Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 7 DECEMBER 2005
MR RUSSELL
MARSH, DR
DOUGLAS PARR
AND MS
GERMANA CANZI
Q200 Chairman: Are we not sort of
fiddling while Rome burns here, if you will pardon the metaphor?
It is an incredibly challenging target to reduce by 60% CO2 by
2050 and really, unless we get real about carbon capture and storage,
we are going to fall straight into the nuclear lobby. Is that
what we want?
Ms Canzi: Well, firstly, I do
not think that it is us fiddling while Rome burns. I think that
there are a lot of—
Q201 Chairman: Who is fiddling then?
Ms Canzi: Well, a number of governments.
I would say that there is a huge potential for energy efficiency
and a huge potential for demand reduction. It is not just us saying
this, but also some industries are saying this and we feel that
the commitment to reaching this potential for energy demand reduction
has not been strong enough so far, so that is the first thing
I would like to say. You mentioned both clean coal and carbon
capture and storage and I think we need to separate the two things,
and I will stick to carbon capture and storage because that is
the subject today. We are currently working on our models for
the electricity market up to 2020 and we will make this public
in a couple of months when we will publish a report. The numbers
that we have seen so far indicate that we could get considerable
reductions in the electricity sector up to 60% without nuclear
and without carbon capture and storage, but of course this depends
on what actually happens on energy efficiency. For example, on
the demand side, policies like CHP need to be boosted, policies
like the efficiency of products, and there are European regulations
that are coming in place, and more high-level political attention
needs to go there. However, having said that, given that we do
not know whether these policies will come into place and we recognise
that there are other sectors, such as the aviation sector, which
are going to be a lot more hard to tackle, then we think that
carbon capture and storage could potentially play a role in order
to reach these significant targets in the electricity sector,
but under certain conditions.
Q202 Chairman: Doug, you think it
is just a distraction?
Dr Parr: Yes.
Q203 Chairman: Your stated position
is that it is a distraction from the real priority of implementing
renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
Dr Parr: The example I would cite
is that of Woking where the District Council from their own offices
and social housing have managed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
by 77% with cheaper prices and high levels of security, so it
seems to us that there is a tremendous opportunity by exploiting
the possibilities of a decentralised energy supply which would
include small-scale renewables or local renewables, I should say,
because they can be very large scale.
Q204 Chairman: It is a drop in the
ocean, is it not?
Dr Parr: Well, a 77% cut from
building emissions is not a drop in the ocean.
Q205 Chairman: Yes, but 77% of what?
Dr Parr: Well, from that baseline
in 1990. It is a pretty staggering figure. I was a bit sceptical
when I first heard about it, but that is endorsed by the South
East England Development Agency, so this, we think, is the way
forward. Now, just to get back to the topic, we do not reject
carbon capture and storage outright as being unacceptable—it
is not like nuclear in that regard—but we think there are
other opportunities that need to be taken up and looked at rather
than thinking that carbon capture and storage is some kind of
silver bullet. We do not have an objection in principle. What
we are worried about is that the real opportunities that lie in
the local generation, decentralised power, energy efficiency,
et cetera, can be ignored because there is this thing, "Oh,
it's very easy. We've got one problem, let's slot in another.
Let's slot in nuclear, let's slot in carbon capture and storage",
and there is a danger that that could happen.
Q206 Chairman: But surely you would
not disagree with the analysis which I think most people make
that China, in particular, is not going to abandon 200 years'
supply of coal in order to satisfy some demands from the UK. I
think you would agree that that is not a real situation.
Dr Parr: Yes.
Q207 Chairman: Should Britain be
taking the lead, therefore, in terms of this technology in order
that it proves that it works and, therefore, it is value elsewhere
in the world.
Dr Parr: I think there can be
a role for the UK, but let's just talk about China for a moment.
Firstly, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has recognised the
strength of the decentralised paradigm because they have done
a study with the World Alliance for Decentralised Energy, looking
at China and modelling the energy usage and projections for there,
and of course they would be using their coal as well as gas and
all the other things they are looking to do. Now, this study indicates
that they could end up over the next 20 years reducing their capital
costs by £400 billion and, rather importantly, reducing their
carbon dioxide emissions by about 56% over their projected emissions,
and that is a Foreign and Commonwealth Office study. They recognise
that there is tremendous potential in this approach, including
the use of coal in China. The second reason why, and I hesitate
to use the word "sceptical", but it conveys the right
idea, is that although I do not think there is any question that
the UK is well positioned to develop the technology and utilise
the technology given the geological formations we have got in
the North Sea, I think in many other parts of the world that is,
to say the least, unclear. We do not know if there are suitable
and appropriate geological formations in China and India, so again
we should not really be rejecting the technology, but we should
not be setting too much store by it because it might transpire
that they do not. Further, you can use carbon capture and storage
here and it makes a certain amount of sense where you have got
a developed science base, where you have got the potential to
develop monitoring and verification systems and you have got a
high level of business compliance with regulation and so on. Now,
that is not necessarily the case in all parts of the world and
it is always, always, always going to be cheaper to chuck carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere than it is to capture it and bury
it underground.
Q208 Dr Iddon: You heard Gardiner
Hill earlier saying that currently we are dumping carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere from current generating plants?
Dr Parr: Yes.
Q209 Dr Iddon: What objections have
you got to the alternative of storing it in caverns under the
sea or elsewhere?
Dr Parr: Well, if it is a straight
choice between whether you want it in the atmosphere or underground,
it is a no-brainer, you want it under the ground. As I have outlined,
our concern is not an objection per se to it, but the way it works
politically. If you accept that a lot of coal is going to be built
in centralised power stations, it would be better if it was captured
and stored, there is no question about that. The questions that
we have at this stage in the development are, firstly, when will
the technology be ready for deployment, which it may well not
be for a number of years, and, secondly, whether the focus on
that is distracting from other solutions that we would see as
more important and more effective.
Q210 Dr Iddon: Is that a general
feeling?
Ms Canzi: Yes.
Mr Marsh: Yes, I think we would
broadly agree with that.
Q211 Dr Iddon: If I could address
this question to you, Russell, you currently only support storage
in oil and gas fields. What evidence would you require to persuade
you that storage in saline aquifers is acceptable too?
Mr Marsh: I think we would need
to see more evidence of how secure the site would be and what
some of the impacts would be of a leak from those kind of sites.
I have not yet seen enough evidence to convince myself that it
is something we should be pushing forward with quickly, but I
certainly would have no problem with EOR as we know much more
about oil and gas fields, but certainly putting it in other places
we are a bit more concerned about.
Q212 Mr Newmark: So it is not something
you object to in principle, but it is a question of getting as
much information as you can so that you can make an informed decision
at this point?
Mr Marsh: Yes, Green Alliance
would not have at the moment an objection specifically to that.
Q213 Chairman: Germana, could we
just have your view on that.
Ms Canzi: Yes, we share this view.
We feel that the oil industry has a lot of experience with the
geology of oil and gas fields and, therefore, we feel more confident
that the science about the permanence of the CO2 underground is
more certain. In terms of saline aquifers, it is a more recent
development. There have only been a few pilot studies, so our
support for this kind of storage will always be on a case-by-case
basis.
Q214 Chairman: It would be qualified?
Ms Canzi: Yes.
Q215 Dr Iddon: Now, the Government,
as we have seen in the last few weeks, has suddenly switched on
to CCS. How effective do you think they have been so far in communicating
CCS technology to the public?
Mr Marsh: I would say not at all.
Dr Parr: I am not aware that it
has actually happened. Has there been any communication about
it? I must have missed it.
Q216 Dr Iddon: Has there been any
communication with the NGOs?
Dr Parr: I went to see the DTI
about their carbon abatement strategy and I get regular communications
from AEA Technology or Future Energy Solutions about the Clean
Coal Programme, though I think it might have been renamed.
Mr Marsh: I have spoken both to
the DTI and to the Treasury over the last few months about the
development of their strategies for CCS.
Q217 Chairman: Do you have a responsibility
as NGOs, do you think, to try and explain this technology to the
public? You are powerful voices within the community.
Ms Canzi: Well, as Friends of
the Earth, we certainly have started discussing this issue with
our local groups. We have only just started, these are our activists
around the UK, and we will have a meeting in January when this
is on the agenda. That is what I can commit to doing. In terms
of educating the general public, I think it is a bit difficult
for us. We can certainly be careful in what we say in our press
releases, but we do not have influence over what the general public
will ultimately think. One thing to say is that we have the feeling
at this moment that in the UK our local groups may be open to
this kind of discussion, but it is fair to say that in the rest
of the world, in our international network, Friends of the Earth
International is still very deeply divided on this issue. I heard
mention of Australia earlier and definitely the Australian colleagues
are opposing this kind of development.
Q218 Dr Iddon: Do all three of you
feel yourselves that you or your organisations have a full understanding
of where the industry is going with CCS, understanding the technology
in particular?
Mr Marsh: Not yet. I would say
that we are still in the process of trying to get our own sense
of where the technology is going, so I think we are still in the
early stages of trying to understand the technology opportunities.
Dr Parr: Just to take the first
point first, I think we do have a very clear responsibility to
think carefully about the right and the best environmental solution
for the big threat that we have of climate change and not to damage
and negate effective solutions through ideology, which I think
is perhaps underlying what you are getting at. We take that very
seriously and have quite a lot of internal worrying about it.
Your second point was whether we feel we are well informed about
carbon capture and storage. Well, we do have technical people.
We have two people who were part of the IPCC special report, and
one was a lead author and another is an acknowledged geological
expert who works in Germany, so I think we have internally got
expertise on the topic. I think the difficulty is that a lot of
the judgments that we make about it on the political and financial
grounds where it is much more difficult to pin down definitive
knowledge. Having said that, I think industry is clearly moving
very fast with that and maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of
what is going on is not necessarily easy.
Q219 Chairman: If I can just ask
Germana and Russell, you have both given a sort of conditional
support for this technology, and I understand that, but could
you give me a precise condition that you would want to see met
before you would give it your unconditional support? Is there
something we should know? I understand the issue about deep saline
aquifers and the need for some proper research there, but is there
anything else where you would specifically say, "We really
need to get clarification here"?
Mr Marsh: I would say two things.
One is a sense that there is a regulatory framework for when the
CO2 is stored so that we can kind of keep a check on what it is
doing and we can be clear that there are programmes in place to
monitor it and know what to do if there is a problem. The second
thing is about the liability issues and getting the liability
issues sorted out. I think we would want to see that those two
things were in place before we would be able to say that we are
happy for these things to go ahead.
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