The line on CCS

In the Today programme this morning following reports that China's greenhouse gas emissions have overtaken those of the United States, John Ashton said:

"We need to do a very fast track programme to make [Carbon Capture and Storage] the universal technology standard for burning coal, if we want to carry on burning coal... We are accelerating [work in this field] and European leaders in March at their summit took a momentous decision to try and make Europe the world's fist low carbon economy with CCS as the universal standard for coal and gas by 2020. Now that really is a fast track. At the moment that's an aspiration. We need to deliver it. We are beginning to see how with a plan to build a dozen demonstration plants over the next few years including one in the UK...Gordon Brown mentioned this in the budget and it's in the White Paper [on Energy]. We are still not going fast enough. But we need to do it in collaboration with China, the United States and others because we are all in this together."

[This is my rough transcript; the actual interview can be found here, about 23 minutes in]

This post was updated at 19.00 or 7pm BST