A story in the Telegraph last week featured a report by Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) which recommended the Government commit to a £30 billion project to pull CO2 from the air. According to the report, Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) machines sited across the east coast could separate the greenhouse gas from air and pump it to underground storage facilities, thereby helping the U.K. to meet its ambitious 2050 Net Zero target. Not only is this extraordinarily expensive idea pointless in itself, it exposes the equally pointless and expensive constellation of publicly-funded lobbying organisations.
According to ESC, “carbon capture in its various forms is a critical component of a low-cost energy transition”, and “without it, at scale, we risk non-compliance with our Net Zero requirement”. And here is the thing that would, were such things subject to public debate, cause millions of people to scratch their heads. So what if the U.K. does not comply with its Government’s self-imposed target? What is the ‘risk’? And why should the public fork out billions of pounds merely for a daft machine that serves no function other than help a Government achieve its ambition that nobody else really cares about?
Madder still, the ESC admits that DACCS “remains unproven at scale”. This raises two important problems.
First, if something has yet to be proven at such a gigantic scale, any estimate of its cost is both for the birds and in all probability, like all Government-backed projects such as HS2 and wind power, will exceed those estimates. Government vanity project HS2, for example, originally had a similar estimated cost of £37.5 billion in 2009 prices. But by 2020, estimates put the cost well north of £100 billion.
Second, it shows yet again that no government, no political party, no MP or peer, no think tank or its wonks, no academic at a lofty research outfit, no green lobbyist or campaigner, and no journalist has any idea how Net Zero will be achieved, but nonetheless nearly all of them fought for such targets to be imposed on us.
It is a problem known as putting the cart before the horse. And it is a characteristic of all climate-related policies that they are driven by ambition, not reality. Not even ESC can explain what DACCS is, how it will work or how much it will cost. All they really know is that it will be required to remove 48 million tonnes of CO2 from the air each year from 2050 – approximately a tenth of the U.K.’s current domestic annual emissions.
Vanity and intransigence drives this irrational push for solutions to non-problems. Air capture of CO2 serves no useful purpose whatsoever. It won’t make a dent in atmospheric CO2 concentration. It won’t change the weather. It won’t make anyone’s life better. And it won’t stand up to any meaningful cost-benefit analysis. £30 billion, roughly equivalent to £500 per head of the population, could do vastly more good were it to be spent in countless other ways, from healthcare through to addressing genuine environmental issues such as water quality. Of course, not spending the money on such contraptions would likely do more good by leaving that much money in people’s pockets to spend how they see fit.
The Telegraph spots the problem. DACCS plants “would need to be powered by wind, nuclear or solar energy so as not to generate as much CO2 as they save”. A fleet of green generators would be working to power the DACCS plants, merely to hit targets. Recent studies show that existing DACCS technology is extremely inefficient, requiring a whopping 2,500 kilowatt hours to isolate just one tonne of CO2. To extract 48 million tonnes of CO2 would therefore require power stations with a capacity of 14 gigawatts – that’s more than four times the capacity of Hinkley Point C. That nuclear power station itself, dubbed at the time “the most expensive power station in the world”, was initially estimated to cost £26 billion but more recent estimates are putting the cost closer to £46 billion. Thus the cost of a widespread DACCS project – with batteries included – is likely to be in the order of seven times greater than ECS claim. And we have not yet even considered the operating cost.
All this puts me in mind of those fun little clips of devices whose only function is to press a switch to turn themselves off. On Youtube, electronics hobbyists compete to build the most impressive ‘useless machine’. Here is one such contender.
But the problem of useless machinery goes far beyond the device itself. Not unlike white elephants such as wind turbines, Energy Systems Catapult is a strange outfit summoned up out of the blobbish technocracy required by the green agenda. ECS is part of an umbrella group of government-backed private companies called the Catapult Network, which itself seems to be part of Innovate U.K., which in turn is part of UK Research and Innovation – the successor public funding body to the erstwhile research councils. ESC and its sister organisations each benefit from millions of pounds of public funding, topped up by opaque philanthropic funding (i.e., green blob organisations), which as ESC claims, allows them to “support Central and Devolved Governments with the evidence, insights and innovations to incentivise Net Zero action”.
The problem at its core is that publicly-funded organisations, though set up as ‘independent’ bodies run at arms-length from Government, are nonetheless wholly committed to political agendas. Seemingly intended to ‘drive prosperity’ through R&D, such a constellation of opaque agencies are tantamount to the Government picking ‘winners’, who invariably turn out to be abject losers, at vast public expense. There are no consequences for such wonks spaffing hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money on pilots that come to nought, or glossy reports that might just as well be case studies from Narnia. Criticism of ideas such as CO2 capture is excluded from academia and business because even if any critics were not already disinclined to apply for roles within the network, and were then not rejected for their obvious hostility to the dominant political culture of such bullshit factories, their politically inconvenient work would soon be shelved.
In other words, the green agenda has produced a useless machine whose only function is to produce designs for useless machines. The parent idea of DACCS, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), in which CO2 is taken from power stations, compressed and then stuffed under the sea, was an idea that attracted attention following the Climate Change Act. But despite the government offering a billion pounds in funding competitions to prove the concept, the project failed and today remains economically unproven. The even crazier idea of pulling CO2 – which is still a trace gas at just 400 parts per million – from the air and then burying it underground faces a similar future. Meanwhile, the U.K.’s climate agenda will run on, as usual, built on extremely expensive pie-in-the-sky fantasies. Nobody has any idea how to achieve Net Zero without destroying ourselves.
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Paying ppl to dig and fill hole till eternity would be more productive. Until these climate goons are hung drawn and quartered nothing much will change. The Tories don’t have the stones to abolish the new executive, the CCC.
Just like they don’t have the stones to leave the ECHR!
No one is ever accountable for these wasteful episodes , it’s a good job our ex Chancellor Prime Minister is frugal with our tax money , Oh Hang on ……
Who? Oh you mean the First Lord of the Treasury?
I used to think that much of the net-zero spending was essentially a Keynesian policy to soak up people left jobless by AI. The equivalent of digging holes then filling them in again. However, it turns out the promised jobs are illusory.
99% of what one reads about AI is as accurate as David Attenbrough and Chris Packham combined. It’s in its infancy and is years off being capable of replacing a person in any job.
In reality it is likely to create more jobs than it replaces but it is, and I use it fairly often, useful for working out an idea for a software issue. It most certainly cannot devise a programme to end the human race, however, I never asked it about Packham’s lies + End Of The World; I imagine it is dumb enough to believe him.
Well the last AI would end the World before saying a racist word!
I asked AI about DailySceptics (in my opinion one of very few accurate websites):
“The Daily Sceptic is a website that has gained attention for its critical stance on various issues, especially related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is known for publishing articles that challenge mainstream narratives and provide alternative viewpoints. It is important to approach information from sources like these with caution and to verify facts independently, as with any news outlet or website.”
“check facts independently”. ——-Why don’t you ask where these “independent facts” can be found
Exactly.
Sounds like a fair description to me. It’s a lot better than the bashing it gets with its Wikipedia entry, which is exclusively devoted to smearing it as a misinformation platform. It’s got 2 headings: “Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation” and “Climate Change Denial” and that’s about it!
You made a mistake, you typed BBC not DS!
I cannot figure why no MP has ever said “Prove it without modelling”. Claiming CO2 is driving climate change is as ridiculously stupid as Cnut’s courtiers claiming he could turn back the tide. Thankfully, Cnut had the sense to state he couldn’t and why he, nor God, could do it.
All this stupid machine would achieve is exactly the same as its designers do: blow air out of its backside.
I take the view that the government, its quangos, the system, and the elite academia realise they have made a mistake, but vanity and arrogance will not permit them to admit it. Leave aside intelligence as that and any association with government suddenly becomes an oxymoronic, on a par with government initiative.
I see no evidence of admission of mistakes. ——-All I see is full steam ahead with every Green absurdity no matter the cost, because the objective is not saving the planet. The objective is Eco Socialism. A world run by technocrats no one ever heard of controlling all of the worlds wealth and resources.
No MP asks that question for the same reason as none of them asked how much Net Zero will cost or if it is even possible. ——-It was just waved through parliament with no debate and no vote. Who in their right mind forces themselves in law to do something without knowing the cost? The answer is Group Think Politicians who know that if they do question any of the Green Blob consensus junk science that they will be looking for a job driving a lorry or a bus.
Or as someone once pointed out “People go mad in herds”
That’s a problem for future Homer. Man! I don’t envy that guy.
It is easy when you gamble with somebody else’s money.
And taxpayers money. Can’t blame those who have given up voting reading this.
Incidentally, did it not occur to any of these morons that digging holes releases vast amounts of trapped CO2?
The bottom line is – more CO2, not less, would be beneficial for crops and have no downside.
This is the absurdity that occurs when you force yourself in law to do something that benefits no one and costs an arm and a leg. Climate Change insofar as it exists at all or is a problem is a global issue, and even Tony Blair whose government gave us the Climate Change Act in 2008 (Miliband) said recently that nothing the UK does will make the slightest difference to global climate. ——-So if doing something will make no difference then why do it? The answer is so simple and I estimate that perhaps 90% of the population won’t know the answer, and that answer is that we are doing all of this because it has nothing to do with the climate.———Let me just repeat that, not for the benefit of DS subscribers, because they mostly know what a total scam everything GREEN is, but for the benefit of casual visitors to this site. –EVERYTHING GREEN THAT YOU THOUGHT WAS ALL ABOUT SAVING THE PLANET AND PROTECTING US FROM CLIMATE CHANGE HAS GOT SOD ALL TO DO WITH THE CLIMATE OR THE PLANET OR THE TEMPERATURE. ——-You are being manipulated.
Wasn’t the Climate Change Act during Gordon Brown’s government?
I don’t think we need worry about minor details like that make no difference to the points being made. You may be correct but they were all in on the scam, and it was actually Miliband’s act.
Nah, it’s self-powered. Out of shot they’ve set up wind turbines which are driven by the draft from the DACCS machine and feed it power.
Give me the £30bn and I will provide many many ‘machines’ which are perfectly able to remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen instead.
These wonderful ‘machines’ build themselves, and require modest amounts of sunlight and water. Not only that but they automatically build the next generation of ‘machine’.
Some of these ‘machines’ also taste good and can be used to feed the population.
I have some magic beans here. Cheap at £30bn!
Plants already do this – no charge.
I’m actually OK with taxpayer money being used to fund creative exploratory ‘eco-solutions’.
As long as the default position is that you have to explicitly opt in.
Let’s see how many of those keen to save the planet are happy to subsidise it.
A year’s funding from the opt-inners should cover the salary of the programme’s DIE director (She/Her).
Some celebrity, I forget who, offered a million-dollar prize for anyone who could come up with a technology for pulling carbon dioxide out of the air into the ground.
They were immediately contacted by regenerative farmer and internet star Gabe Brown, drawing attention to his cows as a qualifying technology. Never heard anything back, apparently.
“Nobody has any idea how to achieve Net Zero without destroying ourselves”
Which is EXACTLY what they want.
PS I love that pointless machine turning itself off reminds me a bit of some of the projects we did at work!
When will this co2 nonsense stop?
Every human breaths out approximately 1kg of Co2/day.
So the 7,000 illegal immigrants that have come ashore year to date have produced 7 tonnes of Co2/day. If we reduced the mass migration of immigrants, legal and illegal by 5million, including natural deaths of the existing population, we would reduce CO2 emissions by c.2Million tons/p.a.
This would achieve a significant reduction of CO2 emissions on an annual basis completely free of charge. £100Bn of taxpayers money could be used for something important to our livelihoods.
Of course all it really does is highlight the completely futile and pointless exercise of Carbon capture.
We would benefit from more Co2.
Do the cretins running our country realise that whatever Co2 reductions we make in one year will be replaced by China and India in a few days?
Of course they do.
Its all about snouts in the trough.
It would be much easier, cheaper and better to produce more clean electricity (Nuclear)and stop using gas turbines that produce 15% of our man made emissions in the UK.
Of course, Co2 is not a problem anyway, so all of this nonsense is just profiteering and corruption.
Every time I read articles like this I have to check the date…but April Fools Day seems to be every day here in cloud cuckoo land. Anything that needs electric power to operate will lead to even more ‘emissions’ than ever.
Not only have I just swapped my reliable diesel car for another slightly bigger one, I am seriously considering installing a gas hob to replace my induction one, as the electric car owners will cause bigger increases in electricity prices and/or power rationing.
How does it compare to planting trees? We need an objective measure eg Trees per Hour. How does it compare to carbon capture by greening? eg %of CO2 capture by the Sahel per hour.