Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend also speaks with customary eloquence on these issues. This is potentially an important part of the solution. We owe a debt to the workers at Port Talbot, and we must ensure that we leave no stone unturned in looking to the future. I look forward to continuing these discussions with him.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State has boasted about spending £27 billion of public money on carbon capture and storage, and on promoting what he calls renewable energy. Does he feel any sense of irony in taking £27 billion from a financial black hole and putting it into a carbon-absorbing black hole? Does he not recognise that his own green policies are generating the very CO₂ he condemns? The Drax B power station needs American forests to be chopped down and brought halfway around the world to be burned, emitting CO₂, at a cost of £1 billion a year in subsidy.

In Northern Ireland, we are tearing up thousands of acres of pristine upland bogland to erect windmills, and Scotland has already cut down 17 million carbon-absorbing trees to make space for windmills. I know the Secretary of State is keen on modelling, but have his models told him how many carbon capture and storage facilities will be needed to offset the carbon impact of his green policies?

[Ed Miliband]

I will let the House into a secret: the conversation—if I can put it that way—between myself and the right hon. Gentleman goes back to 2008 or 2009, when he was shadowing me, so this is a long-running saga, and I fear I will not convince him. I disagree with him on so many levels that it is hard to listen. I respect his point of view, but I think we will not agree.