Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Amendment and Power to Modify) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Grand Committee

To conclude, the Government are committed to supporting the development of CCUS. To meet this commitment, it is imperative that we ensure we have a fully functioning regime for the safe and permanent storage of carbon dioxide in the UK. The amendments proposed by this statutory instrument do just that. They are an appropriate use of the powers of the withdrawal Act and form an important component in fulfilling our commitment to ensuring that the UK has the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee. I beg to move.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, when I read this, particularly the Explanatory Memorandum, I started to feel it was an exercise in irony. Despite all the urgency of the potential Brexit, here we have a situation where it will probably be necessary to pass this legislation by 29 March 2029, given the current government decarbonisation strategy.

In 2017, as the Minister will probably remember, the Public Accounts Committee in the other place pointed out that the Government had wasted some £168 million on CCS projects—including £100 million on the one cancelled by George Osborne in the 2015 Budget—with no progress whatever.

Having said that, I agree with Claire Perry, the Minister responsible for the clean growth strategy. In the CCUS Cost Challenge Taskforce report, she said that,

“we want to have the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s”—

as long as the pricing is right.

The Minister mentioned the Acorn project. I agree that there may be some necessity to do this, but it reflects the rather tragic trajectory of government action. The fact that this core part of the clean growth strategy will not be implemented until the 2030s is most unfortunate.

The clean growth strategy called for a new CCS council—or CCUS as it is called nowadays. Has that been established and is it operating now?

As the Minister knows, I am interested in areas of international agreement, such as the Ospar Convention, which prevents the deposit of waste in marine areas of the north-east Atlantic. I seem to recall that the Government got an allowance through the Ospar Convention process for CCUS—it is seen as disposal of waste at sea, even though it is under the sea—potentially in the North Sea. The UK and the European Union are signatories of this. I am interested to understand whether the UK itself has enough permits under the convention, or a derogation in our own right to be able to continue this, rather than it being done in agreement with the European Union, with it as the signatory. Will we need any treaty revisions or further derogations from the Ospar Convention to move this forward once we are out of the European Union?

In a way, I am glad that BEIS has given this some priority—perhaps it is a sign of movement at last. I look forward to seeing those future plans for CCUS. We do of course have Drax, but I do not think it requires any geological resolution of storage, which this SI is all about.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for moving this statutory instrument. I have just one question. He said that there has been consultation with only the Oil and Gas Authority, which presumably is the regulator in this instance. Page 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that it will apply to,

“activities that are undertaken by small businesses”.

Was a conscious decision taken not to consult widely with the industry, and, if so, what was the reason for that? Obviously the regulator will have a view, but those who work in the industry might have an alternative view.