Energy Bill

I have to say that that is one of the vaguest and most non-committal statements that we could expect to be made. Let me quote once again one of my favourite sources, the International Energy Agency greenhouse gas programme. Its report on worldwide investment supports the view already expressed that the rest of the planet is getting on with this. It says:""Considerable work on CCS is being conducted throughout the world and these efforts are growing rapidly. Many scientists, engineers and geologists are now devoting their efforts to all aspects of CCS."" It also says:""The Canadian province of Alberta alone is planning to spend C$2 billion on new CCS projects. The Australian government has established its low-emissions coal initiative with funding of AU$500 million and has announced an international carbon capture institute funded at AU$100 million. Together, these and other countries are funding a diverse array of projects on every aspect of CCS and this funding is expected to grow."" The Minister asked about capture as well as storage projects. The three fully operational large-scale projects that I mentioned have storage—they include capture, of course, because carbon cannot be stored without having been captured—but while it is true that they do not capture from coal-fired generating power stations, they include capture from mixtures of gases from industrial processes. The IEA report includes a list of dozens of projects worldwide—dozens of storage projects, but also dozens of capture projects. The truth is that more progress is being made in Norway, the United States, China, Brazil, Canada, Australia and Algeria on projects that include not only capture and storage, but transportation as well. Long pipelines are already in place and there is huge investment. The reason for it is obvious—that the prize of developing successful commercial-scale carbon capture and storage for coal-fired power stations will be fantastic. It presents a wonderful opportunity and for whichever countries or companies crack it, unbelievable numbers of jobs and revenue will follow from the successful exploitation of these technologies. While we hesitate, the reality is, sadly, that we may have missed the boat, so we will end up buying in this technology from China or the United States, which will cost the UK economy even more, because we will be expensively retrofitting something that we have not developed ourselves. That is the unfortunate scenario that we face. We have been here before on renewable energy: despite this country's massive resources, we have ended up being overtaken by many other countries. We should have had a natural advantage in carbon capture and storage because of the North sea and its related oil and gas technology, but we are in danger of squandering it. The amending provisions offer an opportunity to try to catch up.