To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what estimate he has made of the price per unit of carbon above which energy companies would have sufficient incentive to retrofit power plants with carbon capture and storage technology by (a) 2010, (b) 2015 and (c) 2020. (243539)

Modelling undertaken by DECC suggests that, when commercially available, the incentive required to install CCS, either as retrofit or on new power stations, is a carbon price of €40-60/tCO₂, although there is significant uncertainty surrounding this range. The commercial availability of CCS is not expected to be achieved before 2020 following successful full-scale demonstration.

Retrofitting carbon capture and storage in 2010 or 2015 would mean deploying the technology before it had been demonstrated at full-scale, and therefore the cost and performance of the technology would be uncertain. Moreover, energy companies are likely to require a significant risk premium for investing in unproven technology.