Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, I rise very briefly, first to offer Green support for the two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I have just one point to add to our discussion of biomass. The Baroness, Lady Young, referred to the issue of using land that might be used for food production to produce biomass for energy. There is also a point about waste biomass. We talk about it as waste, but one thing we desperately need to do is store more carbon in our soil, and that is an alternative use of things that are being described as waste. It may not surprise your Lordships’ House that I will speak against both the carbon capture and storage and the nuclear amendments in this group. I will be very brief, but I want to add a couple of factual points and respond to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about why anyone would be against CCS. I point to SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3 in Canada, which, after nine years and $1 billion, now has a capture rate for carbon dioxide of 57%, although it was built with the promise of 90% capture. That is what has happened in a number of projects around the world which have simply failed to match up to delivery. I compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, for acknowledging the report from the Public Accounts Committee. This is a group with no particular horse in this race that has looked objectively at the Government’s plans and expressed great concern about the risk. One thing that the Public Accounts Committee rightly points out is that scientific evidence recently is showing that producing liquid fossil gas, which is planned to be used to run several CCUS projects, actually leads to the release of more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than had been thought and so is less “green” than has been claimed. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, said, “Well, we don’t want to increase consumer bills”. The Public Accounts Committee notes that three-quarters of the almost £22 billion is envisaged to come from levies on consumers. That is where the funding is expected to come from. Just very briefly on the nuclear points, I note that we are now up to £130 billion for clearing up old nuclear, Hinkley Point C is running behind time and well over budget and there is great concern about the £40 billion Sizewell C plans. I am sure that noble Lords will want to come back by citing small modular reactors as a response to this. I will just note that the Government on 6 February put out a press release headed “Government rips up rules to fire-up nuclear power”—rather Trumpian sounding, I think. Noble Lords might want to consider: do you actually want a small modular reactor on your doorstep or in your back yard?