In the last few weeks a number of serious errors have come to light in the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) plan for Net Zero. The CCC plan was published mid-2019 in a document titled ‘Net Zero Technical Report’.
In summary, the CCCs plan for Net Zero is to shift transport and heating from using petrol, diesel and gas to using electricity and then to decarbonise the electricity grid.
To decarbonise the grid, it is assumed that electricity will be generated using nuclear and renewables. During periods when nuclear, wind and solar cannot meet demand, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will be deployed to remove CO2 emissions as the electricity must be generated using gas.
Carbon Capture and Storage is a new and untested technology that has never been deployed at scale anywhere on earth. However, it is clear from the CCC’s report that CCS plays a major roll in achieving Net Zero. As I reported in a previous article, regardless of this being an untested technology, the U.K. only plans to build a quarter of the required capacity to hit Net Zero by 2050 (the plan requires the U.K. to capture and store 176Mt of CO2 annually).
Nevertheless, our Government envisages significant CCS capacity at 50Mt annually. Carbon Capture and Storage involves filtering CO2 from the exhaust produced from gas turbines used to generate electricity, then piping the captured CO2 to plants that compress the gas into a liquid before it is then injected into underground storage areas around the U.K.
Compressed CO2 is currently being commercialised as a way to store energy for use in periods when nuclear and renewables are unavailable. The company Energy Dome has developed a working 4MWh system in Sardinia, Italy. The company says its technology has an energy storage density 10-20 times higher than other compressed air energy storage (CAES) solutions and two-thirds that of liquid air energy storage (LAES).
The CCC’s plan requires vast quantities of CO2 to be compressed and stored under the U.K. Given this potential energy could be released at any time should something go wrong, it seems sensible to consider the safety implications of Carbon Capture and Storage.
Energy Dome has recently raised $11m and is building a larger 100MWh system. Its 100MWh store requires about 2,000 tonnes of CO2. This means the company is expecting to store 0.05MWh of energy per tonne of compressed CO2. Using this energy density, the CCC’s plan to store 176Mt per year will mean 8.8TWh of potential energy is being trapped beneath the U.K. annually. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT or 0.0174TWh. Therefore the energy we will be storing under our feet is equivalent to 505 Hiroshima bombs every year or the energy released by 16 magnitude seven earthquakes per year.
Fracking is currently banned in the U.K. due to the risk of causing earth tremors. The planned Carbon Capture and Storage facilities are of an altogether different magnitude. Fracking can be stopped in an instant if a problem is detected. Obviously, if there is an issue with 505 Hiroshima bombs worth of energy under our feet, we cannot just release this vast amount of trapped energy.
No one knows what the effects may be of creating a whole series of high pressure areas in the earth beneath our feet, it has never been done at this scale.
There are other issues. CO2 is a colourless and odourless gas that is about 1.5 times heavier than air.
In addition to the asphyxiation hazard of CO2 displacing oxygen in the air, the inhalation of elevated concentrations of CO2 can increase the acidity of the blood, triggering adverse effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. A CO2 concentration of around 5% by volume in air may cause headaches, dizziness, increased blood pressure and difficulty breathing within a few minutes. If concentrations above 17% by volume in air are inhaled, this could cause loss of purposeful activity, unconsciousness, convulsions, coma and death within one minute.
The Lake Nyos disaster saw massive release of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon on August 21st 1986.
The 1.6 million tonne cloud of magmatic gas was deadly, and a count of the fatalities indicated that 1,746 people, most from villages by the lake, had been asphyxiated by it, along with some 3,000 cattle and innumerable birds, insects and other animals. The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were.
The CCS plan means vast quantities of CO2 are going to be piped around the U.K. and ultimately injected into the ground. By 2050 we will be dealing with over 110 times the amount of CO2 released in the volcanic event that took place at Lake Nyos, every single year.
Of course to actually achieve Net Zero the CCC state we will need to store 176Mt of CO2 by 2050. That’s 3.5 times more than we have just been discussing.
As the years go by, the risks increase. The Carbon Capture and Storage plan means that every five years we will be pumping just shy of one billion tonnes of CO2 into the earth beneath our feet.
Does that sound like a smart move to you? What will your children and grandchildren think? They’re going to be stuck with this issue for ever.
As any commercial glass house grower will tell you, the plants on earth are currently pretty much starving. During daylight hours glass houses maintain CO2 levels that are double to three times more than our current historically low levels of atmospheric CO2. Plants have evolved for hundreds of millions of years; the fact they are adapted to thrive in an atmosphere with three times our current CO2 levels is a pretty good indicator that CO2 ain’t the problem.
CO2 is fundamental to all life on earth, but as we have seen with the Lake Nyos disaster, it is also capable of taking life if there is enough of it available in one place. Perhaps storing billions of tonnes of the stuff under our feet is just plain stupid, regardless of the reason?
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis will make interesting reading….
I mean…..obviously they’re going to do a risk assessment and cost/benefit analysis….you know…..like they did for the covid lockdowns……..
In 2019 Net Zero was passed without a debate or a vote. No questions were asked about cost or viability. Who in any walk of life does anything as absurd as this? ——–No one in their right mind goes into something not knowing the likely cost or whether it is even possible. Except eco socialist governments spending other peoples money. ———But ofcourse you know that already.
Are they mad?
Yup …. Certifiably Insane.
But still, we pay!
I think we now have to recognise that the baddies in James Bond books are no longer fiction and are out there doing their best to destroy the world, but in such a way as to reserve a safe space for themselves to reside.
And to think they called us the ‘fruitcakes and loonies’ !
Idiocy. In 1974 the same cadre of idiots wanted Nixon to nuke the Arctic to save us from the ice age. Now DARPA et al are launching chems into our atmosphere whilst another group of morons want to bury plant food.
The Dark Ages are Now.
There is no Science in the climate cult. Net Zero Science.
When I was studying A level Geology in 1970 I remember clearly the teacher communicating the popular concern at the time that we were heading for an ice age!
Being in an interglacial, your Geology teacher is correct:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial
But the time scales are much longer than a few decades.
We still are!
Why not Pump this CO2 into a greenhouse and grow some fast growing biomass plants like cannabis then bury them? It should eventually turn into coal (if you buy the fossil fuel theory – see Saturn’s moon Titan )🤷♂️
And speaking of moons, it rains plastic on one of Jupiter’s.
Oh ,that can’t be good for Ganymede sea creatures!
Maybe Greta should go there and protest against plastic rain! Or, just go there!
Time to invest in shares in the moons of Jupiter? Stake your claim now!
A wise idea. I think that commercial greenhouses achieve enhanced CO2 levels by dint of using the exhaust from their gas fired heaters at present. Perhaps the CCS sellers will try to flog tankfuls of it that they’ve captured elsewhere? Of the course, the overall efficiency of it would go down the drain.
I suppose the buried vegetation would begin to decompose, releasing – well, hopefully CO2 but if anaerobic decomposition, it could be methane, with explosive results. It’s not the worst ‘geoengineering’ idea, though.
What is it with our government and their urge to impose under-tested and vastly expensive ‘solutions’ to barely existent ‘problems’?
You could also just release it into the atmosphere, being a trace gas essential for all life and completely non-toxic below a level of several thousand parts per million. Why let cannabis plants have all the fun?
How about growing tomatoes?
We do that already. Though it would increase that ‘evil’, profit. 🙂
In short yes they are totally mad, they make flat earthers look utterly rational. Believing the earth is boiling in an ice age is akin to believing in fairies. These ppl deserve no sympathy at all, they can only expect our utter loathing and total contempt.
This sounds like a great depopulation strategy.
It might be a bit windy up here at times but living on top of a hill now seems like a very good idea 🙂
It would take a special sort of stupid person to agree to this and one of the special sorts of stupid and the one that inked a lot of this into law announced her stepping back from politics yesterday.
it is my belief that Davos is a one world government project review board and the main stake holders go over there with their progress updates and check the monies for services provided in their anonymous Swiss bank accounts.
‘Are they mad?’—Yes. Certifiable.
I’m a layman, but I look at it this way: I need oxygen to keep me alive. Plants produce oxygen as a byproduct of utilising carbon dioxide to feed themselves, so CO2, currently at a near historical low of 415ppm (plants die below 200pmm) is a good thing. Optimal CO2 concentration for maximum plant growth is thought to be around 1,000ppm. Why would any sane person tinker with CO2 levels at all, when 500m years ago, when the earth’s average temperature was 10 degrees C, they varied between 3,000 and 9,000ppm?
Plants do not create O2, they are just part of a cycle.
But CO2 is the building block for plants; no plants = no animals and no Humans, because animals either eat plants or if not, eat the animals that do.
https://www.britannica.com/science/photosynthesis:
Photosynthesis, the process by which green plants and certain other organisms transform light energy into chemical energy. During photosynthesis in green plants, light energy is captured and used to convert water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into oxygen and energy-rich organic compounds.
I seem to remember that nuclear power was demonised because the waste had to be buried underground, and who knows what might happen if some unforeseen geological accident should happen.
What about a Friends of the Earth T-shirt: “Carbon Storage – No Thanks”
In fact stored nuclear waste is safer than stored CO2, the latter kept under pressure can escape back into the atmosphere, the former is fused in glass pellets so cannot escape into the environment.
I wonder how the company plans to prevent all the CO2 leaking away from their storage system? They can’t possibly line the ‘tanks’ (caverns?) with anything that could possibly be impervious to CO2.
CCS seems to me to be a bonkers idea that will never be implemented at any scale. Why not just stop burning wood pellets at Drax and leave the trees in the ground? However, I’m a bit sceptical about the calculations used in the article. Is it valid to base calculations for long term storage on the energy densities employed in a system where the primary purpose is short term energy storage? Wouldn’t a CCS system operate at much lower pressures?
The UK always seems to have to be “world leaders” in every Green absurdity there is. All to achieve what? A tiny drop in global emissions that gets wiped out faster by the rest of the world in a matter of days. Apparently the amount of CO2 we reduced since 2008 was replaced by the rest of the world in only 140 days. It is the case that UK politicians, not just the current government, are determined to push ahead with NET ZERO no matter the cost. ——-I will repeat that— NO MATTER THE COST.—- But the cost to who? The answer is YOU. But even if there is a climate problem why the mad rush when the rest of the world are emitting CO2 like it is going out of fashion? ——The answer to that lies in the Politics. It is the politics of the UN and Sustainable Development. So our own politicians are ignoring the welfare of their own citizens and are going to impoverish them and take away their access to affordable energy to get a little gold star on their lapel from the world government in waiting. —-The current political class are a truly disgusting set of traitors we never had before, and Thatcher will be squirming in her grave at these eco parasites.
It’s 2050, we’ve implemented CCS at great costs to the country. Our industrial base has gone and the agricultural sector is producing a fraction of the food it was 20 years earlier. Food production cannot meet demand because large swathes of land have been rewilded, fertilisers have been banned, tractors can only operate for a couple of hours on a full charge and WW2 style food rationing has returned. Along comes some wealthy businessman, with friends in high places, who made their money from 20 years of government subsidies for CCS, with the solution to our food shortages. Increase agricultural yields by growing all our food in sheds and greeenhouses and pumping them full of the ‘waste’ CO2 that they own to increase yields. Of course their ‘green solution’ (much like that of Drax today) is all smoke and mirrors with little clarity about the actual CO2 cycle. What’s not to like?
Let’s hope that the plan never sees the light of day (pardon the pun) and that the lunacy is exposed for what it is. Injected how and where? In abandoned coal mines? Tin mines? Or does this involve ripping up the countryside and creating huge holes? It sounds as daft and dangerous as Gates’ plan to shield the sun’s rays. All the most ridiculous plans involve some seemingly coke-addled daydream at massive scale like those stupid films about landing on asteroids to blow them up or re-igniting a dying sun. I don’t even want to talk about risk assessments or cost benefit analyses because those give some sort of credence to what is undeniably, certifiably insane. And all because these idiots in the CCC think we are in a climate crisis. No, the only crisis is their inability to use their common sense and reasoning.
“ridiculous plans” ————But remember we have forced ourselves in law to achieve Net Zero. This means jumping through all manner of impossible hoops and spending astronomical sums of money or face criminal prosecution and being sued. We are also heading down the road of imprisoning our own citizens if they fail to implement green absurdity.
Laws can be repealed especially if they are unjust or, as I say, ridiculous. Going along with insanity is insane. If we all end up in prison because we refuse to abide by what is palbably insane then so be it. Remember, varmint, this is not about us and our relative comfort but for those who come after who have no voice yet and no agency. We have to do what is right because of what we already know about the lies and distortion that this whole stinking pile of green manure is based on.
“We have to do what is right” ——-But the “we” cannot just be a few disgruntled contributors to the Daily Sceptic. The problem with getting everyone to go against this eco tyranny is that mainstream media have it in the bag. Most people are way too busy with work and family life to question any aspect of this energy/climate issue. They think that Investigative Journalists on the telly are doing that for them so that when they tune into their 6 O’Clock News they think they are getting an accurate picture of the state of the climate and the green energy solutions necessary to fix the alleged climate crisis. ——–This is why I have been saying on these pages for sometime that DS readers ranting on in this little echo chamber is like trying to hurt a dinosaur with a cocktail stick. —What is really required is mainstream news documentaries like eg “The Great Global Warming Swindle” a documentary by Martin Durkin that first appeared on Channel 4 in 2007. But OFCOM which is basically censorship, prevent that from happening. Fighting the Climate Industrial Complex is Jack versus a Million beanstalks or David versus a whole planet full of Goliaths.
I know that, varmint, and understood that a long time ago. It’s why I turn up at my local councils and ask them awkward questions. It’s why we, here in Dorset and Wilts, are running talks with interesting speakers on a whole range of subjects – 5G, Food security, energy, healing, common law etc etc. It’s why we’re organising our own spoken word events. I realised that we had to start local. However, I still maintain ‘we’ have to do what is right and that is called resistance for when they try to do what they did again. We are hardly sitting on our thumbs in an echo chamber – we’re actually doing stuff! So, keep your cocktail sticks sharp and keep pricking!!
The first law of thermodynamics is based on the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but can be transferred from one form to another.
Renewable energy? Renewable? No such f#@king thing!
Not too dissimilar to government agendas, initiatives, interventions, policy, all of which are in a stable state whilst on paper until initiation which results in discord and costs, both of which are carried by the populous.
That always makes me laugh too.
Plus they call intermittent electricity production that cannot sustain supply, sustainable energy.
And windmill enthusiasts are too ignorant to understand that the blades remove energy from the wind, thus slowing it velocity and therefore there is a limit to how many at a location because of the necessity to arrange them so one windmill doesn’t ’take the wind’ of another.
If I remember correctly, CO2 is not very stable in liquid form requiring a reasonably stable storage environment of low temperatures and high pressure, but prefers gas or solid as a state. Also we have to assume (quite logically) that the earths crust is never stable and varies in stability from place to place.
So the solution to the purported extinction we are facing, if we do not seek net zero, is to store a gas in a potentially unstable and volatile condition, in a potentially unstable environment.
The annoying thing about this is that if it did go TU, I would not have the time to raise a glass and say FU.
Or just leave it to natural process and plant cellular respiration to store it. Coal and oil are all ‘carbon capture’ and carbon storage; solar storage too.
Since 2 000AD, carbon capture has taken place over an area the size of the USA – this is evident from the plant growth that has resulted particularly around deserts and in other dry places.
Mad – clinically, yes. Psychopaths who want to destroy Humanity or at least reduce it to a state of enduring poverty
They’re not mad, just very stupid, corrupt and gullible.
They also understand that this will most likely never happen – it’s just a great way to eco-launder vast public funds into their and their friends’ pockets in plain sight.
How completely terrifying this all is! To be ruled by madmen who seem to have no idea of science – wow, it is too awful to Mahoney. The only comfort is that it would be a quick way to die (‘The bodies of the dead showed no signs of trauma or struggle; these people had simply died where they were’). BUT: God is ultimately in control, whatever anyone thinks.
I’d rather live near a nuclear waste storage facility.
Funny how that gets so much attention and risk assessed to hell.
“Of course to actually achieve Net Zero …”
There is no necessity whatsoever to achieve ‘Net Zero’ which in any case is impossible unless we all stop breathing – since humans exhale CO2.
Net Zero and the idea (only in the western world?) that humans can somehow manipulate the Earth’s climate by the minutest variation of a single parameter is symbolic of breathtaking ignorance.
Here is a quote from Michael Crichton’s excellent book, “State of Fear”:
And even today, after five billion years, our planet remains amazingly active. We have five hundred volcanoes, and an eruption every two weeks. Earthquakes are continuous: a million and a half a year, a moderate Richter 5 quake every six hours, a big earthquake every ten days. Tsunamis race across the Pacific Ocean every three months.
Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it. At any moment there are one thousand five hundred electrical storms across the planet. Eleven lightning bolts strike the ground each second. A tornado tears across the surface every six hours.
And every four days, a giant cyclonic storm, hundreds of miles in diameter, spins over the ocean and wreaks havoc on the land.
The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They cannot control the climate.
The reality is, they run from the storms.
I love the expression “nasty little apes”!
I’m sure this idea will never get out of the starting blocks on any meaningful scale. But in the meantime a small number of people will have made vast sums of money through tax payer funded subsidies, selling this crackpot idea to their mates in government.
Anyone got a tame terrywrist (is there such a thing) that can go to Sardinia and explode a tiny little bomb on the test storage facility as a proof of concept?
Lunacy of the highest order.
A few simple lessons in thermodynamics would instantly show that compressing CO2 to “store” it is unviable, and would very significantly reduce the efficiency of the gas turbines. Seperation of CO2 from the other atmospheric gases and water vapour from turbines is also energy intensive, as is pumping the stuff all over the country. This plan is the stuff of dreams, completely unreal!
Releasing chilled, pressurized CO2 in liquid form would quickly turn to snow, since liquid CO2 cannot exist in normal atmospheric pressure. It would be a snow volcano! The horror!
Seems like an expensive way of achieving their depopulation targets!
YES – they are certainly mad – and unimaginably stupid also.
Hello Chris Johnson. Thank you for your article. I sent it to someone who is pro-Net Zero and their response was: “Looks like they are conflating two different technologies to scare people. One is using compressed CO² as an energy store. The other is liquifying it to store it long term. So the figure they are quoting is a fabrication.” To be honest, I don’t know one way or the other, but would like to get to a true answer on the matter. Do they have a point?