Officials today proposed a new energy bill for the forthcoming session of Parliament aimed at helping the UK lead the world in breakthrough clean-coal technology.

The bill would enable the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to introduce a financial mechanism to fund up to four commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration plants. The first of these could be feeding cleaner energy into the grid by the middle of the next decade.

The new proposal follows the publication on 17 June of the Government’s consultation document — “A framework for the development of clean coal” — that sets out how the Government proposes to reconcile the need to curb emissions of carbon from future coal-fired power stations with the need to maintain a secure diverse energy mix. The consultation also contains proposals for the detailed design of the financial support mechanism that will be introduced through the energy bill.

“We’re moving fast on CCS,” said Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband. “It’s a critical technology in the fight against climate change and I want the UK to lead the world with it. This bill is about providing the finance needed for the construction of commercial-scale demonstration plants.”

He continued, “Through CCS we can develop a new high-tech industrial sector, we can maintain a diverse energy mix and, once deployed around the world, make a major contribution to the fight against climate change.”

The proposed energy bill was announced today in “Building Britain’s Future,” published by the Prime Minister, which outlines the Government’s priorities and its draft legislative programme. This is now open for consultation before being finalised in the Queen’s Speech in the autumn.

In July, Miliband and Cabinet colleagues will set out a comprehensive strategy on energy and climate change to meet the UK’s carbon budgets, aimed at cutting emissions by more than a third by 2020 and at least 80 per cent by 2050.  Central to this will be shifting the UK’s electricity mix to low carbon — based around new nuclear power stations, a massive expansion of renewables and clean-coal technology such as CCS.

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