Starmer's £22 Billion Carbon Capture Gamble is a 'Waste of Money and Helps Polluting Sectors Avoid Changing How They Operate'
It is a fantasy to think that we can use carbon capture to avoid making the systemic changes needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves capturing carbon dioxide at emission sources like power stations and industrial plants, transporting and storing it underground, has been promoted by fossil fuel companies for decades for a reason.
There would be no need to decarbonise our entire economy and run our lives on clean renewable energy if we could keep burning oil and gas while stopping the resulting emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Related reading: Drax to 'Begin one of the Most Expensive Energy Projects in the World - And UK Public Will Pay Three Times Over'
But despite decades of hype, CCS hasn't been successfully delivered at anything beyond the smallest scale and has a long history of failed projects. It's also an expensive technology, and even if it works as claimed, it would pile additional costs onto projects.
We know that to tackle the climate crisis, our most urgent task is to end the use of fossil fuels and switch our economy to clean renewable electricity. What we don't need is anything that slows down this process or locks us into ongoing reliance on fossil fuels - particularly while making them even more expensive and expecting the public to pay up.
This is why the new Government's announcement last week of an astonishing £22 billion investment in CCS is so worrying. This is a huge amount of public money to be handed over to industries to essentially allow them to keep burning gas, and to be gambled on the success of an unproven and risky technology that has so far failed to deliver.
Despite what the Prime Minister has claimed, it's not finger wagging or eco-extremism to want public money for decarbonisation to be spent on things that actually work and will cut emissions.
Related reading: Why the North Sea Oil Industry's Reaction to the Government's Windfall Tax Doesn't add up
This £22 billion was originally pitched as providing support for sectors which are more difficult to directly decarbonise (by running them on electricity rather than gas), such as cement and glass production.
But actually, even these sectors could transition to using electric furnaces. If we're going to spend huge amounts of taxpayers' money on this it would be more effective to just get on with electrification - and the sooner we do, the better.
There are also worrying details that have emerged of what this huge pot of money will be spent on. It isn't going to the industries which are hardest to decarbonise, but sectors which are very easy, and much cheaper, to directly electrify: a hydrogen production facility, a gas power plant and a waste to energy plant. This just doesn't make sense for our economy or our climate.
Related reading: Government Accused of Investing in Hydrogen Infrastructure That 'Doesn't Work, Makes no Sense and Isn't a Green Solution'
To have any positive role for the climate, hydrogen production should be directly green anyway and powered by renewable energy, and gas power plants should be shut down and replaced with renewables, alongside energy storage and balancing.
After years of soaring energy bills caused by fluctuations in gas prices, the last thing the public needs is to be stuck on gas power, with incredibly expensive and unproven CCS added on to further increase costs.
The numbers on job creation also don't stack up. The Chancellor has suggested that 4,000 jobs will be created by the investment but, at £22 billion, this would amount to approximately £5.5 million per job. This just doesn't represent value for the taxpayer or for the climate.
Rather than waste taxpayers' money on a technology that will drag out our reliance on dirty, polluting, and expensive fossil fuels, we should be investing in economy-wide electrification and increasing our renewable energy supply.
Related reading: New Coal, Oil a
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), which involves capturing carbon dioxide at emission sources like power stations and industrial plants, transporting and storing it underground, has been promoted by fossil fuel companies for decades for a reason.
There would be no need to decarbonise our entire economy and run our lives on clean renewable energy if we could keep burning oil and gas while stopping the resulting emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Related reading: Drax to 'Begin one of the Most Expensive Energy Projects in the World - And UK Public Will Pay Three Times Over'
But despite decades of hype, CCS hasn't been successfully delivered at anything beyond the smallest scale and has a long history of failed projects. It's also an expensive technology, and even if it works as claimed, it would pile additional costs onto projects.
We know that to tackle the climate crisis, our most urgent task is to end the use of fossil fuels and switch our economy to clean renewable electricity. What we don't need is anything that slows down this process or locks us into ongoing reliance on fossil fuels - particularly while making them even more expensive and expecting the public to pay up.
This is why the new Government's announcement last week of an astonishing £22 billion investment in CCS is so worrying. This is a huge amount of public money to be handed over to industries to essentially allow them to keep burning gas, and to be gambled on the success of an unproven and risky technology that has so far failed to deliver.
Despite what the Prime Minister has claimed, it's not finger wagging or eco-extremism to want public money for decarbonisation to be spent on things that actually work and will cut emissions.
Related reading: Why the North Sea Oil Industry's Reaction to the Government's Windfall Tax Doesn't add up
This £22 billion was originally pitched as providing support for sectors which are more difficult to directly decarbonise (by running them on electricity rather than gas), such as cement and glass production.
But actually, even these sectors could transition to using electric furnaces. If we're going to spend huge amounts of taxpayers' money on this it would be more effective to just get on with electrification - and the sooner we do, the better.
There are also worrying details that have emerged of what this huge pot of money will be spent on. It isn't going to the industries which are hardest to decarbonise, but sectors which are very easy, and much cheaper, to directly electrify: a hydrogen production facility, a gas power plant and a waste to energy plant. This just doesn't make sense for our economy or our climate.
Related reading: Government Accused of Investing in Hydrogen Infrastructure That 'Doesn't Work, Makes no Sense and Isn't a Green Solution'
To have any positive role for the climate, hydrogen production should be directly green anyway and powered by renewable energy, and gas power plants should be shut down and replaced with renewables, alongside energy storage and balancing.
After years of soaring energy bills caused by fluctuations in gas prices, the last thing the public needs is to be stuck on gas power, with incredibly expensive and unproven CCS added on to further increase costs.
The numbers on job creation also don't stack up. The Chancellor has suggested that 4,000 jobs will be created by the investment but, at £22 billion, this would amount to approximately £5.5 million per job. This just doesn't represent value for the taxpayer or for the climate.
Rather than waste taxpayers' money on a technology that will drag out our reliance on dirty, polluting, and expensive fossil fuels, we should be investing in economy-wide electrification and increasing our renewable energy supply.
Related reading: New Coal, Oil a
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