Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage

Debate between Julian Lewis and Ed Miliband

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

This is something that my hon. Friend and I have talked about. On Grangemouth, we are advancing at speed—in a way that the last Government completely failed to do, because the project had not even started—with Project Willow, which is seeking an industrial future for the Grangemouth site. He has my absolute commitment that we will use every lever at our disposal in Government to try and make this happen. We have a number of levers available to us that the last Government did not have, including the national wealth fund, and we are going to work intensively on that in the coming months.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will know that until a few days ago, the Fawley refinery and chemicals complex run by ExxonMobil in New Forest East was planning a major carbon capture project that involved controversial pipelines either over sensitive areas of the New Forest or across the Isle of Wight. ExxonMobil has temporarily pulled the plug on that, but one reason it seems to think it cannot use a sea route, perhaps to feed this in to the North sea outlet for carbon capture and storage, is the absence of purpose-built ships for the safe transportation of liquefied CO₂. Will the Secretary of State look into where we are with the development of safe methods of transporting the gas in liquid form by sea?

[Ed Miliband]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I talked to the UK chair of ExxonMobil last week about this issue, and I believe that the Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), is going to meet him later this week. For the benefit of the House, this was not in either track 1 or track 2—it was part of the Solent cluster—but we want all the projects to go ahead and the Solent cluster has real potential and is an important part of this. The UK chair told me that this temporary pause was certainly nothing to do with the actions of this Government, but, frankly, was to do with the time it had taken the previous Government to get going on this. I undertake to the right hon. Gentleman that we will continue our dialogue with the company about these issues, including on the more technical issues that he is talking about.

Contracts for Difference

Debate between Julian Lewis and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend is 100% right, and she puts it incredibly well. It is hard for Governments of all stripes to admit this truth, but when the 1 October price cap was announced, these matters were not within the previous Government’s control, and would not have been within ours, because of our exposure. These prices are set internationally. When Putin or the petro-states make decisions, they rebound on my hon. Friend’s constituents, and the only solution is our clean energy superpower mission. The truth is that it will take time, and it will be hard for her and my constituents, and the constituents of those across the House, but the answer has to be to go as fast as possible, because that is what gets us energy security and lower bills.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment; he is the perfect example of a political renewable. As politicians, we all have a great deal to contribute to onshore wind. More seriously, does the Secretary of State share my concern that The Guardian last year and The Daily Telegraph this year both drew attention to the Chinese exploitation of Uyghur slave labour in the manufacture of so many solar panels? Other countries have been banning their import. How does he propose to deal with the matter, because I am sure that he shares my concern that we should not profit on the back of that sort of disgraceful exploitation?

[Ed Miliband]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He raises an incredibly serious and important issue. When I came into Government, I asked for discussions across Government on this. Controls were in place, to be fair to the last Government, and as part of the ongoing solar taskforce, these issues were being looked at, but we need to kick the tyres on this, to make sure that the proper controls are in place. My Department is very happy to have discussions with him and other interested parties on those questions.