My Lords, my noble friend may be aware of two projects that we are funding—one at Peterhead and one at White Rose. They will become the world’s first commercial-scale gas CCS projects.
They are still being developed. If my noble friend will allow, I will give him a fuller response. We are demonstrating that we are leading in the world with CCS. Investing £1 billion shows our seriousness about taking CCS forward.
I shall continue with the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. She referred to the carbon price floor, saying that there was a projection and a sort of wish list that it would rise. We all know that the EU ETS has to be reformed properly. None of us expected the carbon price to fall as much as it did. However, we are where we are with it. I was at a European Council meeting a couple of weeks ago where there was broad agreement that we needed to look at reforming the EU ETS to make sure that it better reflects its participatory role in ensuring that countries that do not have an extreme tendency to reduce their carbon footprints will be encouraged to do so. There is broad agreement that it has to be reformed. That will play a large part in how we respond to the discussion around the carbon price floor.
Another important point is that we must remain competitive. It has always been key that as a country we should not out-compete ourselves by driving ourselves to reduce carbon emissions at a pace while others use them to be more competitive. We need to reach a fine balance, and it is important that in pushing for reform we ensure that the measures we take, internally and domestically, give great examples for others to follow. That is my response to the noble Baroness.