As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. This has been an interesting debate, as was the previous one—you missed most of it, but we discussed scientists and whether we agree with different views on energy.
I am from the ultra-modern school of the National Union of Mineworkers. I was a coal miner. I worked on the coal face and I really enjoyed that occupation—that is why I sit on the Energy and Climate Change Committee. I am not a scientist, but I am guided by scientists. That is probably the right way to be. When I was in my heyday cutting coal under the North sea, I was under the impression—it is what people had told me—that coal was the fuel of the future. I believed that then and I still do now—coal is extremely important. I was not bothered then about whether coal was burned with carbon capture and storage, or whether it was burned cleanly. It was my livelihood, and the livelihood of people in my community and in communities up and down the country.
That was the way we dealt with the situation. We opposed nuclear, renewables—every single thing—because coal was what we did. It was our livelihood. But as time went on and scientists explained that the planet was being destroyed by gas emissions from fossil fuels, I began to believe and understand that perhaps they had a point. That was against the grain, of course, but it was politics against the scientists. Now, I think the scientists are probably right, but the political situation is not where I would want it to be.
We have been talking about carbon capture and storage for 30 years. It is what we used to talk about as young men in the pit: “How can we burn coal cleanly? If we can get the technology right and the Government begin to invest in carbon capture and storage or some type of clean-coal technology, perhaps we will have a future and will be here for many years to come.” That was topical and we are still talking about it now. It was 30 years ago.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) has given me a cartoon showing a scientist behind a rostrum in 1990—I think it has “IPCC” written on the rostrum—saying, “So, this climate change thing could be a problem.” The cartoon then shows the same fellow in 1995, five years later, with the same specs and same beard, saying, “Climate change: definitely a problem.” It then shows the same fellow six years later saying, “Yep, we should really be getting on with sorting this out pretty soon.” It then shows him in 2007 saying, “Look, sorry to sound like a broken record here.” It shows him in 2013 saying, “We really have checked and we’re not making this up.” Then it show the same bloke a lot older than he was at the beginning; he was tapping the microphone and saying, “Is this thing on?” I thought that was very amusing. It highlights the fact that we have not taken carbon capture and storage seriously for generations. I have been involved in the matter and have been hoping and praying that it would save the industry I loved so much, was brought up with and miss so much.
The Minister said that Margaret Thatcher did x, y and z. I will not get too political about Margaret Thatcher and the coal industry despite the fact that she absolutely demolished it. However, I remind the Chamber that in 1988 Grimethorpe colliery had a demonstration fluidised bed combustion plant and clean coal technology plant in operation and it was closed because of the finance—£38 million. Look at what we are talking about now—£1 billion for two projects. If that project at Grimethorpe had continued, who knows where we could have been?
We all waited after that for the Longannet complex to come into operation. It took years and years by successive Governments to finalise the details and it was withdrawn at the last moment. We have been there or thereabouts for about 30 years and it is about time we got a move on.
It is interesting listening to scientists. The argument is, “Should we listen to scientists or should we not?” If the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee is discussing mad cow disease, which affects farmers, experts in the field are listened to and I say that with good humour towards my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer). Of course we are guided by people with knowledge in the field on which the inquiry was focused. We look at a number of things regarding carbon capture and storage, and the contribution that it can make to decarbonisation in the UK.
On the contribution it could make, the Energy and Climate Change Committee estimated that the UK’s decarbonisation power sector will require approximately 18-20 GW of CCS for coal and gas by 2030. The Government’s independent advice from the Committee provided an energy scenario to reach the UK’s 2030
energy decarbonisation target. The power sector currently accounts for around 25% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. The general mix to achieve a carbon intensity of 50-l00 grams/kWh by 2030 suggests that the energy mix that should be in place is in the region of 40% nuclear, 40% renewable, 15% CCS, and around 5% unabated gas-fired generation. With power generation capacity of about 125 GW by 2030, that equates to 18-20 GW of CCS for coal and gas. Is that realistic? My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test mentioned emission level targets: the 100 grams/kWh and the 200 grams/kWh. I think it will be extremely difficult to reach such targets. Perhaps we should look at them and concentrate on them.
Ministers and Members generally say that things are looking far better now because we are getting rid of coal, which has emission levels of roughly 850 grams. Gas has less than roughly 450 grams.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton mentioned the potential for shale gas. The reality is that we are crying out for shale gas, but we must be careful what we are looking at. If we exploit shale gas and extract as much as has been suggested, we will need carbon capture and storage or we will miss every target that we have set ourselves. That is the reality. Carbon capture and storage is not just for coal; it is for fossil fuels. Shale gas is a fossil fuel and natural gas is a fossil fuel. That is why there is a real need for carbon capture and storage.
The Committee on Climate Change estimated that the power sector will capture a larger amount of CO2 per year than industry until 2040, when power and industry are projected to capture similar quantities annually. The Committee said that,
“there is a growing role for CCS in industry through the 2020s, which by 2030 reduces emissions by around”
5 million tonnes of CO2. So a lot of information is being pressed and put forward by the Committee on Climate Change; but I do not agree with all of it, and neither does the Select Committee.
The second issue concerns the potential benefits that the UK could get from the ability to export carbon capture and storage technology and techniques across the world. I have the latest figures in front of me and they suggest a major green-growth opportunity for the UK and:
“If CCS opportunities develop as anticipated, benefits for UK-based firms have been estimated to be between”
£3 billion and £6.5 billion a year by the late 2020s. That is fantastic.
We are living in austere times when young people need employment, skills and apprenticeships. We live in a low-wage economy. Developing carbon capture and storage and using young people, skills, apprenticeships and so on is so important for what we could do to lead the world of carbon capture and storage, and to export those technologies. We should be focusing on that as a priority.
The third issue is the international efforts to mitigate climate change and the role that UK CCS could play in that. CCS is acknowledged to be a crucial transitional technology for climate change mitigation. The UK has a crucial seedbed role to play. We are told that there is a clear danger that other countries will move ahead more rapidly, and that the UK could lose what might be
perceived to be a technological advantage in market leadership. I think we have already lost that. We keep saying that we are leaders in this and leaders in that, but we are not particularly leaders in much in terms of energy.
The Select Committee had a fantastic, very informative visit to China only two or three weeks ago. We keep telling the Chinese that we are leaders in carbon capture and storage, but we do not have a plant and they have, and we keep telling them what they should be doing. Last year, we went to Boundary Dam in Canada to look at the carbon capture plant that my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test mentioned. We keep telling them that we are leaders, but we do not have anything in place yet and we are not likely to have anything in place in terms of carbon capture and storage until 2020 at the earliest—that is if we get our skates on. Even though we should be leaders, we are not, but we keep telling people that we are, when it is really not true.
The Boundary Dam project has been completed; it was estimated to start some time in March this year, although I believe that it started slightly later than that. It is a 110 MW coal power plant with retrofit CCS technology, and the total cost of the project was estimated to be about $1.24 billion, with $240 million from the Federal Government. We were very pleased to see it, because the Committee discussed carbon capture and storage many times without actually seeing a plant with more than two or three bricks. We have been there and done it. We have looked and got advice, and the report, in my view, is exactly what we need.
The Chair of the Committee said that despite the claims that there are many plants globally, there are only 22 projects in the world, and that includes China. Interestingly, we were in China, which burns about 1.3 billion tonnes of coal a year, largely, if not entirely, unabated. The technologies that are being developed there are fantastic. We have seen massive progress in China on renewables and nuclear, and there is a real desire to move away from coal. I think it will be extremely difficult, in the next 50 years even, to get China to convert what they are now burning in coal to other types of alternative energies—to green energy and renewable energy. We were in Beijing, which was unbelievable. You could only see 50 yards ahead of you, Mr Walker—this was a really sunny day, or they said it was sunny; you couldn’t see the sun. Somebody said that the toxins in the air should be measured at about 20 to 50, according to the World Health Organisation, but on the day we were there, they were 500. It was unbelievable, and it was mainly because of the energy and power being generated in the area.
We have a huge role to play, and although we keep saying we are market leaders, we need to be market leaders. It is so important that we get on with it and develop what we said we would almost 30 years ago. There are a few barriers, and a few key players have suggested that they might be interested in moving into the market, apart from the two big projects that have been set up. However, the four key issues for potential investors in CCS projects are the operating costs, the contractual terms and the involvement of contracts for difference, the storage performance risk and the CCS development timelines, which I have already mentioned.
We have to get on with it. We have to make sure that when we say we are the leaders, we actually are the leaders in carbon capture and storage. It is not just for
the coal industry; it is for the gas industry, too, whether that is natural gas or shale gas. We and the European Union have set ourselves some very harsh emission-level targets for the future, for 2020, 2030 and 2050, but we cannot achieve any of those targets unless we have carbon capture and storage up and running in this country.
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