Carbon Capture and Storage

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) on securing such an important debate.

I start by welcoming the announcements made yesterday in the net zero strategy, which set out the UK’s plan for carbon capture and storage. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), I am delighted that the east coast cluster has been chosen as a track 1 cluster that will benefit from the Government’s carbon capture and storage infrastructure funds over the coming years. I also pass on my congratulations to the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, a partner in that bid.

The UK has committed to net zero by 2050, and we have become the first major economy in the world to pass legislation to reach such a target. The Government are right that we cannot reach that target by emissions reductions alone, so carbon capture and storage is vital to reducing our net output of greenhouse gases. It is simply impossible for many of our major industries to eliminate carbon emissions with current technology and energy use.

The Humber region is one of our most important industrial areas, but it emits 12.4 megatonnes of carbon a year, or 40% of the UK’s industrial emissions. These industries are vital to our economy and our security, as well as to jobs and livelihoods. While of course the Government should support and encourage industries such as steel to reduce emissions, we must be realistic about what is achievable. That is why projects such as Zero Carbon Humber, which has the potential to absorb 50% of the industrial cluster’s carbon dioxide emissions, are so important. This is a brilliant opportunity for UK industry, and with Government investment the commercial barriers to using our geological reservoirs for carbon storage can now be overcome.

In addition, the deployment of carbon capture and storage can deliver support for tens of thousands of new jobs, as many hon. Members have said. Not only is that good news for existing industries, but it offers huge potential for new ones. One of the key requirements for reaching net zero is to reduce our reliance on petrol and diesel cars and increase the use of electric vehicles. It is good news that £1 billion has been invested in Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, which aims to produce new generation all-electric vehicles in the not-too-distant future.

However, as things stand, we do not have the capability to produce all the components of electric vehicle batteries here in the UK, making us reliant on other countries—particularly China and the US—for elements of the manufacturing process. Not only is that a supply chain risk, but it means that we are missing out on the opportunity to add an enormous amount of value here in the UK.

James Durrans & Sons, a brilliant carbon engineering business in my Penistone and Stocksbridge constituency, has a long history of cutting-edge manufacturing and success all over the world. The company has ambitions to develop a new facility for high-temperature graphitisation that would enable the UK to produce 30,000 tonnes of anode-grade synthetic graphite a year for electric car batteries. Europe’s only producer of needle coke, the starting material, is the Phillips 66 plant on the Humber, but we currently sell the coke abroad for graphitisation and reimport it for seven or eight times the value.

If James Durrans & Sons is successful—I urge the Minister to pursue Government support for this important investment—we could complete the EV battery production process here in the UK, securing our supply chain and, of course, adding value and creating jobs. However, like many high carbon-based industries, the project relies on the ability to capture and store the greenhouse gases produced.

That is why it is such good news for James Durrans & Sons and many other innovative companies that carbon capture is now a realistic prospect in the short term. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire said, a science-based approach to carbon capture must be taken, so I am delighted that the Government have signalled such strong support for it. That is great news for our industries and for net zero.