My Lords, I am slightly sympathetic to the Government on certain of these amendments in certain ways; I expect the Minister will not immediately accept them. First, I re-emphasise my interests in energy storage, as declared in the register. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, back into the conversation. She and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, are quite a powerful duo and I am just thankful that they are not both here together—it might be just a little too much, but we might get some movement from the Government if they were.
On carbon use, I have no disagreement with the amendment; it would be positive to include it. In a way, I follow the Minister’s hesitation from Monday in saying that if we have carbon use, we have to make very sure that that use is long-term rather than short-term. I am not sure we have got to that point yet in the amendment. I will say that one obvious area where we should be doing this is in building and construction, where we use wood rather than concrete and steel. Many other economies and housing markets across Europe and other parts of the world use those technologies: they are there, they are strong and they capture the carbon in wood for probably a century or more—however long these buildings last. I would be interested in the Minister’s—maybe positive—response about how we can make sure that that carbon use sequesters the carbon for a long period.
As for the idea of air capture, I very much agree with the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. What concerns me, though, is exactly the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made. Not in this Chamber, clearly, and not among the Members present, but problem with air capture of carbon is that it gives a free ticket out for climate sceptics who say, “Don’t worry about any of this stuff because technology is going to solve it. We don’t have to worry about energy efficiency and renewables because technology will find a way forward”. I very much hope that it will, and there are good signs of that, but the other thing about it—which is why it is not the priority on the scale, if you like—is that it will take out 0.4% of the atmosphere that you have to process. Whereas, if you, as a power station, are using carbon capture, that concentration is hugely greater, so it is a much more efficient process to deal with in the first place. Again, my heart is there in terms of future-proofing, but to me it sends out dangerous signals to the market.
The much bigger issue, which seems to have been forgotten since COP 26, is methane. That is the gas that we need to get out of the atmosphere quickly and effectively. Ever since COP 26, where the Government were very supportive of initiatives to take methane out, science has shown that methane emissions globally are much higher than we expected and very little action has taken place on that since. I see that as a priority, but I will be very interested in the Minister’s response.