Energy: Carbon Capture and Storage

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I can only talk about what the Government have spent in FEED, which is their investigative, exploratory work on this. To date, we have spent more than £60 million—quite a significant figure. As I said earlier, we have committed £1 billion to the project. We will learn even more as we go into the next project and I hope that we will be successful.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I very much welcome the renewed commitment of the Government and my noble friend to carbon capture and storage in future. Will the Government look at fossil fuels other than coal? How do they see co-operation with other nations, for instance China, in developing this technology to our mutual benefit?

[Lord Marland]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for his very good points. The reality is that if we all had our time again we would start on gas, which is going to be fundamental to the future of our energy supply. I am at one with the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, on this, for a change. I very much hope that in the next competition we will have a lot of applicants for a gas project and that we can become world leaders in its carbon capture and storage.