Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 91. My noble friend Lady Liddell is not able to be with us today, so I have taken on the mantle of championing carbon capture, usage and storage. Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in his place, I hasten to add that I equally would champion the benefits of hydrogen in the future; he has spent the last year telling the House why it is so important. CCUS, as it is known, is a technology aimed at capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial processes, power plants and other sources. It prevents them entering the atmosphere. The captured CO₂ can be reused in various industrial applications or stored permanently in geological formations deep underground. The CO₂ can then be monitored to make sure it is stored securely. This is a great opportunity for the UK to lead on technology development, and our resource of the North Sea offers huge potential opportunities to store carbon from other countries in Europe. I am convinced that CCUS is safe. It clearly contributes to a low-carbon society and offers great opportunities for growth in our country. The UK is home to seven major industrial clusters, which produce 50% of all UK industry emissions. The Government, quite rightly, are supporting development of CCUS in those clusters. Deployment in the first two of those clusters is called track 1. The first two clusters were chosen by a process called phase 1, launched in 2021. They are HyNet, in the north-west of England and north Wales, and the East Coast Cluster in Teesside. In October last year, this Government announced that they had made available £21.7 billion in funding for the first CCUS projects in the UK. Looking at the timescale, I recognise that the last Government were very supportive of CCUS as well. We are at a pivotal moment. The first carbon capture projects in the UK have reached financial close, and the Government are clearly making strong commitments to support deployment across the industrial heartlands, but progress is at risk from outdated or inconsistent planning rules. At present, the treatment of certain CO₂ infrastructure, especially short spur pipelines and capture plants, is ambiguous under the current system. As an example, projects under 10 miles in length do not fall within the nationally significant infrastructure project regime, despite being essential components of major decarbonisation efforts. There are also legacy legal barriers, such as the requirement for special parliamentary procedures under the Pipe-Lines Act 1962 for compulsory purchase of land related to CO₂ pipelines. This process is not required for other comparable infrastructure and risks introducing unnecessary delay. My two focused amendments seek to ensure that CO₂ capture plants and shorter spur pipelines are designated as nationally significant infrastructure projects under the 2008 Act, and to remove the need for special parliamentary procedure under the Pipe-Lines Act where it applies to CCUS infrastructure. These are very limited but important changes. As the spirit of this legislation—despite much of the debate we have seen so far—is about growing our economy and making it easy to develop infrastructure, I very much hope that my noble friend will agree to have a look at this. I beg to move.