Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:15 pm on 21 June 2018.
Lord Teverson
Chair, EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, Chair, EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee
6:15,
21 June 2018
My Lords, as this is a separate debate, I declare that I am still a board member of the Marine Management Organisation, as far as I am aware. I was going to start by telling the Minister that I very much support this but I am not sure that that is in line with my noble friend Lord Bruce’s contribution. I am sure we are agreed on this. The industrial emissions directive is generally an excellent piece of legislation. It is intelligent, in that it looks at best practice and varies its requirements according to what is possible and as best practice improves over time. Of course, it replaces the rather obsolete large combustion plant directive.
I have only a couple of questions about this because I welcome it. Coming back to one of my noble friend’s questions about cost, the medium combustion plant directive 2015, which is part of the EU’s clean energy package, says specifically that for new plant the directive applies immediately but for retrofit it does not need to apply until 2025 or 2030, which comes back to my noble friend’s point. My only real question on that is: is that the sort of timescale the Government are looking at in their understandable, correct and—lenient would be the wrong word—intelligent approach to getting these installations right? My other question is one I should know the answer to: what is the enforcing authority on this and how is it enforced—how are emissions measured—offshore? It is fairly straightforward onshore but how is that done offshore?
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