The Government has pledged nearly £22bn for carbon capture and storage projects in a move that has united sceptics and alarmists in condemnation of the expensive and unproven technology. BBC News has more.
The Government said the funding for two “carbon capture clusters” on Merseyside and Teesside, promised over the next 25 years, would create thousands of jobs, attract private investment and help the U.K. meet climate goals.
Sir Keir Starmer, who is to visiting the north-west of England with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to confirm the projects, said the move would “reignite our industrial heartlands” and “kickstart growth”.
But some green campaigners have said the investment would “extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production”.
Carbon capture and storage facilities aim to prevent carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from industrial processes and power stations from being released into the atmosphere.
Most of the CO2 produced is captured, transported, and then stored deep underground.
It is seen by the likes of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Climate Change Committee as a key element in meeting targets to cut the greenhouse gases driving dangerous climate change.
Despite Miliband first announcing plans to develop carbon capture projects for power plants in 2009 during the last Labour government, little progress has been made since in the UK.
Speaking at a glassmaking factory in Cheshire, Sir Keir said: “For our energy intensive industries like glassmaking here, or cement, or steel, or ceramics, you are familiar with these, the security that the future belongs to them.
“That the necessary mission of decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation. This if you like, is the politics of national renewal in action.”
Speaking to the Today programme, Miliband said the project was “essential if we are to decarbonise without deindustrialising”. …
James Richardson, acting Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee, said: “It’s fantastic to see funding coming through for these big projects.”
However Greenpeace U.K.’s Policy Director, Doug Parr called for spending instead on offshore wind or nationwide home insulation.
He said £22bn was “a lot of money to… extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production.”
The Guardian cites further critics of the “high risk and not future proof” plans:
Lorenzo Sani, an analyst at Carbon Tracker, a climate thinktank, told the Guardian the Government’s decision “repeats the mistakes of the previous administration” by committing new funding without first reassessing its CCS strategy.
Sani said the plan “remains anchored in outdated and overly optimistic [cost] assumptions”, which risk “squandering even more taxpayer money on carbon capture projects that are both high risk and not future proof”.
Dr. Andrew Boswell, an independent researcher into the CCS industry, dismissed the investment as a “massive giveaway to the fossil fuel industry” and a “bad decision” for bills, energy security and the planet.
Even George Monbiot is against it, calling it “absolute madness” and blaming “lobbying by fossil fuel companies”.
This is absolute madness. Carbon capture and storage has failed time and again. Labour has slashed reliable green programmes, to pour vast sums of our money into a complete crock. The only possible explanation is lobbying by fossil fuel companies.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) October 4, 2024https://t.co/GCyad2C3N4
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Twenty two billion (£) eh?
Now where have I heard that number previously?
Uncanny.
Yep these words like “22 billion”, “reset”, “world leaders” etc come out of his mouth a lot. But in reality, the only thing we lead the world in these days is impoverishment of our own citizens who now have the highest electricity prices in the world, and we are all supposed to have nice warm glow inside about that.
The warm glow inside me is because I am incandescent with rage.
Human beings interfering with nature by being alive is bad, so we’re going to do more interfering to make things less bad.
We are all bad by nature because we emit CO2 and can’t help it.
It’s the “original sin” of the new climate religion.
Of course you can help it. Just hold your breath.
Hmm, maybe we could get some hi-vis jackets and tee shirts with ‘JHYB’ printed?
Don’t worry it won’t work – but it will provide lots of loot for grifters.
Carbon capture is in the same category as gold from base metals, and recovering gold dust in and around coal seams, from colliery waste – both theoretically possible, but impractical. But fools, convinced by The Science™️, handed over their money to the experts and got swindled.
At least they lost their ox, money, this shower-O’-Shite is losing ours.
Already we in the UK have the highest electricity prices in the world. 4 times higher than in the US. Now here are the absurd eco socialists making us fork out another 22 billion basically for NOTHING. We get not a single watt of energy from this latest nonsense.
—— I notice also that the press conference let this cretinous Prime Minister get away once again with saying “Renewables are now cheaper than Fossil Fuels”. NOPE———Renewables only work part time. Fossil Fuels are full time energy that work 24 hours a day every day. For every watt that renewables produce you need the same amount as backup ticking over in the background which Starmer also needs to factor into the cost. Him and all proponents of climate change policies and renewables deliberately ignore this reality when they tell their bare faced lie. ——–He then admits that prices will be high for the short term. —–For how long? 1 year? 2 years 5 years? 10 years? ——But isn’t it simply the case that price of energy will always be high in line with the eco socialist desire to cut consumption because it is deemed by Starmer’s bosses at the UN/WEF that our lifestyles are unsustainable?
Yes, the aim is to cut consumption, but ours not theirs. 2TK and his pals will continue to live in the lap of luxury, totally unchanged.
What a bloody nuisance we are….8 billion of us.—Some wind turbines and solar panels is all we are getting. Like it or lump it.
It wouldn’t happen if the people spending our money so recklessly on these projects were forced to guarantee their results with their own personal wealth.
It’s easy to spend a few billion of other people’s money knowing that if it’s completely useless and achieves nothing (which it won’t) literally nothing will happen to you. Worse, no one is ever going to know either way because it won’t be reported. The news will be busy telling all about sone completely comlletely manufactured, inconsequential, highly titillating political “scandal”.
Monbiot …. “the only possible explanation…”
Wrong, George. It’s very simple – the Energy Minister is a weapons grade cretin.
AT A CINEMA NEAR YOU——–A MAURICE STRONG PRODUCTION OF —-THE 3 STOOGES—-STARRING —-Starmer Miliband and Reeves.
As someone on Talk Radio (if I remember aright) has pointed out, this major and poorly costed investment in handling fossil fuels for vital industries comes at the same time the same people have destroyed our own gas production and oil refining capacity. Hence we will thereafter be paying through the nose for LPG to be processed and transported across the world in carbon-dioxide producing plants and tankers.
This does not seem to be rocket science, but our government can’t do rocket science. Come to think of it, between Spacex and the arms companies, rocket science is not doing too well at reducing greenhouse gases either. Did you know that getting one man into orbit has a similar “carbon footprint” to about 100 long haul airline flights?
They will probably argue that they are using liquified natural gas (LNG) fueled tankers to ship the LNG around the world. There has been a fair bit of investment in storage facilities for such liquid, e.g. at Milford Haven. At least they don’t use heavy fuel oil to transport LNG around!
The South Hook and Dragon Liquid Natural gas (LNG) terminals import about 25% of our natural gas needs from Qatar. And yes they do !., Heavy Fuel Oil is used to power the diesel and steam turbine engined LNG carriers (LNGCs). The LNG boil-off is under in some LNGCs to propel the ships but boil-off rates can provide about 50% power only.
Many people complain that waste from nuclear power stations will need to be buried and stored for thousands of years before it is safe. When do they expect it to be safe to release the stored CO2 from this boondoggle? Never?
It’s not lobbying by fossil fuel companies. It’s Net-Zero zealots wasting our energy – literally.
Just a second… if we have decarbonised by 2050, why do we need carbon capture?
As a punishment beating of course!
It’s the premise that CO2 is the toxic thermostatic control knob to our climate that fundamentally needs to be attacked and discredited. This is the square root of the bullshit.
Net Zero sceptical chats on things like Talk TV and GB News are all well and good but until they address the ‘CO2 controls climate’ scam they may as well be discussing the absorbency of tampons.
In currenr times, to say that CO2 is not a temperature thermostat is like claiming that the sun does not orbit the earth in Galileo’s time.
It’s a heresy that will get any prominent figure into serious trouble.
Neither the Telegraph nor the Spectator will allow this heresy to be published, although their comment columns of full of people denying we are in a climate crisis caused by CO2. There is plenty of practical Net Zero scepticism, but the fundamental argument is never mentioned.
Millibrain, Peeves and Two-Tier Free-Gear
The Monbidiot and some other bloke were arguing about this on Radio 2 at midday.
2 bald men fighting over a comb.
Moonbat is another good name for George.
They are all officially certifiable.
We should be proud that we will be leading the world in a technology which doesn’t work and which nobody else is foolish enough to want.
Literally the equivalent of breaking rocks in Victorian prisons – pointless energy wasting with zero value, except being seen to ‘do something’…
This is so dark and so contrary to the life force that I think it will be a short-lived enterprise. Even the masses are beginning to sense it, the sense that this is an anti-human and anti-life agenda propagated by shrivelled ghouls who have risen to prominence in our shrivelled society. I think there is cause for optimism in the sense that complacency will always disappear when things get really difficult.
Don’t diss the number six it is the essence of the materium. You just can’t do that as a material being and you aren’t going to be able to upload yourself onto the internet and live forever.
Either my maths is bad or we have a very, very large black hole. As huxleypiggles has noted, 22 billion was the inherited black hole. The government is proposing to spend 22 billion on carbon capture. I believe that 22 plus 22 equals 44.
I wish the gods would move rapidly on to stage two (Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad).
They are already mad, and BAD. Time for the Gods….
Monbiot: “…the only possible explanation is…”
Lol – the guy is and always has been, deranged.
This is really stupid. They will use a great deal of energy removing a tiny amount of CO2 from the air in Britain whilst China takes the same air and adds Millions of tons more CO2? Have I missed something here, are they going to enclose the UK in a vast glass wall to keep our own CO2 free air? Of course such a plan would kill all plant life in Britain too, so perhaps not a good idea. Will any warming stop, of course not. A simple scientifically illiterate vanity project at our expense. I suggest that Labour politicians use their own money, not mine!
Clearly the new buzz phrase to replace “build back better “ is “decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation”. I expect to hear this echoing around the world, courtesy of the Davos crowd for whom decarbonisation does not mean cutting their own carbon footprint!
Carbon Capture is the green boondoggle equivalent of repeatedly digging a hole only to refill it again. Completely parasitic “make work “
The stunning stupidity of these uneducated politicians is simply breath-taking, but I suppose that is what ‘carbon capture’ is all about. (We exhale 100 times the amount of carbon dioxide we inhale.)
Capturing carbon would mean digging up coal but that is another discussion.
I cannot think of a more pointless project than carbon capture. Its cost of £22 billion will be funded by consumers of electricity and gas in their bills. It will not make an iota of difference to the climate but green plants will have a little less CO2 with which to grow and increase food crops. The government in general, and Ed Miliband in particular, are completely bonkers.