§ Motion made, and Question proposed That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]
12.16 am§ Mr. David Penhaligon (Truro)It gives me considerable pleasure to be able to raise Cornwall's hot rock project on the Floor of the House and to give the opportunity to the Minister to explain the Government's position, and perhaps I can guide his response with one or two questions and observations as we go on.
The basic theory of Cornwall's hot rock project is not new to many hon. Members who have followed this with any interest. Anybody who has gone down South Crofty mine will be more than aware that the rocks in Cornwall are very hot even at moderate depths. That has been well known for a long time, and it has caused some difficulty with the mining industry. The concept is that if it was possible to drill parrallel holes to a substantial depth and it was then possible to break up the rock between the bottom of those two holes and put cold water down one hole it may be possible to get hot water, indeed steam, out of the other. That is the theory and the background, and much work has gone on in that over the past decade.
By chance I had some remote connection with the origins of that. I used to work for a company in Camborne called Compair in its research and development department back in 1973, when that company, together with the local school of mines and a small company locally called Penryn Granite did a few tests using the equipment that was then available to monitor the increase of rock temperature as deeper holes were drilled.
In 1976 the Science Research Council gave the project some money and assistance. In 1977 the European Commission became involved, with much local support. Compair, my old company, and a company called Pneu-o-plant, run by a friend of mine, Mr. Williams, all put a great deal of energy and effort into it out a personal interest that in the long run this was something of above average interest.
In 1978 the Department of Energy became involved, a little slow for some of our tastes, with a six-year project and then the real work on this concept started. It is fair to say that difficulties were experienced in the early days. There was no great problem in drilling the holes. That has been done elsewhere and satisfactorily on that site. The cracking of the rock at those depths was a new concept and, in the early stages, it is fair to say that when the rocks cracked, they cracked in the wrong direction. When the cold water was put down the hole, far too large a percentage of the water just disappeared.
A rethink of the whole process, and a discovery that the problem was that the pumping was being carried out at too high a pressure led the project to drill deeper and pump at a lower pressure. Since then tremendous results have been achieved. The holes are now 2,000 m deep, and some 75 per cent. of the water is recovered. The circulation has been going on for some 7,000 hours and the temperature of the rock face, which is just short of 100 deg. C, shows no sign of falling. That is all good. It is a tremendous achievement. It is all new technology. There is no book to which the engineers could go to seek answers to the problems with which they were faced.
So far so good, but further questions remain. The general belief is that rock of 200 deg. C needs to be found. 885 before it is likely that we can produce hot water and steam in the quantities and at the pressure and temperature required to generate electricity. The view of all the geologists is that that temperature is available at 6,000 m. The questions that I ask the Minister will revolve around the reason why the Government have not given the go ahead to drill the deeper holes.
There are technical question marks. I cannot say that there are problems because as yet we do not know. For example, water at that temperature and pressure has a quarter of the viscosity that it has at normal temperature and pressure. There is a possibility that the flow will become turbulent. If it does, the heat transfer characteristics from the rock to the water, which is extremely important, may be interfered with. It is the view of the scientists and those who have studied the matter that we shall find out only by trying. We are virtually at that point.
Some 18 months ago, the Government started on an amazing charade. First it was suggested that the project should be privatised. Dr. Tony Batchelor, who I think all would admit is the main driving force behind the project, managed to find someone who would allow it to be privatised. It was American money. The Government eventually turned it down. Whether it was because it was not enough money, or because it was American—all that was in the middle of the Westland affair—we know not. It does not make a tremendous difference. The fact is that the Government killed that aspect.
Then we started the saga of the chief scientist's report. We understand that the first draft suggested that the project would produce electricity that was as cheap as coal. The report was then redrafted. The second draft suggested that the electricity might be a great deal more expensive than coal. We then had the Russian tragedy. At that point the report went off for the third drafting. That drafting is more strongly in favour of the project than the first. The Minister will know that I tabled some questions and was promised that the report would be published. I would appreciate an idea of when that will be.
What is certain is that the Government, throughout the negotiations, allowed the project to run within days or at least weeks of the redundancy notices being handed out. The team of experts was on the verge of breaking up. We are talking about very high technology.
I have had a few Adjournment debates in my time. but I have never known a situation so transformed between the time when I obtained the Adjournment debate and reaching the opportunity to deliver my speech. Between those two dates, the Government announced that they are to fund the project for another two years — a sum of over £5.75 million is to be provided, and £1 million for something extra, which is unspecified.
Will the Minister confirm what he thinks the engineers and scientists are to do with that sum? I understand that they will be asked to continue the circulation tests to make sure that the temperature profile is maintained. I have no complaint about that. They will be asked to develop tools that are capable of drilling into higher temperature rock, which will be required at deeper depths. I have no complaint about that. Some money will be provided for shallow drilling to check the temperature profile in other parts of my county, to see whether there are other more attractive sites. I have no real complaint about that, either. 886 My real complaint is that all adds up to a sum considerably less than what the engineers had hoped for. They will not be able to answer the fundamental question unless the Government have the courage to finance the 6,000 m hole. That is what is required. We would not expect the go-ahead to be open-ended, with no review points or analysis of what happens at various stages. However, until the go-ahead is given for the 6,000 m hole, we will not be able to answer the questions.
I understand that the tranche of money is intended to cover two years. The scientists tell me that they will be able to tell whether the 6,000 m hole is worth drilling a long time before that two year period elapses. We need to have information from the Government as to when a decision is to be taken on the hole and whether a review relative to that is planned before the two years is up? What criteria will the Minister use to judge whether that prospect is viable?
It may be that if the hole is drilled and is a success, the Government might not wish to be involved in building the electricity unit. I have no real complaints about that. If a commercial proposition can be involved, I would wish the commercial firm good luck. However, can the Minister say whether any private companies are involved at this stage or whether he expects any to become more involved as time passes?
We want the go-ahead for the 6,000 m hole with the 200 deg C rock. If that is as successful as the project has been so far—and it is worth recalling and placing on the record that the scientists have made promises and have delivered the goods—what must they do to get the go-ahead for the 6,000 m hole? There is a view that if the Government do not finance it, the hole will not be drilled. However, we seeking answers to questions that will only be answered by carrying out the research. Research is cheap in this area relative to the quantities of energy that may well be produced. It is worth recalling that there are some 6,000 million tonnes of coal equivalent within the south west basin. Even a small percentage of that will be worth recovering.
The scientists want answers to those questions and I am delighted to have been able to give the Minister the opportunity to clarify these matters. I know that the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Mudd) wishes to ask some questions, so I will finish my remarks.
§ Mr. David Mudd (Falmouth and Camborne)I would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon) on his success in securing the debate and I am especially grateful that he has allowed me the opportunity to speak. Although the hon. Gentleman lays claim to the entire county of Cornwall as his county, the constituency in which the project is carried out is exclusively mine. I can therefore speak from a differenct point of view from the hon. Member for Truro, as I know more about the facts and a little less of the political folklore that it has generated during the past five or six years.
The hon. Gentleman was rather scathing in his suggestion that the Department of Energy has been less than enthusiastic in its support for the project. I can set the hon. Gentleman's mind at rest and tell him the facts which he could easily have obtained had he so wished. Far from being reluctant to give government support, since 1980 the Department of Energy has provided £20 million of 887 taxpayers' investment even before the £5.75 million announced as recently as Thursday of last week to see the project through the next two critical years.
The hon. Gentleman thought that the Department of Energy was dragging its heals. Perhaps he is unaware that I had the honour of pressing the Department to make its decision over the past three months and that that decision was partly associated with my effirts to obtain that early announcement.
I welcome the fact the. Camborne School of Mines has been awarded a contract and that it will be using Geoscience Ltd. as its sub-contractors. Not only does that guarantee a continuity of exploration, development and exploitation but it suggests that a continued public sector participation rather than a move to the private sector at this stage, will continue to enhance the inter-change of technical knowledge from various competing projects in Germany, Sweden and California. Had the Commercial sector been brought in inopportunely at this stage, it would have inhibited the all important exchanges of knowledge which are so vital to the project worldwide.
Moreover, the work to be carried out within the new contract period to the end of September 1988 should allay one of the hon. Gentleman's fears, namely, the complete dissipation of the highly professional and expert work team. They now know that they have the guarantees to be able to work together to arrive at all important decisions about what ultimately might be capable of commercial exploitation.
It is right that the next two years should be seen as the preliminary years of an eight-year programme which could lead to the construction and operation of a power plant in south-west England. That will be a commercial decision and the next two years, which are now firmly guaranteed by the announcement on Thursday, were never in doubt. It was never considered that that support would be withdrawn. The announcement will provide the necessary time for industrial concerns to consider a concerted approach to the development of a pilot plant. It will also give the important and valuable techology the chance to prove itself.
I hope that details of continued Government support will be made at the latest half way through this new contract period, since I certainly share the hon. Gentleman's view that there can be no denying that delay and prevarication hits morale, causes alarm among those who work on the project and, understandably, leads to the danger of various experts being seduced by private corporations, offering them long-term prospects.
The two years guaranteed in Thursday's announcement must be used to encourage industrial interest to exploit the technology and to take some of the risks associated with research; to help smooth the transition from full Government support to commercial operation; and to make easier the transition from research to development without any significant extra demands on taxpayers.
I welcome the partnership of Camborne School of Mines with Geoscience Ltd. in what is now internationally regarded as one of Britain's most promising renewable energy projects. I am proud that in Cornwall, where so much traditional industry and expertise is under threat, my constituency has become the scene of one of the world's most active research programmes into using natural sources for the production of much-needed energy.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Hunt)First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Penhaligon) on securing the debate tonight and thank him for opening it. I welcome his interest in one of the promising renewable energy sources that the Government are examining as part of their renewable energy research and development programme. I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Mudd) has been able to contribute to the debate, because he has put the record straight on some important points. My hon. Friend is a great lobbyist on behalf of the hot dry rocks project in his constituency.
I am also delighted to see in his place my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris). In recent months both my hon. Friends have been pressing me hard on behalf of the project to make the announcement that I was able to make on Thursday. I am sorry I could not make it earlier, but I made it at the earliest possible opportunity.
When the House debated the alternative sources of energy on 25 October 1985 I stressed that in many cases we were working on the frontiers of science to establish the renewable technologies firmly in our energy future. In many respects our geothermal hot dry rock work is in the vanguard of this technological advance.
Since 1980 we have been engaged in one of the most active research programmes worldwide into the possibility of obtaining energy from hot dry rocks beneath the earth's surface. We have invested £20 million in this programme. The prospects are encouraging and for that reason we announced last Thursday that a further £6.85 million will go into this research programme. The major part of this investment will be the extension of the programme carried out by the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall for a further two year's work from October 1986, and it will cost £5.85 million. Other related work will cost a further £1 million.
Our hope is to have a commercial prototype in operation with industrial collaboration by the mid-1990s. The work that we have now commissioned will allow us to make decisions as to what could be capable of commercial exploitation.
The hon. Gentleman may know that I was delighted to have the opportunity of visiting the project last week in the company of my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne. I had the opportunity then of talking to the team directly and I thanked them for their loyalty and the hard work that they have put into the project.
When the hon. Gentleman throws doubt on whether an announcement could now be made to move on to the next stage, I hope that he will accept from me that I raised that issue with the project team, most of whom were at the meeting with me last Thursday. They all agreed that it was not yet possible to move on to that stage. Everybody was resolved in their determination that the two-year extension would enable us as quickly as possible to move on to making a decision about drilling to a deeper depth.
§ Mr. PenhaligonThis is important. Is the Minister clearly saying that the decision to go for the 6,000 m hole can be taken a long time before that two years is up, provided, I accept, that the evidence suggests that that is the logical thing to do?
§ Mr. HuntI can be quite clear with the hon. Gentleman, because I was pressed in the meeting by my hon. Friend 889 the Member for Falmouth and Camborne to make clear exactly what was proposed. I set a target of being in a position to make the decision at some stage next year. I offered to accept a further invitation from my hon. Friend to visit the project in his constituency at an appropriate time next year when I hope that the necessary work will have been completed which will enable us to make a decision on drilling to a deeper depth in good time before the expiry of the two-year period at the end of September 1988.
I want to stress again that the Government are firmly committed to developing and promoting all economic renewable technologies which have potential to make an economic contribution to the United Kingdom's energy supply. While geothermal hot dry rock technology is very much a technology for the 21st century, other technologies that we have developed such as passive solar design and waste derived fuels are economic now and we are actively promoting their take-up in the market place.
Major advances have been made on other technologies and some have real promise of becoming economic in the United Kingdom in the near future. In that respect I am encouraged by the progress that we are making in wind power and the next twelve months will see the completion and commissioning of our horizontal and vertical axis machines on Orkney and at Carmarthen bay.
Since 1979 the Government have spent over £81 million on a comprehensive range of research and development for the renewable technologies, a wise investment given that renewable energy sources have the potential to contribute over 30 million tonnes of coal equivalent per annum to the United Kingdom's energy supply by 2025. No Government have ever had such a positive attitude to wind and tidal energy, to geothermal hot dry rock technology and to renewable sources of energy generally. If the research and development on geothermal hot dry rock is successful and we can move to commercial exploitation then the resource could be significantly increased.
We are currently carrying out a major programme to develop this promising technology at Rosemanowes quarry, which if successful could extract heat from deep impermeable rocks at depths between 4.000 m and 6,000 m.
As the hon. Member for Truro said, the programme started in 1977 and it is designed to realise and to determine the technical and economic viability of hot dry rock systems in the United Kingdom. The possible uses envisaged for hot dry rocks are electricity generation, combined heat and power schemes and the direct use of heat.
At this point I should like to refer to Richard Shock's report. I regret that the hon. Member for Truro made a number of unjust accusations about this report. There has never been any secrecy about it. A report on the economic viability of hot dry rocks was commissioned by my Department last year. The report by Dr. Richard Shock, the chief officer of the chief scientists' group at the energy technology support unit, is in its final draft stages and it is intended that the report should he published as soon as possible. The draft report has been discussed extensively and will take account of comments made by experts in the field, including experts at the Camborne school of mines and Dr. Tony Batchelor. The report examines the economics of hot dry rocks for electricity only, combined 890 heat and power and heat only and is likely to conclude that electricity production is the most attractive option for hot dry rock technology.
The cost of generation is subject to a large number of uncertainties, such as drilling costs and flow in the reservoir, but it is estimated to be 4.5p per kilowatt hour. However, there is a large amount of uncertainty about this figure. The work to be carried out over the next two years will help to eliminate these uncertainties.
As the hon. Member for Truro will know, the main work on the hot dry rock geothermal research has been carried out by the Camborne School of Mines at the site in Cornwall and the research there has reached an interesting stage. The hon. Member for Truro sought to encompass that in his speech and spoke about the intermediate depth system. That has now been established and is currently being developed. Three holes have been drilled in the rock to a maximum depth of about 2.5 km and experiments have been carried out to open up the natural joints in the rock in order to create a series of fractures between the holes. The object is to achieve good circulation of water through the fracture system or reservoir so that we can be sure that if commercial systems are created at between 4 and 6 km, the flow rates will be sufficient for the economic production of electricity. Although the basic idea sounds easy, I can assure the House that the problems in creating such a system are complex.
I am delighted that we have some of the best brains in the world present on this project site in Cornwall. Other countries have hot dry rock projects, but the United Kingdom has established itself as the world leader in this technology. I went to see the project last week and I was delighted to hear that the Camborne team has now achieved the highest circulation rates in the world to date. It did that approximately four weeks ago. The circulation rate is about 30 litres per second.
§ Mr. PenhaligonIf what the Minister has just said are the best brains in the world in this technology reach the conclusion some time before the two years are up that now is the time to start drilling the 6 km holes, will he give the go ahead and finance that drilling before the two years are up?
§ Mr. HuntI have already made absolutely clear and I make it clear again that I have set the team a target, which it has readily accepted, that it should place my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in a position next year to make a major decision. Everyone agrees that further work must be done first in order to eliminate the uncertainty. At the meeting I attended last week, nobody expected me to go further than that. When I visited the site in Cornwall at the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne for the first time in November 1984, and again last week, I was most impressed by the techniques developed by the research team there and the standard of research carried out.
In a review of renewable energy research and development in 1985, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's advisory council on research and development, ACORD, endorsed hot, dry rock geothermal energy as a "promising but uncertain" renewable technology. ACORD share my view about the high standards of research achieved by the Camborne team. ACORD recommended that the work in Cornwall should continue, and I fully support this view.
891 The extension of the work for a further two years beyond October 1986 will enable the complex problems of reservoir formation and the extent of the geothermal resource to be fully understood. This will, if successful, enable us to demonstrate the technical and economic case for a new programme at greater depth, leading to the commercialisation of hot dry rock technology. That is the assurance that my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne has constantly sought from me. I have told him many times that there was never any question of terminating the project at this stage. The question was how best we could carry it through to the next stage. The work will continue, with the Camborne School of Mines in the lead. I am anxious to see that every opportunity is given to United Kingdom industry to become involved in the technology so that eventual commercialisation can take place in the United Kingdom economy. A major aim of the two-year extension will, therefore, he to develop a suitable broad based institutional structure for the project, and United Kingdom companies are being encouraged to participate.
It is also essential that we continue to collaborate in hot dry rock research internationally, and I am pleased that the European Community has so far contributed about £2 million to the work in Cornwall and a further £1 million is expected. The other major project on hot dry rocks is being carried out near Los Alamos in the United States and there is close collaboration technically between the Camborne school of mines and the Los Alamos team. Collaboration is also under way with a joint French-West German project at Soultz, which involves the drilling of a 892 1 km deep hole to provide a facility to develop hot dry rock techniques. That project is also partly funded by the European Community. The possibility of collaboration on hot dry rocks research with Sweden is also currently being discussed.
The longer-term aim of the United Kingdom programme is to have a commercial protoype in operation at about 6 kilometres depth in collaboration with suitable commercial companies by about the mid-1990s. This depends, however, on whether the technical targets at the present depth of 2,000 m can be fully achieved, and whether it can be shown that hot dry rock technology has sound prospects for commercial viability.
The next two years will be an important proving time for the technology. The project will be subject to review during that period so that all options for the future can be fully considered. I hope that if the review of the longer-term technical and economic prospects for the technology is favourable, a case can be made for a new programme of work at 6 km leading to a commercial prototype.
I am sure that the House wishes the Camborne team every success in achieving the necessary technical targets that we have now set for the programme. The Government will continue to back the most promising technologies and promote further technological advance wherever necessary to encourage the use of renewable energy sources. Our commitment to geothermal hot dry rock is a clear statement of that intent.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes to One o'clock.