Carbon Capture and Storage

The £21.7 billion of funding to which we committed in October will kick-start the carbon capture, usage and storage industry, supporting thousands of jobs in our industrial heartlands through the east coast and HyNet clusters. We continue to engage with important future projects, such as Acorn in Scotland and Viking in the Humber, and we will make further announcements following the spending review.

As my right hon. Friend will recognise, Merseyside is a clean energy pioneer, a hub of carbon capture and hydrogen technology. The climate emergency is the challenge of our generation, and that challenge will be met only through the collective endeavour of communities across our country, including mine in Wirral West. How are the Government helping our communities to deliver good, local energy projects?

My hon. Friend is entirely right about this. We have learned over the last decade and more that this is the biggest jobs opportunity of the 21st century. Nowhere is that more true than in the investments we are making in carbon capture, usage and storage, and I am confident that my hon. Friend’s constituents will benefit. A couple of weeks ago, the Confederation of British Industry produced an important report that showed that last year, the net zero economy grew three times faster than the economy as a whole. The House should let that sink in, because it tells us that if we turn our back on the net zero economy, we turn our back on business, jobs and investment.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is huge potential for carbon capture and storage to play a key role in our green energy ambitions for Scotland? As we look towards the spending review, does he agree that the Acorn project presents an excellent and efficient opportunity to invest in CCUS, and to reduce the carbon impact of industries across Scotland, because it will repurpose existing pipelines?

I congratulate my hon. Friend. He is a fantastic advocate for the Acorn project, of which we are hugely supportive. Track 1 projects were agreed in last year’s Budget—a fiscal event, a fiscal moment—and the Government are considering those projects ahead of the next phase of the spending review, which will come in June; but I do not think that anyone doubts the potential value of the Acorn project, not just to Scotland but to the whole United Kingdom.

No one who cares about the future of our children and our grandchildren will gainsay the importance of carbon capture, but does the Secretary of State not understand that he is undermining that good work—notwithstanding his answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden)—by continuing to subsidise the Drax power station, which is cutting down forests in Canada, turning the wood into pellets, and shipping it thousands of miles across the Atlantic to burn here? That makes nonsense of what he is trying to achieve.

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect. The situation that we inherited from the last Government meant that we had to consider matters such as security of supply and how we could secure the best deal for bill payers. That is what we did, and that is why we made the statement that we made on Drax. On longer term, however, the right hon. Gentleman is entirely right. We need to move away from unabated biomass and consider all the possibilities to enable us to move towards net zero, and that is what this Government are doing.

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the six students from Bourne community college who came to Westminster yesterday to present their report on the future of hydrogen storage as a net zero approach to aviation? Does he agree that students engaging with science, technology, engineering and mathematics are excited about the potential of clean power and carbon capture, and that proper funding for STEM in our schools will provide us with the next generation of scientists and engineers who can help us to achieve these goals?

I join the hon. Lady in warmly congratulating the six students from her constituency whom she mentioned. I am sure that I speak for all Members of the House when I say that when we meet young people who are engaged in the potential of clean energy technology to transform our country and our world, it is an incredibly important reminder, both about its potential for jobs, and about our duties to future generations.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that by 2050, we need to be removing 10 billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year if we are to stand a chance of keeping below the 1.5° target. It is clear that carbon removal, and not just carbon capture and storage, will play a critical role in our avoiding a climate disaster. In the face of the Conservative party once again embracing climate denialism, what steps will the Government take to support the research, development and deployment of carbon removal technologies to ensure that British companies become leaders in this emerging sector?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I can tell him that the Minister for Industry held a roundtable with a whole range of industry voices on this precise topic last week. He is right about this issue. There is scepticism about CCS in some parts of academia and elsewhere. All the evidence that I have seen from the Climate Change Committee, the IPCC and others, including the International Energy Agency, is that CCS technology has a crucial role to play on something like 20% of emissions. He is also right to say that carbon removal is the next stage of that journey, and it is something that my Department is heavily engaged in.