My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness’s amendment. It has always seemed to me that if you are to have an effective carbon capture and storage policy, and if it is to be developed from the two projects which the Government are currently financing, it would make sense eventually to have what one might call a grid for the CO2 that would be separated as a result of the technology. Each individual power station developing its own method of disposing of its CO2
would not seem to me to be sensible.
However, we are at a very early stage in developing this technology. Yes, there have been other examples of a technology being worked in other countries. A number of noble Lords were in a party that I joined a year or two back when we went down to see the BP research establishment at Sunbury. We were given what I found a completely fascinating account of how carbon capture and storage has been operated in a large BP gas field in Algeria, with gas deposits spread over about 20 miles or more coming up to the collection point and the carbon capture and storage technology being applied and the CO2
going straight back down to the deposits from which the gas had been extracted. The gas, now free of CO2,was piped to the coast where it was delivered to markets.
I completely understand that that is a unique situation, but there are other examples in other parts of the world where the technology is working, and one hopes that this will be possible. If we are going to have to rely on fossil fuels—as I believe we will—for at least the next three decades or perhaps more, it seems desirable, if we can, to develop an economic method of carbon capture and storage so that it can be done without necessarily increasing the carbon that has to be discharged into the atmosphere.
I say this with some hesitation as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, is sitting opposite and knows, I suspect, 10 times more about this than most of the rest of us. Nevertheless, the Government’s policy of having pilot projects and supporting them with the support of the industry is the right way ahead. It may well be that if this can be developed it will be necessary at the same time to develop a coherent system for disposing of the CO2
thatis discharged from the plant. I shall be interested to hear from my noble friend on the Front Bench about whether this needs a change in the law. It seems to me that something along these lines may eventually be necessary, and I hope that perhaps the Government will recognise that in due course.