It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship here, Mr Walker, just as it is in other forums of the House. I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the contributions from members of the Select Committee to this interesting debate. The Committee’s report was timely, coming as it did alongside further interest from the Government in some of the other documents that others have touched on, including the Government’s scoping document.
I was here for most of the previous debate, although I missed the opening comments from the Chair of the Select Committee—whatever state of dress he was in. The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) also spoke, but he is not here now. Although I have not read the full 1,000 page report, I have read some of the summary documents that were referred to. I do not think that those documents were seeking to mislead anyone in making clear the importance of carbon capture and storage for the future. These debates follow on from each other in quite a relevant way.
I have taken part in most of the debates on carbon capture in this House in the last four or so years, first as a Back Bencher and then as a Front Bencher. My view is that CCS is an absolutely vital technology in our transition to a lower-carbon economy—not just for the generation of power, but in terms of a number of energy-intensive industrial processes.
Some people argue that it may be well be possible to generate power in various different ways that mean that carbon capture and storage proves to be too difficult or expensive or becomes something that happens further into the future. However, without carbon capture and storage I do not think that there is any realistic option or alternative for a number of industrial processes to reduce significantly their carbon emissions while continuing to be part of our industrial space and foundation industries for the manufacturing base and other sectors in this country.
It is important that we make sure the focus in the Select Committee’s report on industrial clusters is not lost in this or any other debate about carbon capture and storage, because it is vital. As I have previously remarked, power can be generated from wind, wave and solar, but no one has yet demonstrated how to manufacture steel from sunshine. That is unlikely to be the case in our lifetimes and for that reason, apart from any other, CCS remains vital.
I say that because one of the frustrations in our various discussions of CCS over the past few years is that every now and then, it becomes something that people alight and comment on, saying it is important and wanting to demonstrate commitment to it, but then the subject disappears again and when it reappears we find that we have not moved far along. That is not all the fault of the current Government or the previous Government; some of it is to do with technical issues.
It is, however, vital that there is a sense of serious and significant engagement from the Government in the existing situation and into the future.
In August, the Government published their scoping document and there is a lot to commend in it. Interestingly, it also refers to carbon capture and utilisation, as well as to carbon capture and storage, which is another important and interesting aspect. There is no denying that many in the nascent CCS industry were disappointed with some of the content—or, more accurately, lack of content—in the scoping document about some of the big issues that my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) have touched on, particularly on the way in which contracts for difference will work for CCS technologies and how that will be taken forward. There was a level of expectation that things would at least be begun to be addressed in that document in a way that, actually, they were not.
I am conscious that there have been some announcements this week. I am not sure whether the members of the Select Committee know—I was made aware of this while listening to the previous debate—but the Government have today released to the CCS Development Forum some proposals in relation to phase 2 projects that seem, from the summary that I have just been able to get by e-mail, quite interesting.
It is welcome that the Government propose to establish an expert group—the Minister may be able to help me if I have got some of the details wrong—that will probably meet before Christmas and will provide evidence to Ministers by April on the way in which phase 2 projects could be taken forward. I presume that that will be a matter for whoever the Government are post the general election.
That is a welcome development. I am also pleased that the UK Government and the Canadian Government this week signed a joint statement on a number of issues relating to CCS, but particularly about cost reduction, to which the Chair of the Select Committee referred. Other issues include the ways in which intelligence, expertise and experience can be shared to meet shared goals.
I was struck by the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck made in his description of the series of cartoons about climate change. We could apply that to many different areas of energy policy. The point that I will make is that, often, the longer we leave decisions, the fewer options we have and the more expensive they become. That is certainly relevant in this case. My hon. Friend referred to the lead that the UK claims to have in relation to carbon capture and storage. He is right: we say and have said that frequently. We may not be in the lead, but we do have very significant academic and industrial expertise, which is important. We have the experience of earlier projects, including Longannet, which Scottish Power pulled out of a couple of years ago, for a range of reasons. Some were financial, but some were technical, so there is valuable experience from that.
We have something else that I think is quite important—potential storage capacity that, to other places in Europe, may well be very attractive. Depleted oil and gas fields are available and could potentially be sites for storage. The Select Committee Chair referred to some of the
issues in relation to public acceptability. Members of the Committee will be well aware of the situation in Germany, where the public antipathy or opposition to carbon capture and storage was very strong from the very early stages because people were not comfortable with the idea of carbon dioxide being stored underground. However, if we have the opportunity to offer storage sites, a wider economic advantage could come with that.
There is a huge amount of opportunity, which we should not seek to underplay. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck also touched on this issue. The opportunities in relation to economic activity are also potentially very significant. Not immediately but in the second half of the 2020s and beyond, this could be not just an enabler of industries continuing in parts of the country, including—not quite in his area—in Teesside and the cluster of industrial activity there; it could be, in and of itself, a significant employer. There is real potential, which has been highlighted by various bodies.