Westminster Hall
Tuesday 17 March 2009
[Miss Anne Begg in the Chair]
UK Energy (Coal)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Barbara Keeley.)
9.30 am
Mr. David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): It is a great privilege to be here this morning in front of you, Miss Begg, and some eminent colleagues. I declare a number of interests: I am the chair of the all-party coalfield communities group and of the clean coal coalition, and I am very proud to be a member of the Durham Colliery Mechanics Association.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): Will my hon. Friend give way?
David Taylor: Does my hon. Friend acknowledge how highly predictable it is that not a single member of the Conservative party is present for the start of this debate? It just goes to show that on the 25th anniversary of the coal strike, the only miners that they are concerned about is our noble Friend—Lord Myners—the banking Minister.
Mr. Anderson: I could not possibly comment, except to say that their absence is not unusual, because they have never shown any interest in coal, apart from when the issue was how to get rid of the coal industry and to destroy working-class organisations. If they do not attend today, it will show even more that they are not interested in what we are talking about. But this is not just about what has happened in the past; this is about the future for this country.
We live in very strange times. Everybody wants to be green and to have clean power, but, at the same time, everybody wants more power, more gadgets, fridges the size of wardrobes, air conditioning, ice for their drinks, and to drive 4x4s. There is huge demand, but, at the same time, resources are dwindling. Newcastle university supplied me with figures showing that production of oil and gas in the North sea reached its peak in about 1999. Global production is projected to peak between 2017 and 2021, and BP’s own estimate is that oil will have depleted by 2050 and gas by 2070.
So, we turn to nuclear. But building and decommissioning nuclear plants is very carbon-intensive, and even if we get everything right—including transportation, construction and decommissioning—about nuclear, and that is a big if, one thing that strikes me is that figures, again supplied by Newcastle university, show that there are estimated to be only 50 years’ worth of viable uranium reserves in stable countries—in Canada and Australia, in particular. Beyond that, we would damage other parts of the environment to get at uranium.
I am a big supporter of renewables and want a massive move towards such energy in this country, because that is the way to engage our young people in engineering and in the whole move forward. But, sadly, no matter what we put in place, be it wave power, artificial islands, turbines or bore holes, they will all be good and contribute but they will not contribute enough to fill the energy gap. On wind power, in particular, the coldest days in this country, when we need more power than ever, are the days when the wind does not blow, so what good is that to sustaining base load electricity production? The world is rising to the challenge, however. Jeep, in America, is developing electric Jeeps—big 4x4s—that can do about 90mph and 400 miles on eight gallons of petrol, so we know that we are in a different world from that we have been in for most of our lives. Hyundai is developing people carriers, and this country is developing electric Range Rovers, which could cut running costs by a projected 80 per cent.
The truth is, however, that we cannot fill the energy gap in this country unless we use coal. In my constituency, we are promoting the development of new types of technology. We are going into something that is talked about time and again in these debates—carbon capture and storage. One North East, the regional development agency, has given me a brief for this morning’s debate, and Members should listen to what we are putting forward in our area: a carbon grid and storage proposal on Teesside; £1.5 million of planned investment by Progressive Energy and Centrica in a 1 GW coal-fired gas station at Eston in the Tees valley; £2 billion of planned investment by RWE npower in a 2.4 GW power station on the site of the former Blyth power station in Northumberland; and the potential use of Rio Tinto Alcan’s plant at Lynemouth in Northumberland for retrofit solutions to get rid of stored carbon. That plant was fed for years by Lynemouth and Ellington collieries, which have both closed in the past two years as a direct result of the failure by the people who run those companies to invest properly and to keep them open at a time when we need them.
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing a most important subject to the attention of the House. He mentioned carbon capture and storage but moved on very quickly, although I am sure that he will return to the subject. Does he share my slight disappointment that although we could lead the world in that technology, our demonstration plant will not come on line until 2014 or, given how the Government have invested in it, become commercially viable until 2020? That is just too long, and I want it brought forward so that we can use the coal that we have in this country.
Mr. Anderson: I will return to that issue, because everybody is talking about it. But that is all we appear to do—talk about it. One thing that I will put to the Minister is that the time for talking is finished.
Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): The hon. Gentleman may deal with this issue later, but does he agree that we must concentrate on—according to estimates that I have seen—the 300 years’ worth of coal that we have in this country? If carbon capture and storage were put forward seriously, it would safeguard this country, in terms of foreign security, let alone energy security, from the potentially disastrous consequences of depending on other countries for our energy supply.
Mr. Anderson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. That is one key issue to which I shall return. The change that I have seen in my short time as a Member relates to what happened last summer, when petrol prices got out of control across the world. It made people in this country, particularly Ministers, finally realise that what some of us had been saying for many years about coal was true. The Americans have also realised it, and they are going at it in a big way.
I come from an area with one of the world’s oldest coalfields, yet it is estimated that we have tapped only 25 per cent. of the north-east’s reserves, and that is why the north-east branch of the National Union of Mineworkers has asked the Government to support it in conducting feasibility studies of two drifts near Sunderland and near Amble in Northumberland. They could enable access to 400 million tonnes of proven reserves and create 7,000 jobs. The branch is working alongside One North East and north-east universities such as Durham and Newcastle and saying to us that if we are serious, the reserves are there and we need to go and get them, because they will give us long-term protection.
We need coal. It is a con that we do not burn coal in this country. We talked earlier, before Opposition colleagues arrived, about what happened 25 years ago when we stopped using British coal, but the truth is that we still burn half as much coal—65 million tonnes—as we did 20 years ago. During the past 12 years, we have imported 372 million tonnes of coal. In 1996, coal imports represented only about 26 per cent. of the total, but, by last year, they had gone up to 72 per cent.—a huge leap.
Mr. Jim Devine (Livingston) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend know from which countries we import that coal, and how stable they are?
Mr. Anderson: I do, and I shall come on to that. My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that they are not very stable.
In 2007, we imported 43 million tonnes of coal, of which 22 million, more than half, came from Russia. Responding to a question that I raised, the Minister with responsibility for coal said that the value of those imports was £2.072 billion. So, we have exported more than £2 billion of our money to bring in foreign coal. The cost to our balance of payments has been a massive £2 billion, and our dependence on Russian coal is both startling and frightening. This whole debate is about how green we are, and it is not very green to transport millions of tonnes of coal halfway around the world.
The real scandal and even greater cost, however, is the human cost, because that coal is covered in blood. More than 5,000 deaths a year occur in the coal mines of China: four deaths for every million tonnes of coal that are mined. That is bad. But it is even worse in Ukraine, where the death rate is seven deaths per million tonnes. To put those figures into perspective, the last time the death rates in the UK industry were as high as those in China was in the 1920s, and we have to go back to the 1880s to find rates as high as those in Ukraine. Hon. Members should consider what life was like in the 1880s in the places that they represent, compared with now. That is what we are talking about. That is whywe are subsidising coal. We have done away withBritish Coal—the cleanest, safest coal industry in
the world—and we are relying on cheap imports based on death and dying. There is blood on the coal; there is no doubt about it. We are doing this for cost.
I should like hon. Members to think about something tonight when they go home. On walking into their houses or flats, putting the light on, turning the television on and turning the heating up, and even putting the electric blanket on if it is cold, they should just think that tonight 20 Chinese miners will not be going home—not tonight; not ever again. That is the cost of importing coal into this country. There will be more deaths than that in Ukraine.
About 10 years ago there was a potential disaster at a mine called Quecreek in Somerset county, Pennsylvania. Guys were trapped underground in an air pocket and, thankfully, thanks to bore holes being drilled, they were rescued. But for three days the whole world held its breath. There were nine men involved. Twice that many will die in China today, on average.
If we were talking about importing leather footballs made by kids, perfumes that had been tested on animals or cheap T-shirts from sweatshops, we would say, “No, this is disgraceful.” But it is coal, so nobody cares. Well, somebody cares. I was approached by one of the boiler manufacturers this morning by e-mail, saying, “Do you think it’s wise to mention the true cost of importing coal?” I think it is wise; it is a moral question for our Government. We have to answer the question: “Are we happy to carry on burning coal that has been produced in that way?” It does not have to be like that. This country was like that. In the 1930s, a miner was killed every six hours in this country, but at the height of the mining industry in the 1970s and 80s, the numbers were down almost into single figures. Yes, mining will always be a dangerous occupation and people realise that, but with proper investment and technology it can be made much safer in every sense. That is the reality.
David Taylor: Does my hon. Friend recognise that the international markets are deaf to the cries of Chinese widows and Ukrainian orphans? All they look at is the imported cost per tonne, which has varied between £40, approximately, and £150 a tonne in recent years. UK coal mines need a price of about £50 a tonne even to give a moderate profit in respect of operations. How do we bridge that gap?
Mr. Anderson: Should we try to bridge that gap? Should we be dictated to by companies that say that life is cheap? The last time I was in this Chamber, a number of colleagues were talking about the scandal of asbestos. This is exactly the same argument. We could have carried on using asbestos and we could have accepted that people kept getting killed. But we should not do that. We are a civilised nation and we should not be taking coal and getting it cheap from people who are exploiting others and letting them die. It is out of order.
People might say, “If we do not use coal from Russia and China, where are we going to get it from? We might carry on getting it from Colombia, where it is produced with child labour.” However, we could get it from this country. I want to read directly from a note that was prepared for my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton) who was going to address a miners’ conference last year. He had asked for a brief on nuclear potential, which I shall read word for word:
“In 2006, the Coal Authority estimated that there were more than 600 million tonnes of coal in established and accessible UK reserves. Importantly, in British Coal’s 1992 annual report, it estimated that 190 billion tonnes of coal lay underneath the UK, of which 45 billion tonnes could be extracted using the then known techniques. Of course, a lot of progress has been made since. British Coal estimated that the pits then open—before the 1992 closures—had 1.1 billion tonnes in classified reserves that could be economically extracted. To put those estimates in context, total UK coal output between 1853 and 2006 was only 22.7 billion tonnes. That gives us some sense of what is left now—even after the whole industrial revolution and two world wars. Some 22.7 billion tonnes has been used since 1853, and the estimate is that 190 billion tonnes of coal lies underneath the UK”.
That is not Arthur Scargill or the National Union of Mineworkers speaking, but the Department responsible for the coal industry in this country.
Mr. Cash: I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind my mentioning the fact that that is precisely why, in 1992, I was one of only four Conservative Members who voted against the pit closures. That represents the problem that we now have to face in terms of our ability to use that coal to secure our own country’s future.
Mr. Anderson: I accept that the hon. Gentleman took the correct decision at that time. Sadly, overall we did not. Everybody who was involved at the time accepted the fact that we were closing mines that were potentially serious competitors, going forward. Those mines should have been protected.
It has been estimated that in the last 40 years in the north-east alone more than 500 million tonnes of coal has been sterilised by premature closures. Nationally, that figure is well in excess of 1 billion tonnes. That figure is for coal at less than 800 m deep, which is easily worked with today’s technology.
Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this excellent Adjournment debate. I am sure that he is aware of the Welsh Affairs Committee report on energy, in which there is a strong recommendation that endorses all the points that he makes, particularly in relation to carbon capture technology. The report emphasises that to exploit this coal we need to invest not only in carbon capture technology, but in skills, including higher-level skills, and mining degrees. Has he undertaken any survey of what is available in terms of skills training across the UK and would he endorse my view that it is underdeveloped and needs to be focused on, particularly by the UK Government and the devolved Administrations?
Mr. Anderson: That is a key question. The average age of miners in this country is 49 and the skills will be lost when they go. We have raised that issue with the Secretary of State and he is clear that, if we are going to have a mining industry, we have to look at the skills level. The truth is that the National Coal Board had some of the best training facilities anywhere in the world, which led to our having the safest, most technologically advanced coal industry in the world, as I said earlier. That is a major issue, whatever we choose to do.
We cannot close the energy gap without coal, wherever we get it from, and we must burn coal more cleanly, which means investing in carbon capture and storage. There is, as was mentioned earlier, a proposed
demonstration project out for tender. But everyone in the industry who I speak to is saying, “When’s it going to happen and will it be enough? Is it going to be big enough.” One demonstration project will not show the way. We must get on as quickly as possible with demonstration projects. We should also give further support, particularly, as I have mentioned, to some of the initiatives in the north-east and certainly the positive one advanced by Yorkshire Forward, linking with Hatfield colliery in the Secretary of State’s constituency, which will allow the infrastructure that is already in place to bring oil and gas out of the North sea to be used to take carbon back out and store it under the North sea. We can lead the world on this if we get our act together; if we do not, we will be left behind.
Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD): I fully endorse what the hon. Gentleman says. A delegation from California that leads on these issues in the United States is in the UK and Brussels this week. I asked the delegates expressly whether the technology is available to develop the carbon capture and storage that they need and we need. They were clear that it is not about a lack of technology, but is a question of will: being willing to have the finance in the right place and having the priorities right.
Mr. Anderson: The hon. Gentleman is correct. Everybody accepts that the technology will work. However, it has not been tested on the scale that we need. It all comes back to a discussion that we had before about where the investment is coming from. A private stakeholder in BP would probably say, “I don’t want you investing in clean coal and carbon capture. I want you to go out and exploit some more Chinese miners or get some cheap gas from somewhere else in the world and we will drag it round the world in tankers.” But as serious, legitimate people who are worried about the impact on our country in terms of stability, security, jobs and climate, we must say, “Sorry, but these things do not add up.” We must say to the investors that we as a Government will play our part, and we will not ask but insist that they do what is necessary, or we will not work with them.
Mr. Cash: Proposals for wind turbines in my constituency are complete rubbish. Vast subsidies are available, but Professor Dieter Helm and even Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the former Prime Minister, say that wind turbines do not work well onshore. Money is being pumped into those ridiculous proposals, which will achieve nothing, when we could be putting it into the extremely important area that the hon. Gentleman is discussing in his very good speech.
Mr. Anderson: I do not accept that wind turbines will do no good. I believe that they will not do as much good as some people preach. The huge carbon footprint involved in building and maintaining them is ignored, and that will probably be even worse with offshore turbines, but that does not mean that we should turn our back on them—
Mr. Cash: I was talking about onshore turbines.
Mr. Anderson: Neither onshore nor offshore wind turbines are the panacea that some people claim. My clear argument is that there is a key role for coal, but one process should not be set against another; they should all be used together.
We should exploit our reserves, including those in the vale of Belvoir, Margam in south Wales, south-west Scotland, and other proven areas throughout the country. I mentioned the reserves off the North sea coast and—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) will pick this up—the Minister is aware of the trade unions’ request to help them to move strategically from Welbeck colliery to Harworth colliery to access 40 million tonnes of coal, and to keep hundreds of men in work. My understanding is that the current position of the Department of Energy and Climate Change is that it cannot get involved because of European legislation. I am sorry, but we must get involved and we must provide support.
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