Climate Change: Global Temperatures

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the noble Lord is probably well aware, under the heat and buildings strategy, another of the Chancellor’s announcements last week, we have allocated hundreds of millions of pounds to the public sector decarbonisation scheme to go with the £1 billion that we have already spent in the past year on the PSDS. I could point the noble Lord to numerous examples across the country, both in London and elsewhere, of excellent schemes where the public sector is using these funds to deliver meaningful carbon reductions.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The Minister mentioned the carbon capture and storage facilities that have been approved. He will also be aware that the one that was most ready to go ahead is at St Fergus in Aberdeenshire, but that was not given approval. Why? Are the Government deliberately setting out to upset Scotland and the Scottish Executive?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think that the noble Lord knows the answer to his own question. A rigorous process was gone through to determine which schemes should get the go-ahead. It is not true that the scheme to which he referred was the most advanced. An independent panel of experts studied all the bids. It is not the case that we are not going ahead with the scheme; it is on the reserve list. It will almost certainly proceed, but just not in the first wave.