to decarbonise our power production and our heavy industry. The areas that get CCS infrastructure will become magnets for new power and industrial investment. That means that we can protect energy-intensive industries, which are currently being challenged by European Union and United Kingdom climate measures, and help to reverse the decline in our manufacturing sector. Failure to act will lead to more announcements like the recent one on the closure of the UK’s last aluminium smelter. Ironically, it is in Northumberland next to the North sea, and the owners had considered using CCS to keep the plant going. It is now too late.

Where should CCS investment take place? Again, we should be ambitious. There are four obvious prime locations: the Aberdeen area, the Forth, the Tees and the Humber-south Yorkshire area. They all have merits, and the Department of Energy and Climate Change should kick-start development in them all. A long-term strategy should be developed for CCS infrastructure.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have listened carefully, and disturbingly I find that I must agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman says. On his point about funding all the schemes, surely the great challenge is that there is a finite pot of money. How should that problem be addressed?

[Ian Swales]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that challenge. I do not necessarily see it as my job to represent the Treasury, but £1 billion for less than a quarter of the Longannet power station was not a good use of money. Having talked to people in the industry, I think that there are better ways. Conglomerates of private sector companies want to get into the sector, and we need to be more imaginative about how we make that happen.