Hunterston Power Station (Carbon Capture)
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S3M-6923, in the name of Ross Finnie, on Hunterston—not the way forward for carbon capture. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the lodging of the application by Peel Energy Ltd to build a 1,600 megawatt coal-fired power station at Hunterston, North Ayrshire; understands that, initially, the power station is to have 400 megawatt of its gross output (300 megawatt net) processed through carbon capture and storage technology, which would leave 75% to 80% of the plant’s CO2 emissions unabated for an indeterminate length of time; considers that these unabated emissions, which could amount to up to some four million tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum, are incompatible with the climate change targets set out in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, and accordingly believes that the development of carbon capture and storage technology should be restricted to existing coal-fired stations.
17:06
I am very pleased to present the motion to the chamber. I am well aware that we have debated—indeed, we voted—on the specifics of the section 36 application. We have not, however, as a chamber, had the opportunity to discuss the principles that surround the use and application of carbon capture and storage technology, how it might successfully or otherwise be introduced in Scotland and the dangers or otherwise of applying it to new coal-fired power stations.
I have two preliminary points to make. First, I apologise to the chamber for the fact that the original form of the motion was lodged quite some considerable time ago. Then it lapsed, and I was advised by the chamber desk that difficulties might arise if I were to change it in any way. Although unfortunate, the two inaccuracies in the motion—namely, that the application was made by not Peel Energy but Ayrshire Power Ltd and was for a power station of not 1,600MW but 1,852MW—are not material. Although they do not affect the thrust of the points that I want to make, I apologise for the inaccuracies nonetheless.
Secondly, I reassure the minister that although the thrust of the motion has a lot about the policy of promoting new-build coal-fired power stations to test carbon capture technology, I accept that the riders that Bruce Crawford, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, made on 18 March in the climate change debate will apply to references to the section 36 application consent. I understand and accept the position that the minister is in; I do not seek to pursue the matter unnecessarily.
I thank the member for his understanding. I will try to respond to the maximum extent that is absolutely possible. I think that the debate will be a good one.
If there are inaccuracies in the motion, I regret to say that they are as nothing to the inaccuracies in the letter that Ayrshire Power circulated to members in advance of the debate. The public record of what I have said about this matter will show that I am not opposed in any way to the development of carbon capture and storage technology. As I have made clear on a large number of occasions, this technology could make a major contribution in terms of the global use of coal-fired power stations.
I am, however, opposed to a policy that suggests that it is appropriate to deploy CCS technology for new coal-fired power stations. There is a problem with that. A commitment to operate CCS technology is all well and good, but there are uncertainties around when it might be developed. In the case of the Hunterston application, that means that 75 per cent of the potential CO2 emissions will remain unabated for an indeterminate period of time.
I say to the minister that it is extraordinarily difficult to see how that level of emissions—from any station that is developed anywhere in Scotland—would be compatible with the target of a 42 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions that was set by the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
There are two important omissions in the letter from Ayrshire Power. First, it does not mention that there is a CCS technology development at Longannet, which has been supported by the Scottish Government and is in the process of applying for financial support from the United Kingdom Government. The application of CCS technology to an existing coal-fired power station seems to have two very obvious benefits. If it is proven to work, that is good, and it means that in the process we are attempting to reduce existing CO2 emissions rather than creating new ones. That is where we should concentrate our efforts.
Secondly, the letter refers to an alleged gap in our energy supply, which is interesting, but makes no reference to the more recent report by Garrad Hassan, “The Power of Scotland Renewed”, which demonstrates clearly that Scotland has the capacity to replace the existing power stations by means of investing in its renewable energy.
That is where we should be pointing to, but it does not preclude the development of CCS technology if we can prove that it works. I do not necessarily doubt the technology people who tell me that it can happen, but I have not yet met anyone who can give me a more precise timescale for when it might come into play.
Two points of principle arise. One concerns the Government’s guidance on section 36 applications, which calls for detail on how the compressed CO2 will be dealt with in transportation and in storage. That is a serious omission of detail from the Hunterston application; there are references to it in the supplementary documents, but the detail is not provided in the main thrust of the application. That raises an important point of principle, because we must be able to assess not only the carbon capture technology itself, but how we store and transport it. The Government was right to set out in its guidance that the issue should be addressed in detail, but that detail is singularly absent from the Hunterston application.
The final point of principle is that any application anywhere in Scotland that impinges on a recognised site of special scientific interest deserves to be treated in a way that the public understands. I deeply regret that Scottish Natural Heritage has chosen not to renotify the Portencross SSSI on the ground that there is an outstanding planning application.
You should be finishing now, Mr Finnie.
As a matter of principle, we expect SNH to protect our natural heritage. Apparently, it is able to negotiate with an applicant, but it is not prepared to tell the public or the Parliament what its intentions are regarding the SSSI. That is a dereliction of duty on the part of SNH. I have written to the Minister for Environment about the matter and I hope that it will be taken up. It is an important natural principle.
I thank members for attending the debate. I hope that we will discuss in some detail the principles that are involved in trying to promote carbon capture technology without imperilling the targets in our important climate change act.
17:15
I congratulate Ross Finnie on securing this evening’s debate.
I fully agree with the heading of the motion, but unfortunately I did not feel able to sign it, simply because of the last few words, which are that the Parliament
“believes that the development of carbon capture and storage technology should be restricted to existing coal-fired stations.”
Members might recall that, in 2007, there was a proposal to build a £500 million CCS plant at Peterhead, which was expected to create about 1,000 jobs. BP said that the decision to shelve the project was a major disappointment, but that it was due to Westminster delays over financial support. The project, which would have been the world’s first industrial-scale hydrogen power plant, was supported by Friends of the Earth. It would have demonstrated post-combustion capture of carbon dioxide emissions relating to electricity output of the equivalent of 400MW of capacity using an existing gas turbine, an existing steam turbine, an existing electricity network connection and so on. Peterhead would be an excellent site for carbon capture. Hunterston is not.
Ross Finnie mentioned Longannet. Last year, I visited Longannet with representatives of West Kilbride, Largs and Fairlie community councils, and we looked at the experimental model there. It was clear that it is at a very early stage. We were told that, for every 3 tonnes of coal that is cleaned, it takes another tonne of coal to do that. The technology is therefore very resource rich. Longannet was hoping to get the ratio to about 1:7. When I spoke to Ayrshire Power about the issue, it said that it expected the United Kingdom Government to pick up the tab, which in the case of Hunterston would amount to about £300 million a year for the 40-year lifespan of the project. There would be an electricity levy on UK taxpayers to fund that.
It is clear that the Hunterston project has little support. To illustrate that, I lodged a parliamentary question, which was answered only today by Jim Mather, to ask how many expressions of support and how many objections had been received by 1 September 2010. The answer states that there were 13 expressions of support and 15,500 objections to the Hunterston proposal. It is clear that there is significant opposition to the project.
It has to be said that Ayrshire Power has not covered itself in glory. When the project was first mentioned in 2008, the company talked about it as the world’s first carbon capture plant, but we then realised that it would only be carbon capture ready with, as Ross Finnie pointed out, only a small proportion of carbon capture and sequestration included in the plant.
Local people are concerned about air quality. Dust already goes on to the houses of Largs and Fairlie because of the coal terminal. People are worried about the impact on traffic, about health, about ash lagoons, and about mountains of gypsum being stored up. EDF Energy, which runs Hunterston B, has put in what is, in my view, a damning objection that expresses its concerns about safety given the proximity of the Hunterston development.
I certainly agree with Ross Finnie that Longannet should be progressed, and I also believe that Peterhead should be progressed. In today’s Guardian, WWF Scotland’s director Richard Dixon expresses concern that the UK Government might actually pull its resources from Longannet. Of course, Longannet is the site of the large-scale trial, so we need to progress it if the technology is to have any future. WWF makes it clear that use of the other sites that are being considered, including Hunterston, would result in vastly higher carbon emissions—in fact, an amount equivalent to Scotland’s total annual emissions.
The Parliament should make it clear that we do not oppose the technology, but that it must be used in the right place and that Hunterston is certainly not that location.
17:20
I congratulate Ross Finnie on securing the debate.
Hunterston is, of course, no stranger to either base-load power generation or large-scale imports of coal. What is new is the proposal that a coal-burning plant should, in effect, take the place of an existing nuclear power station, with the substantial net increase in greenhouse gas emissions that that change of generation technology at Hunterston implies.
The proposal can be traced back to decisions that were made by the current Scottish Government to specify coal as the primary fuel for a new power station at Hunterston in the updated version of the national planning framework that was published last year. At the time, the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee called for the national development of a new power station at Hunterston to be non-technology specific, but ministers chose not to pay heed to that call.
It follows that responsibility for a coal-fired power station proposal coming forward rests squarely with ministers, and they will also be responsible if it turns out that the specific application fails to receive adequate scrutiny as a result of its inclusion in national planning framework 2. That remains to be seen, of course. The minister has made it clear that he would not wish to comment on the merits of the application, but it would be helpful if he could indicate—I saw him responding to the comment that I made a moment ago—what level of scrutiny he believes will be appropriate for the application, in the context of the inclusion of a clean coal-fired power station at Hunterston in the national planning framework.
The member knows that I cannot talk about specific projects, but it would be useful to say that scrutiny is in absolutely no sense diminished by the inclusion of a project in the national planning framework.
I welcome that commitment. It is clear that we will want to judge that as the application progresses.
The wider issue of carbon capture has already been raised. When Ayrshire Power Ltd brought forward the proposal, it identified its ambition to capture the whole carbon output of the plant in due course. However, as Ross Finnie said, it has also made it clear that it is not in a position to do that at the moment.
Timing is crucial. It has been said that the current Government at Westminster has inherited plans for a competition to demonstrate carbon capture and storage at scale. I hope that it will deliver on that and that Longannet will be the host. It has also been said that carbon capture and storage technology is far from proven at commercial scale. It might cost £1 billion of taxpayers’ money to achieve the necessary levels of capture and to transport and store the carbon that has been produced. The demonstration is not scheduled to deliver a result until 2014. Even when it does, there will be little appetite in the industry in general for spending shareholders’ money until carbon capture and storage has been shown to operate successfully in a commercial environment.
The good news is that carbon capture and storage facilities at an existing power station will begin to reduce carbon emissions as soon as they are operational, whereas building a new power station with partial CCS will have the opposite effect. That does not mean that we should be against carbon capture and storage at new power stations for ever more. If the technology is proven at scale and the sums can be made to add up, there is the potential for CCS at new-build plants to make a real contribution at some point in the future. That point is not now—indeed, it might be quite a few years away—but we should not rule that out.
Instead, the Scottish Government should back up its warm words about CCS with action. I will give an example. The minister will know that Scottish Power has proposals for replacing the coal-fired power station at Cockenzie with a modern gas-turbine power station, and that there is to be a public local inquiry on that proposition. If we are serious about reducing carbon emissions while retaining jobs and investment in Scotland, ministers might want to consider how to expedite that public local inquiry and the replacement of existing fossil-fuel generating plants in general, rather than encourage the building of new carbon-emitting power stations. Scotland will need a diverse energy mix, and we should not rule out any low-carbon technologies that can cut emissions while maintaining production and jobs. However, new coal-fired power stations that produce large quantities of unabated carbon emissions are not part of that low-carbon future.
17:24
I, too, congratulate Ross Finnie on securing this important debate. I say at the outset that the Scottish Conservatives, alongside our colleagues in the United Kingdom Government, have long been supporters of clean-coal technology. We support the Scottish Government’s stated aim of Scotland becoming the European leader in carbon capture and storage. To that end, we welcome the CCS road map that the Government has produced jointly with Scottish Enterprise.
Turning to the motion, I note the deeply worrying figures that Mr Finnie cites on the levels of carbon dioxide that would remain unabated under the Hunterston proposal. However, rather like Mr Gibson, I would not wish to go as far as Mr Finnie does in seeking to restrict carbon capture solely to existing installations. That seems to be inflexible, although I accept that Mr Finnie raises real concerns about how we assess implementation of the technology.
The fact remains that, as with all new energy infrastructure, whether it be wind turbines, hydro schemes or—as we are debating—a brand new power station, it is essential that it be the right scheme in the right place. Mr Gibson raised legitimate questions about that. I am certainly aware, as he is, that local concern remains current and the community is worried. Having examined the details of the Hunterston proposal and the passionately expressed concerns of local residents, not to mention the issues that are highlighted in the motion, the Scottish Conservatives are not fully convinced that the site in question is an appropriate location on which to construct such an installation.
As someone who lives near the Clyde and who, like Mr Finnie, went to school in Greenock, I know the Clyde coast well. The proposed development is in an area of exceptional beauty that is rich in biodiversity and popular with tourists. We must therefore subject any such proposal to the highest levels of scrutiny. I am concerned by the representations of bodies such as RSPB Scotland and the Scottish Wildlife Trust, which have real concerns that the proposal could destroy a substantial part of the Portencross SSSI, which they say has the best remaining intertidal mud and sandflats on the outer Clyde and which are important feeding grounds for a huge range of waterfowl and waders.
The comments that were made earlier about the attitude of Scottish Natural Heritage legitimately give rise to concern. We must be in the business of sustainable development and of considering proposal and consequence. It is difficult to justify development on the proposed scale on such a sensitive site if we are serious about fulfilling our obligations to preserve and enhance the rich diversity of our coastal locations and to respect the concept of a sustainable environment.
I note that the proposal entails an air emission stack of some 500ft in height. There is no doubt that that would be a disruptive and detrimental visual intrusion and that it would impact negatively on the landscape. Profound concerns have been expressed to me by local people about the road infrastructure in the area, which they feel is unsuited to dealing with the inevitable increase in heavy transportation that the project would entail. Rail transport also seems to be at maximum capacity. Concerns have also been raised with me about health, and the data to which Mr Finnie referred do nothing to assuage those.
I conclude with a word about the future energy development that my party would like in the region. The Scottish Conservatives, along with every other party in Parliament, supported the world-leading emissions reduction targets that were agreed by the Parliament last year. It is our conviction that achieving those targets will be exceptionally challenging if, as has been said, nuclear capacity is not part of the mix. To that end, the Conservatives would like the continuation of nuclear generation at Hunterston, initially by extending the life of Hunterston B beyond its current estimated decommissioning date for as long as it is safe to do so, and ultimately by replacing it with a new nuclear facility.
17:29
The debate has been useful and interesting. I join others in commending my colleague Ross Finnie, not only on the motion and on securing the debate, but on pursuing with his trademark tenacity the concerns that he has highlighted alongside many members, representatives of the local community and non-governmental organisations.
Ross Finnie acknowledged a couple of the shortcomings in his motion. Kenny Gibson rightly highlighted the case of Peterhead, which illustrates a further shortcoming in the wording of the motion. Nevertheless, the motion has served a useful purpose in allowing us to have the debate this evening.
As Annabel Goldie pointed out, through the road map, Scotland can be proud of the position that we have taken in the development of our understanding of CCS. Scotland is clearly playing a leading role in developing it. I commend the efforts of Patrick Corbett and his team at Heriot-Watt University, who perhaps deserve special mention, although I am aware that it has been very much a collaborative effort. All the members who have spoken in the debate have referenced Scottish Power’s proposals in relation to demonstration at Longannet. That is something to which the Liberal Democrats have given strong support, not least through the efforts of the previous constituency MP, Willie Rennie. It is something that I want to see being taken forward as part of that pilot, and we will make suitable representations to the UK Government.
In passing, I mention that my Liberal Democrat colleague in the European Parliament, Chris Davies, deserves credit for his endeavours in securing significant funding for the rolling out of CCS across Europe at the sort of scale that we all want to see. Although the benefits will accrue in Scotland, it is the wider application of CCS internationally in the global fight against harmful emissions, combating the effects of climate change, that shows the true potential of what we are seeking to develop here.
Nevertheless, there are still uncertainties surrounding the scalability of the technology and the timeframe within which it can be achieved. Also, the concern has been expressed throughout the chamber this evening that it should not be seen simply as a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who make proposals such as that for Hunterston. As Ross Finnie said, that has the potential to produce over time unabated emissions that would call into serious question our ability to achieve the objective of a 42 per cent emissions reduction to which we all signed up in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
Although I fully accept the restrictions on what the minister can say about the specific proposal, I observe that, in his response to Lewis Macdonald, he rather overlooked the fact that the inclusion of a coal-fired power station within the national planning framework perhaps concedes the principle. Although it may be subject to scrutiny, that is not the same as its not appearing at all in the framework.
I hope that, in his deliberations on the proposal, this evening’s debate will give the minister a true sense of the widespread and collectively held concerns that exist in Parliament around the proposals of Ayrshire Power.
17:33
I join other members in congratulating Ross Finnie on bringing the motion to the chamber for debate tonight. I agree whole-heartedly with the comment towards the end of the motion that the addition of
“some four million tonnes of CO2 emissions per annum”
through unabated coal burning is
“incompatible with the targets in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009,”
which we passed just over a year ago, patting ourselves on the back for our ambition and consensus on the issue.
The only quibbles that I have with the motion are minor. It states that the Parliament
“understands that, initially, the power station is to have 400 megawatt of its gross output ... processed through carbon capture and storage technology”.
I would have said that the applicant “aims to have”. The phrase “is to have” implies that it is going to happen, but we simply do not know whether it is going to happen because nobody in the world knows yet whether it can happen. It is still an area that is subject to research and development at a pretty fundamental level. No one knows whether the technology can be made to work on a large scale.
Towards the end, the motion states:
“and accordingly believes that the development of carbon capture and storage technology should be restricted to existing coal-fired stations.”
I am perfectly happy to agree completely with the words that Ross Finnie used in his speech—he said that he was not in any way opposed to the development of CCS technology. I am not in any way opposed to the research that is going on, with support from Government funding, to find out whether we can make CCS work. However, as well as not being opposed to the development of CCS technology, I am not yet convinced about it. It is a fundamentally new area, which no one has yet been able to show is going to be viable.
The debate that we had on 18 March was mentioned earlier. I hope that it was not only because it was my birthday that members chose to support my amendment in that debate, because it raised serious concerns about the viability of the technology. An abstract from a paper in the Journal of Petroleum Science & Engineering, which I made available to members for that debate, suggested that the potential for sequestration has been wildly overassessed. It also suggested that, given the necessity of storing CO2 in a closed system, unlike when we were trying to get oil or gas out, when the pressure under the earth or under the ocean allowed us to extract it easily, in this case the pressure will make it increasingly difficult to pump material in. The result of that is that the practical capacity for storage is much lower than the physical capacity suggests. The paper suggests that between 50 and 200 times more underground reservoir volume would be required to store the CO2 from fossil fuel combustion than has been envisaged. It states:
“it renders geologic sequestration of CO2 a profoundly non-feasible option for the management of CO2 emissions.”
That is only one research paper; many others are being written elsewhere. No doubt, all arguments on this are beyond the specialist expertise of anybody in the chamber. However, the paper tells me that this is not a closed question. We do not yet know whether the technology can be made to work.
Lewis Macdonald said that the potential for CCS at new coal plants might exist at some point in the future and that that might be some years away. Yes it might. It also might never happen. We have to acknowledge both those possibilities. CCS technology might be incredibly useful for the world or it might not happen. We cannot put all our eggs in that basket.
Annabel Goldie said in her speech that she endorsed the ambition for Scotland to become a world leader in so-called clean coal technology. There is a huge risk in placing our hopes in such a speculative technology. I commend to members the objections raised by Christian Aid, as well as the other non-governmental organisations that have circulated material for the debate tonight.
CCS technology is a speculation. We cannot place our faith and trust in it. I hope that the fact that we passed, with significant majority support, a motion to oppose a specific project will call into question any consent for the principle of the project that might be implied from its inclusion in the national planning framework.
17:38
I congratulate Ross Finnie on securing the debate. I also recognise the tremendous work that my colleague Kenny Gibson, the local MSP, is doing on the issue.
A number of constituents have approached me about the issue, which impacts on the future of the whole of Ayrshire, and, indeed, the whole of Scotland. Many constituents have expressed many of the same concerns as the local community about the environmental impact of the proposal by Peel Energy, which is the parent company. I share those concerns, which I have conveyed to the Scottish Government.
This evening I would like to make three wider points. First, is what is proposed needed? I well understand the difficulties that our Government faces in developing an energy strategy for Scotland for the years ahead in the context of Scotland’s welcome and world-leading commitment to reducing carbon emissions.
On this particular site, it is worth noting that, when the development plan for Ayr county was approved way back in 1971, the late Gordon Campbell—the then Tory Secretary of State for Scotland, whom I am sure that my colleagues will recall—said that he
“considers the land suitable for industrial purposes which require the unique facilities at Hunterston, and that he intends himself to control the development of the land rigorously so as to ensure the amenity of the area.”
To take forward that approach, the national planning framework identified the development of a clean coal-fired power station on the site as a crucial element of Scotland’s future infrastructure. In looking at the background to the development and the proposal as lodged, I have been concerned that the statement in the national planning framework has been taken as a signal that a potential developer need not address the legitimate concerns of the local community and other parties.
On the central question whether such a plant is needed anywhere in Scotland at present, I understand that the Scottish Government has commissioned an assessment of future energy demand and supply. That will assess the current electricity supply base, deployment rates for renewables projects and likely retirement dates for existing base-load power plants.
The proposed plant might not be required to meet Scotland’s foreseeable energy needs or to be a demonstrator project for the viability of carbon capture technology. If that is so, the proposal should be summarily rejected and the site should remain protected against unwarranted development.
That brings me to my second point, which is whether we have the right partner. If the Scottish Government’s view is that the plant is required, will Peel Energy, the parent company, be the right delivery partner for a critical part of Scotland’s infrastructure? According to the company’s website, it
“is at the forefront of delivering low carbon energy for the UK”
and has
“a balanced portfolio of more than 3GW in generation or development including wind, tidal power, biomass and multi-fuel power plants with carbon capture and storage.”
Closer examination of the company’s portfolio reveals that the Hunterston plant represents more than half that balanced portfolio. Of the other projects that are listed on the company’s website, only three are identified as being in operation. They are all wind farms in north-west England, where many other Peel Holdings businesses are based, and their combined output is less than 80MW—one twentieth of the Ayrshire plant’s proposed output.
It is obvious that Peel Energy has its own definition of what makes up a balanced energy portfolio. It has been a power generator for just 10 years and has operated just one wind farm with an output of 3.6MW. The company does not have the resources or the track record to take on a project of the proposed scale or to respond fully to legitimate concerns about the project’s long-term impact on the environment and the local community.
My final question is whether the issue is for Scotland or the UK. Scotland needs to operate in the context of a UK-wide energy policy that continues to favour nuclear power and in which Scotland’s renewables sector is heavily disadvantaged by connection charges to the national grid.
Considerable concern is felt that the UK Government is so committed to the new base-load capacity that it will accept as demonstration projects proposals for new power stations that are likely to fail the viability test for full-output carbon capture. That could mean that new plants operate without an effective carbon capture mechanism for the majority of their capacity.
The financial interests of Peel Holdings must not be allowed to dictate the site’s use to generate carbon-releasing electricity for export. The Scottish Government should explore the use of compulsory purchase powers, if necessary, to ensure that the final decision on any energy-related development of the site is taken in Scotland and not in Westminster.
17:43
I join others in thanking Ross Finnie for the opportunity to debate the proposal. I congratulate him, Kenny Gibson and Annabel Goldie on their effective representation of their constituents’ views. I think that I have mentioned every member who has a constituency interest.
As members know, formally it is inappropriate for me to discuss the specifics of an active application such as that for Hunterston, which is subject to statutory consultation and consent procedures. To do so could be seen as pre-empting or prejudging any decision that is yet to be made by my colleague, the Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism. Notwithstanding that, the debate and all members’ speeches will be published tomorrow, so they can help to inform decisions, whether by a council or a minister.
Can you comment on generating capacity in Scotland, for Scotland? We should not be having this debate, because any new capacity in Scotland would be for export.
I will restrict my comments on the issue. Without drawing any particular inference for any current planning applications, I noted Willie Coffey’s point that we should not generate electricity in a carbon-intensive way simply to export it.
Decarbonisation of the electricity sector by 2030 is a vital prerequisite for meeting our 2050 target of an 80 per cent reduction in emissions. The roll-out of CCS has a key part to play in meeting that important target. However, that point is qualified by how we count the numbers for our 42 per cent target, which come from the operation of the European Union emissions trading scheme. We already know what those numbers will be, and they are unrelated to what we do in the real world. That is why it is important that we continue to pressure the EU to increase its target, so that our numbers benefit from the work that we are doing on the ground to reduce the CO2 from our energy generation.
Ross Finnie pointed to errors in his motion. None of us who have participated in tonight’s debate will hold those against him.
Reference has been made to the demonstrator and the decision that we expect in May next year. It is worrying to read in The Guardian the reports to which other members have referred. I hope that Ross Finnie and other Liberals will use their power to influence ministers at UK level to ensure that the £1 billion that was previously promised for the demonstrator remains available, because that will be a very important matter.
There was a bit of talk about sites of special scientific interest. I think that it is impossible for an SSSI’s status to be changed while there is a planning application that affects it. I make that point based on recollection—it is not in my brief. If members care to write to me, I will be happy to provide them with the formal position.
Importantly, Kenny Gibson pointed to the fact that we must consider the use of gas. We have a successful gas-generation station at Peterhead and there are welcome indications that CCS for gas may be back on the agenda. The member also pointed to the fact that, currently, CCS is a rather inefficient way of using energy: for every tonne that is used to create energy, a tonne is expended to generate energy to capture the resulting CO2. That is an interesting point.
Like other members, Lewis Macdonald said that there is potential for 100 per cent carbon capture in the future. That will be one of the tools that will be available in our inventory to reduce carbon emissions from energy production. Annabel Goldie made the same point, indicated that the Conservatives support clean coal and welcomed the road map that the Government has published.
Both Liam McArthur and Patrick Harvie showed scepticism about whether CCS will ultimately deliver. That is a perfectly reasonable point to make, because none of us yet knows whether it will. That is why it is important that we move forward with a demonstrator.
It is important that we continue to work with the UK Government, because energy is devolved to the Scottish Parliament only to a limited extent. In particular, we should look at how the CCS levy may touch on devolved powers, to ensure that Scotland-based projects benefit and are not merely contributors. We are confident that Scotland stands to benefit from funding from the new EU new entrant reserve allocation, which will begin in 2010.
We are driving forward academic research in CCS technologies with Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish centre for carbon capture and storage. We are working with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and other European environment agencies to exchange information. And we are partnering the Scottish European Green Energy Centre to secure funding for several EU-funded research and development initiatives.
It is currently unlikely that Scotland can meet its energy needs for some years to come without some form of thermal generation. We of course expect good penetration from renewables over the next decade, although intermittency issues remain with regard to a variety of renewable energy sources. Therefore, retrofitting our existing plants with CCS will be an important part of the way forward, and we should not lose focus on that.
We recognise the challenges that lie ahead for CCS, but the opportunities for breaking new ground are considerable. We are committed to placing Scotland at the forefront of the development and deployment of CCS. That gives us a climate change benefit and it creates a commercial and economic opportunity for us. We want Scotland-based companies and researchers to be in a leading position to benefit from the multibillion-pound worldwide market. We want to promote the North Sea as Europe’s principal CO2 storage hub—noting the caveats that Patrick Harvie raised. We also want there to be large-scale demonstration projects in Scotland, thereby ensuring that we secure the ancillary and research and development services here in Scotland.
Meeting closed at 17:51.