CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE AND DEMAND RATIONING

That this House recognises that the Government's proposal for new coal-fired power stations trialling a degree of carbon capture and storage (CCS), potentially fully retrofitted by 2025, would be a significant improvement in terms of rules, but would still involve a new wave of largely uncaptured emissions; notes that the Committee on Climate Change has recommended that no coal-fired plant should operate without full CCS by 2025; further notes Scottish Power's call for CCS to be trialled via support for retrofits to existing plant; urges the Government to consider instead addressing the energy gap and fuel poverty concerns largely via a demand rationing-type approach, for example introducing a tax-free allowance for personal electricity use, with tax take concentrated on the excess, facilitated by the rollout of smart meters; further notes that Vaclav Smil's calculation that to bury just 10 per cent. of the world's current carbon dioxide emissions via CCS would involve pumping carbon dioxide underground at a faster rate than all current world crude oil extraction; and considers that rationing-type approaches may have more far-reaching abatement potential than CCS, and so to address the energy gap largely via a rationing-type approach, whilst pioneering CCS out of a smaller network of power stations, would set a much more powerful and apposite example to the rest of the world, as well as achieve faster progress in tackling UK emissions.