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Energy Bill

moved Amendment No. 2: 2: Before Clause 32, insert the following new Clause— ““Capture of carbon dioxide competition In any competitive process relating to the capture of carbon dioxide initiated by the Secretary of State, equal status should be given to all technologies relating to the capture of carbon dioxide.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, the amendment relates to an important part of government strategy, which is the continued use of coal as an energy source in a low-carbon economy. The only way that we can do this is to take out carbon dioxide from the generation of electricity through coal. This is very important technology. It is interesting that, although we sometimes say that we lead in this area, Germany last month launched the first power station in Europe with carbon capture and storage technology, and the United States and Norway are on a similar path. Yet in the UK, competitions have been based solely around post-combustion technology. The Americans have gone down a different route. There is always an inherent danger in Governments trying to choose or restrict the technologies with which industry experiments to try to bring forward this important technology. The amendment would make sure that the criteria are broadened and that, in future competitions, both pre-combustion and post-combustion technologies are allowed to be tendered for. The European Parliament has recently debated in the context of the energy packages there being some dozen experimental sites for carbon capture and storage within the European Union, to be functioning by 2014. I hope that we will have a number more of those in the United Kingdom, but it would be very dangerous if we restricted it to a particular type as has happened so far. Carbon capture and storage is absolutely key to medium and long-term energy needs within the United Kingdom, and towards our climate change objectives. It is, therefore, undesirable to restrict the technologies that the private sector is able to move forward, to experiment with, or to prove at this stage. I beg to move.