Revised Draft Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN-1)

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, in the gap I doff my warm woolly hat, or even my mitre, in three directions—three areas where I think the policy statements are inadequate. The first has been covered partly by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and partly by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, from very different perspectives: the economic impact of these policies simply is not spelt out. Where is the £250 billion that is required by 2025 to come from? How much will be paid by consumers through their electricity bills? My electricity bill in Scotland currently has government obligations of about 7 per cent. That will be much greater in the years to come. How great? If electricity bills in this country get out of sync with those of other competitor countries, it will produce unemployment, which is a moral consequence of policies that one does not always or often accept. How can this be spelt out in a way that is much more transparent? At the moment there is simply a deathly silence.

Secondly, due to the occupational hazards of being a bishop, I, too, cannot be here on Thursday, like my right reverend friend the Bishop of Liverpool, but I have a question about nuclear. The policy statement makes a clear case for major nuclear investment, but why is there not the same subsidy as is available to wind power, given all the constraints and difficulties that exist in relation to wind power? I hope that the Government can answer that on Thursday.

I should like to spend a little more time on the third area, and ask how these policies relate to events in the wider world. Every country on earth that has fossil fuels, especially underground oil and gas, feels a compelling economic requirement to exploit them. We are told on page 13 of the report that it is the Government’s policy to maximise production of oil and gas from the North Sea. If you are the Sudan or the United States of America, you feel the same compulsion. You would feel the same compulsion if you suddenly discovered vast amounts of additional gas in the form of shale gas. What will become of the oil and gas that is taken out of the ground? It will be turned into carbon dioxide; that is the only useful thing you can effectively do with it, because its value is tied up in the energy in the carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds in the molecules. Whatever we do in this country, the great presumption must be that there will be a huge increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere worldwide. Any policy in this country has to be co-ordinated much more with international policy, lest we end up with very expensive energy and economic consequences that we are not currently facing.

We are told on page 54 of EN-1 that the global increase in coal production simply continues. What will happen to that coal? It will be turned into carbon dioxide. That is the only useful thing that you can do with it. It is extraordinary to assume that carbon capture and storage will come to the rescue of all this. In a previous incarnation, I was a chemist—the very foothills of science when compared with the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and perhaps others here in the Room. There are difficulties in the chemical processes of capturing the carbon dioxide in the first place, potentially involving vast amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, both of which are very combustible gases. Who will pay for transporting the CO₂ through vast pipelines or for storing it underground? How secure will that be geologically? That point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Reay. These are huge questions, quite apart from the cost. We have not been told of the costs for CCS so far.

I hope that I can simply doff my cap in the direction of the Minister and ask for some replies—either today or in writing.