Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2005
MR BRIAN
MORRIS, DR
GEORGE MARSH,
DR JIM
PENMAN AND
MS HELEN
FLEMING
Q1 Chairman: May I welcome our expert
witnesses to the first session of our inquiry on carbon capture
and storage and the many people who have come from the Royal Society
who are part of the pairing scheme with MPs. You are particularly
welcome to what will be one of the most exciting sessions you
will ever, ever witness! I would like to ask a general question
just to start us off. I think it is now accepted that the UK will
miss its 2020 target for a 20% reduction of CO2. Is this because
the Department and its advisers, particularly in Defra, DTI and
the Treasury, have put too much faith in carbon capture and storage
as a solution to this problem?
Dr Penman: No, I do not think
it is because people have put too much faith in carbon capture
and storage. I think it is still an open question whether we shall
miss our target.[1]
The current Climate Change Programme Review is assessing what
additional action we need to take. I think it is certainly accepted
we need to take additional action to get back on track towards
the target. The current Climate Change Programme does not contain
any action on carbon capture and storage because this technology
had not been very widely thought about at the time we were writing
it. It certainly is not true that we put too much faith in it.
Q2 Chairman: Do you agree with that?
Mr Morris: I do. It has only been
in the last two or three years that carbon capture and storage
has had an increased profile. I certainly would agree that it
has not really been recognised as a possible technology until
very recently and I do not think it has featured in any mechanisms
or any policies which have tried to look at the targets for 2020.
I would even go as far as to say that one would tend to think
about this technology as being beyond 2020 and, as I think you
will see in the Carbon Abatement Technology strategy, we think
of this technology as being something beyond that time. It is
not really a technology that could apply up to 2020.
Q3 Chairman: Helen, the Treasury
has shown absolutely no interest in putting funds into this technology
on a large scale. Does that mean that you have abandoned the target
for 2020?
Ms Fleming: No, not at all. Did
you say the target for 2020?
Q4 Chairman: Yes. Is the 20% reduction
by 2020 now dead?
Ms Fleming: By 2010, I think,
Chairman.
Q5 Chairman: No. You have a 2010
target and you have a 2020 target. The 2010 target is a Government
target.
Ms Fleming: We are working, as
Jim said, through the current Climate Change Programme Review
to look at all the options for how we will meet those targets
and a lot of work has gone in to assessing all of the options
for that. In respect of carbon capture, as Brian said, this is
a technology that has come to the fore relatively recently. The
Chancellor has said in his Budget earlier this year that he was
interested in exploring the scope for using economic incentives
to promote the use of carbon capture and that is something that
we have been working on.
Q6 Chairman: Do you feel that this
new technology, which is a sort of a saviour, means that people
have put a great deal of faith in saying that we are there to
capture carbon from coal and gas fired production of electricity
and therefore the nuclear option will go out the window? Is that
why it is so strongly on the political agenda now?
Dr Marsh: My view is that it has
been recognised now as another big technology that could make
a significant contribution to CO2 abatement. It addresses the
large emissions that come from the electricity supply sector and
its costs, as far as we know them, because there is a lot of uncertainty
at predicting costs 10 or 20 years into the future, are comparable
with nuclear and other options.
Q7 Chairman: In terms of sustainability
of supply and security of supply, is that now the number one priority
for all of you in terms of advising your respective departments?
Dr Marsh: It is one of the issues.
In addition we have got to think about the UK targets and also
the lead that the UK wants to give internationally on CO2 abatement
as well. CCS is really relevant to all of those.
Q8 Chairman: By 2020 we will have
something like 90% of gas coming from either Russia or Saudi Arabia
to geo-political hotspots. Is that a sensible avenue to be going
down?
Dr Marsh: I think you can achieve
diversity in a number of ways in terms of the choice of fuels
or a multitude of sourcing. I guess if we go to gas then the key
issue is to have a diversity of sources.
Q9 Chairman: Are there many other
major sources apart from Russia and the Middle East?
Dr Marsh: There are lots of sources
in the Middle East and in North Africa, Algeria and Norway still
have lots of reserves as well. I suppose the options are a combination
of gas pipeline supply and also liquefied natural gas supply as
well.
Q10 Mr Newmark: To what extent is
funding for CCS in competition with funding for renewables in
general? Do you agree with those who say that support for CCS
encourages dependence on fossil fuels?
Mr Morris: I think renewables
already has a more considerable forward allocation of funding
than we have. Our budget at the moment per year is about £6
million and a good bit of that goes into the R&D we have been
doing over the last three or four years into clean fossil fuel
technologies. So the emphasis of the funding has been more on
renewables at the moment. We have also recently announced £25
million for a demonstration project which would run from next
year and that is the first time ever we have had some money for
demonstration projects. Sorry, I have forgotten your second question.
Q11 Mr Newmark: Do you agree with
those who say that support for CCS encourages dependence on fossil
fuels?
Mr Morris: It allows you to use
fossil fuels in a way which does not damage the environment and
I think that is the important point about it. It gives you an
opportunity for diversity of supply. It means you can possibly
start to continue to look at using gas and coal in ways which
will not be damaging to the environment. It provides you with
the opportunities to continue to use it without damaging the environment.
Q12 Dr Turner: Can I just pick you
up on that point, Mr Morris, because there is quite a lot of enthusiasm
out there now for clean coal technology, etcetera. Given that
the timelines for carbon capture and storage and its application
are rather long and given the amount of fossil fuel generation
that is already in the pipeline, do you not think that there is
a risk, especially if other developers think clean coal technology
or clean gas technology is going to be the answer, we will go
for fossil fuel because renewables are not going fast enough,
we will actually do more environmental damage because it will
be up to 20 years before carbon capture and storage becomes a
widespread reality? So we will actually have released many megatonnes
of CO2 before carbon capture and storage becomes available, rather
more than we might if people had a different policy and mindset
and were focusing more on renewables.
Mr Morris: I agree with you that
there is the problem that the technology is not there now and
in the meantime you have to look at the shorter-term technologies
such as wind power which is obviously there now. I suspect this
is a question for the energy review which will be announced in
the near future. We are very aware of the issue and very aware
of the problems and the timing is awkward to say the least. In
the meantime we have countries like China and India which are
building huge capacity at the moment. Each year they are putting
in coal fired power plants equal to the total capacity of the
UK and that is very worrying. What is worrying is the possibility
of carbon lock in. That is one reason why in the G8 we were trying
to promote the idea of "capture ready" plant, where
if you built a new power plant, whether it be coal or gas, you
would build in the right sort of hooks so that later on you could
attach the carbon capture technologies which would solve the problem
in the future. I agree with your point, the timing is awkward.
In the meantime if we are going to use these technologies and
we are going to accept that fossil is going to be in the energy
mix for many decades to come we have got to prepare for that now.
We have got to be doing the work today to enable those technologies
to be there by 2020 to handle that problem.
Dr Penman: The thing to bear in
mind is that fossil fuels are going to be used in future probably
whatever happens. This is not a zero-sum game and this is a classic
transition technology. I think we are looking in the long term
to low carbon technologies and CCS helps us work, starting with
the existing energy system as it is to achieve that. If we did
not do that we would run the risk of incurring higher costs than
we would otherwise have done.
Q13 Dr Turner: I do not disagree.
Do you not see the risk of actually encouraging a greater dependence
on fossil fuel use than we might otherwise seek and thereby greater
environmental damage even if the new plant is "capture ready"
because it will be 2020 before capture is likely to be fitted?
Dr Penman: I see the risk as higher
if we do not go along that path.
Q14 Dr Turner: I am not suggesting
we do not go there, but there has to be an important policy caveat.
Do you not agree?
Dr Penman: I think one has to
think about these things. One also has to bear in mind, for example,
the political power that is behind fossil fuels and how we engage
that to achieve this transition. It is issues like that we also
need to bear in mind.
Dr Marsh: I have heard a number
of comments about how this is a long-term technology. Let us be
clear, Brian is right, the constraints of the build time preclude
a significant contribution to the 2010 target, but most of the
technology that we are talking about is available and deployed.
The new thing that needs to be done is to combine it in an integrated
process for carbon capture and storage and certainly quite significant
quantities of technology could be deployed by 2020 or possibly
sooner than that.
Q15 Chairman: You mentioned the issue
of India and China and the speed at which they are bringing new
coal plants on. China is not going to say, with 200 years of coal,
"We're suddenly going to spend all this money on putting
in this technology when America and Europe and the rest of the
first world have been using it for 150 or 200 years." How
are we going, as part of our strategy, to encourage China to put
in carbon capture facilities either with their plant or indeed
to put retrofit facilities in in order to do it later? Should
we be involved in that? Should we be helping to fund that, Helen?
Mr Morris: Let me start. We are
very actively engaged with China. The G8 conference in Gleneagles
invited developing countries along and China was among them. The
Chinese are aware of the problems around increased levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere and the issues around climate change
and the impact it could have on them. Only yesterday we signed
our bilateral agreement with China into research and development
into clean technologies. Lord Sainsbury and the Minister of Science
and Technology from China signed this agreement yesterday afternoon.
That is setting a basis for us to work with them in areas of research
and development. On top of that, arising from the British Presidency
of the EU, there has also been an EU-China agreement signed this
week to look into carbon capture and storage in China. The first
phase is that the UK Government has put in £3.5 million and
£3 million of that is from Defra and £500,000 the DTI.
That is going to look at the feasibility of carbon capture and
storage projects in China. Phase two would be a design and phase
three would be a build. Obviously the costs increase considerably
as you go along and there would be need for thought given as to
how that is going to be funded, but at the moment we are looking
at the feasibility of doing that. I think it is important to emphasise
that the Chinese, more so than countries like India and America,
are very aware of the consequences of climate change and are very
aware that they want greater capacity for their economic growth
but at the same time they realise the damage that burning coal
without trying to control the emissions is going to do not just
to the planet but to their own prospects in the future. They are
very aware of the issues. We are certainly having lots of discussions
with them about this and we are hoping to come to a good collaborative
arrangement with the Chinese over time.
Q16 Chairman: Helen, do you feel
we need to part-fund those developments together with probably
the Americans if they can be persuaded?
Ms Fleming: I think the Treasury
clearly agrees, as the rest of the Government does, that this
is a global problem and certainly the issue about industrialisation
in the developing world, particularly China, is one where we need
to encourage them to go down the route of looking at all the carbon
abatement options and we are certainly working closely with colleagues
to make sure that the right processes are in place for that. As
to whether it will require additional funding by Government, we
will have to see and we will have to consider that at the right
time. Clearly the initial work to set out the feasibility of the
projects needs to be done first and clearly any decisions on funding
would be a matter for ministers once that was done.
Q17 Dr Harris: Do you see any risks
with this technology both in terms of actual risks—environmental
and other—and in terms of public acceptance? Obviously the
two are linked.
Mr Morris: We are very aware of
the perception of the risks, the risks basically being if we are
storing carbon dioxide beneath the ground, particularly as we
are thinking of it in the depleted oil and gas fields in the North
Sea, then there is the concern that the carbon will leak out again.
You are seeing experts from the British Geological Survey later
on and I think they will be able to give you much more advice
on those issues that I can. Where it has been done to date, such
as in the Sleipner field in the Norwegian part of the North Sea,
the carbon dioxide they have been storing, which is about a million
tonnes a year, has not leaked out, it seems to be staying in and
behaving itself! The risks do seem to be manageable based on what
has happened so far around the world. What is interesting is that
there is a considerable store of natural CO2 beneath the surface
which seems to have been sitting there for millions of years and
it has not come out yet. One of the ways around ensuring that
those risks are minimised is through verification. There is going
to be an issue there about making sure that it is controlled.
We are aware of the public perception issue. The Tyndale Centre
was doing work on that and we contributed to the funding of that
work to try and understand how people saw this technology. One
of the activities arising from the Carbon Abatement Technology
strategy is that we intend to develop a communications strategy
which would try to raise the issue with people and try to tell
them objectively what it is about, what the risks are and what
the benefits are. We are aware of that issue. We know it is going
to be a difficult issue as well.
Q18 Dr Harris: Why do you think it
will be a difficult issue?
Mr Morris: When people think about
storing carbon back under the ground there must be some concern
about it leaking out again and whether we are not really just
putting off the problem for the next generations. I think it is
a very understandable problem. We need to be able to demonstrate
that we are doing that in a responsible way for the future.
Dr Penman: A couple of years ago
the DTI commissioned a very interesting study on risk from consultants
which I think is in the public domain. I think the conclusions
were that there were risks associated with what you might call
the engineered infrastructure, the pipes and all that sort of
thing, but they were within the normal range of risks which society
faces and are managed in accordance with normal procedures. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently published
a special report on carbon capture and storage which broadly confirms
that judgment. As Brian says, it indicates that the risk from
geological storage, if properly done, is not large. Clearly we
have to continue to think about the problem and justice must not
only be done, it must be seen to be done.
Q19 Dr Harris: We have had evidence
which says, "Migration of CO2 into aquifers used for potable
water supplies could lead to acidification of those resources,
or their contamination by destabilisation of heavy metals naturally
sorbed or precipitated on aquifer minerals such as iron oxyhydroxides
. . ." To the public, particularly if provoked by interested
parties, that is "acid in the drinking water". Something
"terrible" like iron oxyhydroxides might even be worse
than GM, it might be GM for all the public know and the sand contamination
is in there as well. Have you thought about how you are going
to deal with this, particularly given the fact that there may
be pressure groups saying, "This technology is just allowing
people to burn coal so we're going to go for them on this"?
Mr Morris: Not every aquifer is
going to be the right aquifer for storing CO2. When our colleagues
from the British Geological Survey give evidence later on I think
they will be able to answer your question far more competently
than I can.
1 Note by the witness: This response assumed
that the Chairman was referring to the Government's target for
a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2010. Back
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