Energy Bill

That is quite wrong. We have to say that if someone is going to build a new coal-fired power station they should, in any case, expect to set an emissions performance standard for that station. What is done in CCS should be an enhancement of that. We cannot say that we should build anything that does not have an emissions performance attached to it now. That seems crazy. How can we set ourselves national targets if we begin from a presumption that we are not going to measure anything? That is why we should have the courage to set for ourselves an emissions performance standard. I concede that the only project that I have been able to find is one that has not been mentioned; it is in the United States. An American Electric Power company CCS retrofit project in West Virginia has so far been able to capture carbon at a rate of 1 per cent., but it hopes to raise that level to 7 per cent. That is a salutary measure of both the starting point and the extent of the road ahead of us. Having said that, I return to the point that this gamble is unavoidable: we have to take it, but we should not do so without setting safety net standards in relation to power stations having CCS.