Carbon Capture and Storage

Tim Yeo Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Once again, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and in particular I declare my interests in a company developing a hydrogen fuel cell and in the nuclear industry.

As we mentioned earlier, the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change introduced the concept of a global carbon budget, a total maximum level of greenhouse gas emissions that can be emitted safely consistent with a 2° average rise in temperatures. The report stated that the maximum carbon that can be released into the atmosphere compatible with the 2° target is 1,000 gigatonnes.

We have already emitted half that budget. Between the start of the industrial revolution and 2011, 515 gigatonnes of carbon were emitted into the atmosphere, which is a little more than half the carbon budget. We have, however, an enormous amount of fossil fuel still available to burn. According to the International Energy Agency, the total potential emissions from the remaining fossil fuel reserves in 2012 amounted to 780 gigatonnes of carbon which, added to the 515 gigatonnes that we have already emitted, take us well in excess of the budget identified in the IPCC report. In effect, more carbon dioxide is locked up in the fossil fuels that we have not yet consumed than can safely be emitted in order to stay within the global carbon budget.

The International Energy Agency has therefore argued that without a significant deployment of carbon capture and storage, a substantial proportion of the fossil fuel reserves that are proven to be available cannot be commercialised if the temperature rise is to be limited to 2°. According to my arithmetic, less than two thirds of the available reserves may safely be consumed.

All that would change if we had an economically viable form of carbon capture and storage. CCS could allow continued fossil fuel use while staying within the carbon budget. In 2005 the IPCC estimated, for example, a technical potential of at least 545 gigatonnes of carbon storage capacity in various geological formations around the world. Using that potential would transform the prospects of the fossil fuel industries.

Carbon capture and storage not only would allow us to consume more fossil fuels, but has the potential to reduce the overall cost of decarbonisation. In 2009, International Energy Agency analysis suggested that, without CCS, the overall cost of reducing emissions to 2005 levels by 2050 would be 70% higher. Unfortunately, however, the high energy and financial costs involved in CCS at the moment make the process uneconomic. That is why we need to look at whether any policy interventions might be able to overcome the problem.

The carbon capture and storage cost reduction taskforce’s final 2013 report estimated that the first set of CCS projects in the UK could have costs in the range of £150 to £200 per megawatt-hour, which is roughly three times as expensive as using fossil fuels without CCS. That is actually considerably more expensive even than some of the more expensive low-carbon technologies now being supported with money from the levy control framework. Those CCS prices are significantly higher than the strike prices even for offshore wind and nuclear.

The challenge therefore is to find a way of getting the cost of CCS down to levels that make it economically viable. Unfortunately, at the moment, momentum on CCS around the world is pretty slow—in my view, much too slow to offer a realistic prospect of a rapid cost reduction in the near term. Some of the other solutions to climate change have seen a transformation in their costs, such as in the case of solar power. Costs have been driven down to an extraordinary and largely unforeseen extent by the huge scale-up of the solar industry and by the cost reductions achieved by manufacturers in China.

The Global CCS Institute’s 2014 progress report stated, however, that in the whole world at present only 22 projects were in operation or under construction. The next few years are therefore critical if the development of CCS is to be accelerated sufficiently for it to become a significant part of the solution to the challenge of climate change.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I think there is more consensus on this report than the previous one. Does the Chairman of the Select Committee share my optimism about the combination of power production and carbon capture in such novel production facilities as NET Power’s in Sheffield, from which the Committee heard evidence?

[Mr Yeo]

I am hopeful rather than optimistic, but I certainly do not underestimate the potential for either that or innovation in other areas. We underestimate at our peril the potential impact of technological innovation in a number of ways. Certainly, one of the reasons why I am not despondent about our ability to decarbonise our economies without constraining economic growth is because I am confident that technology advances will continue to surprise us all. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) said that we might have more consensus in this debate than the previous one. That is not setting a demanding threshold, but I hope that we achieve that.

The CCS technology road map produced by the International Energy Agency in 2013 highlighted seven key actions needed in the next seven years to create a solid foundation for starting to deploy CCS by 2020. That is a demanding—and perhaps slightly optimistic—target, but at least we are seeing a few more positive signs of progress. Indeed, the Committee has seen a couple of those signs in its work.

On the Committee’s visit to Canada last year—I did not take part and therefore I do not know as much about it as some other members of the Committee—it saw the flagship CCS initiative in Saskatchewan that started operating last month. More recently, on the Committee’s visit to Guangdong province in China, we saw the work carried out on what is referred to there as carbon capture, utilisation and storage in which there is significant UK engagement.

In the UK, we have a particular interest in developing CCS for several reasons. First, obviously it is potentially a key technology that will help decarbonise our power generation and industrial sectors, which are, and are likely to continue to be, significantly reliant on fossil fuels—perhaps in the future that will be more on gas than coal, but it will still be fossil fuels. Secondly, potentially enormous wider economic benefits will flow from the development of economically viable CCS.

The export potential is enormous. Indeed, one of the reasons why I am a little pessimistic about rapid progress on CCS is because the financial opportunities open to any organisation that creates economically viable carbon capture and storage technology are such that it will have the most massive market. When one looks around the world at the amount of coal that exists and could be burnt in China, India, Australia, America and even Europe, one can see that the rewards for developing that will be breathtaking. Given that many businesses in the energy industry have research budgets that run into not millions, but billions of pounds, I am concerned that none of them seems willing to risk much of that money on trying to develop CCS on their own: they all have their begging bowls out and are saying, “This has got to be paid for by the taxpayer” to some—or even a large—extent. Nevertheless, let us not underestimate the potential rewards to be had. If the UK is a leader in developing economically viable CCS, we will get a particular benefit from it.

Thirdly, we should focus on CCS in the UK because we have a significant geological advantage in that, close to our shores, we have the potential for enhanced oil recovery, which greatly improves the economics. Therefore, in our research we should focus particularly on that potential advantage. Other parts of the world, including China, also have that advantage, but if we could show that enhanced oil recovery makes the economics of CCS more viable—if it is brought down close to the price of solar—we should focus on that.

There are, however, barriers to making progress that need to be overcome. The first is the absence of a carbon price. If we had a significant carbon price, that would transform the prospects for CCS. As I said in the previous debate, I am confident that, by the end of the 2020s, we will have a significant carbon price, but that is still 10 or possibly 15 years away and it would be better if we could get on with developing CCS in the meantime. Secondly, it would help if we had a clearer global agreement to tackle climate change. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, and I agree, there is at least a possibility of that emerging from Paris next year. Without that, it will be a struggle and a great deal more Government effort will be needed to develop CCS, especially if we are doing it largely on our own.

Progress in the past 10 years or so has been patchy, to put it no more strongly. The competitions unveiled in 2007 were expected to deliver an operating CCS project by this year, but initially they did not manage to support any projects at all. We had something resembling a lost decade. In 2012, an NAO report on this matter criticised the Government’s handling of the competition, and a second competition, which was announced in that year, is now looking to fund two projects that we hope will be operational between 2016 and 2020.

Despite that slightly faltering start, I am pleased with the recent attempts to move a bit faster. The Government’s response to my Committee’s report stated:

“The Government is committed to facilitating the development and deployment of cost-effective CCS by the 2020s.”

I am reassured. I would have been disappointed if they had said any less than that, but that is at least an earnest of good intentions. The publication in August of “Next steps in CCS: Policy Scoping Document”, which set out the Government’s plans to support the industry, is also helpful.

Looking ahead, there is a clear possibility that the UK will be overtaken by other countries and thereby we might relinquish some advantage that we once had. That would not necessarily be a complete disaster: any country or company that develops CCS will rapidly want to share its technology—though no doubt at some sort of cost—with other potential users.

I welcome and support the Government’s efforts in a number of respects, but I conclude by reiterating some of the key aspects of the Committee’s report. It would be desirable to have contracts for difference available for first-of-a-kind CCS projects. It would be useful to support projects beyond those for which there have been competitions. We would like longer term clarity about the funding framework that may be available in the 2020s. It would be helpful if the tax regime incentivised enhanced oil recovery. I believe there are issues about building public confidence in relation to storing carbon dioxide, on which some people express concerns that seem to me somewhat irrational. Any update that the Minister can give us on any of those matters would be useful.

I have sometimes been publicly sceptical about the potential role of CCS. I do not want to be negative about it; I very much want it to succeed. It seems to me to be the one technology that the world most urgently needs if we are to overcome the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. However, I do not believe that progress has yet been sufficient to enable Governments—here or anywhere—to base their energy and climate change policy on the assumption that an economically viable form of carbon capture and storage will be available in the near future, or, possibly, even the next decade.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Whitehead —Dr Whitehead, I am sorry. Dr Alan Whitehead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Yeo]

I thank everyone who has taken part in these two debates, particularly my hon. Friend the Minister, for her responses. We will hear from her again on another subject next week, when she gives evidence to the Committee for the first time since her appointment. I also thank the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) for his contribution. There is a fair degree of bipartisan consensus on CCS, which is helpful in an industry where decisions have to be taken for investment purposes on a very long-term basis.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) on his speech and his obvious and passionate pride in the industry in which he worked. The first parliamentary election I fought was in a south Wales mining constituency more than 40 years ago. I remember the extremely vibrant engagement I had with many people who worked in the industry at the time, when of course it was a vastly more important employer in south Wales than it is today. One of the most astonishing statistics is that just over 200 years ago in, I think, 1800, 98% of the coal being mined in the whole world was mined in the UK. The ability to move that coal from Newcastle to London, which at the time was the centre of the manufacturing industry, made that possible. Our leadership in mining and using coal was one of the principal factors behind the industrial revolution, so it would be fitting if, having led the world in the exploitation of coal, we could also lead the world in the technology that makes it possible to go on using coal during the rest of this century.

The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) and I often agree, and I hardly ever hear him say anything that I would not have said myself. The point he just raised with my hon. Friend the Minister, was exactly the point that occurred to me, so I too look forward to the response. The question goes to the heart of some of our concerns about the long-term future of the levy control framework, which is absolutely essential to supporting low-carbon electricity generation. To give the Government credit, investment in low-carbon renewable energy has increased enormously in the past few years. That is a great success story, and we want it to continue into the 2020s. To do that, we must be clear about how the levy control framework will work beyond 2021.

I am grateful for those contributions. This has been a useful debate, although I know it has not been hugely well attended. I repeat my thanks to the second Clerk of the Committee for his assistance at the start of this sitting, and I am grateful to you, Mr Walker, for your courteous and elegant chairmanship.

Question put and agreed to.