Clause 21
Energy Bill
4:00 pm
Malcolm Wicks (Minister of State (Energy), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Croydon North, Labour)
The hon. Lady always expects me to predict the detailed future for an emerging technology. As I said this morning, we are only into the first pages of chapter one on this technology and I cannot predict the footnotes for chapter six. I am sorry, but I do not know the answer. I guess that it might vary from licence to licence and from store to store but until we get into greater detail and consultation, I will not have the answer to that. Someone else may, however, and if I change my mind about it, I will let members of the Committee know. It will be judged on its merits once it reaches a stable state, and whether that stable state might vary because of the geology is only an assumption. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for asking that question.
I now turn to the specifics of clause 21. As I began outlining this morning, the clause makes it an offence to carry on carbon dioxide storage activities without a licence, and it sets maximum penalties for an offence committed under the clause. The purpose of the clause is to ensure that any carbon dioxide storage related operations are carried out by appropriately licensed operators, thus minimising the potential negative effects on the environment, health and safety or other uses of the sea. Currently, the deposition of substances in the marine environment, including the sea bed, is governed by provisions in part 2 of the Food and Environmental Protection Act 1985. In the clause, we have sought to achieve consistency with the penalty arrangements that would have applied had the licences been issued under that Act. However, the provisions in the clause ensure that lower penalties will apply to exploring or building installations for the purposes of exploration without a licence, as the environmental risks associated with such activities are lower than those associated with storage.
We had a major debate on CCS this morning, and the next few clauses—up to clause 26 or so, I think—are in many ways similar to the ones that we discussed on gas storage. It is up to the Committee whether to debate them, but I intend to move some of them formally. I give early notice of that in case others would like a debate on them.