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£400 Billion to Capture Carbon

We are all now well aware of Ed Miliband's plan to waste £22bn of taxpayers' money on carbon capture. But alarmingly it's just the tip of the iceberg, with up to £400bn being quoted to take us to 2050, says Paul Homewood.

5 min read

We are all now well aware of Ed Miliband’s plan to waste £22 billion of taxpayers’ money on carbon capture schemes. Even though it will be spread over two decades, it is still a lot of money.

But alarmingly it is just the tip of the iceberg, as the Telegraph reported this week:

Miliband has already pledged £22 billion to CCS projects. Most of this will be added to consumer bills, with the rest from taxpayers, roughly equating to £800 per UK household, albeit spread over two decades.

But far more will be needed.

Some economists suggest Britain will have to spend £400 billion between now and 2050 to build and run a working CCS industry.

The question is, can a country already facing the world’s highest electricity bills cope with yet more costs, despite the potential benefits?

The Telegraph fails to point out what those mysterious “benefits” might be! But it was right to draw attention to the unbelievably high costs of carbon capture, which the Government is desperate to keep hidden away from the public. The costs quoted are derived from the Climate Change Committee, which notoriously tends to understate costs.

Some of that £400 billion will not be spent for many years yet, maybe not until the 2040s, when Direct Air Carbon Capture will be essential for removing the carbon dioxide from hard to decarbonise sources.

But worryingly a recent study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has found that the Government is already

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31 Comments
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NMSmith
NMSmith
11 months ago

it might be completely stupid, but maybe not so much for those getting all the cash

Simon MacPhisto
Simon MacPhisto
11 months ago

It’s like having Monty Python in power.

brachiopod
brachiopod
11 months ago

We used to go to war for less. We would certainly lose far fewer souls than we will if we roll over and let these harms be inflicted on us.

Covid-1984
Covid-1984
11 months ago

We will laugh at Ed Milliband rocking in his chair at Rampton. The earth is flat in Ed’s mind. As always, follow the money.

ACW
ACW
11 months ago

That is a lot to catch plant food.

Richard
Richard
11 months ago

Insanity! The climate is warming up, so what? Adapt and change. We are not going to die as a species because of it. But trying to suck plant food out of the atmosphere is in the class of King Canute! It won’t reduce the temperature but it will be a complete waste of time and money! What science do these idiots follow? Clearly not the science I was taught!

Gezza England
Gezza England
11 months ago

Meanwhile…questions are being asked about the financial viablility of OVO and the Centrica beardy weirdy boss thinks there will be another round of suppliers collapsing adding more costs to our bills. I guess this is the £4.43bn they are owed by customers coming into play.

MadWolf303
MadWolf303
11 months ago

They don’t call him Mad Ed for nowt…..

MadWolf303
MadWolf303
11 months ago

Surely it your that mad kean to capture Co2, it would be much easier to to capture it in China or India, or the US, as they have billions of tonnes of it and don’t care a damn about it……

shred
shred
11 months ago

The CCS stations planned for Teeside are of the blue hydrogen type. These convert natural gas- methane by steam reformation, which splits it into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. hydrogen is burned to produce electricity. The only problem is that, although less expensive than green hydrogen, produced by electrolysis, it uses much more methane than conventional gas generation and produces about half the electricity for the same cost. The cost of compressing the CO2 and pumping it under the sea is additional. Some geologists think it will leak out. The extra methane sales suits the producers of course. Some of it leaks when being transported, which is unfortunate because it’s a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

Purpleone
Purpleone
11 months ago

This talk of not yet being ‘commercially viable’ annoy the hell out of me – I think they mean ‘effective at scale’, as my understanding of commercially viable is ‘it earns more than it costs’… employing thousands of people, to complete a pointless task, will NEVER create any new value / money – it just spends what we (don’t) have… absolute and total madness. I can only surmise it’s a total grift, like all the other eco bollox, to transfer money from the public to private enterprise en masse, until they finally twig, and it’s too late

JXB
JXB
11 months ago

The byproduct of burning hydrogen in air is water – water vapour is the No 1 most effective greenhouse gas. Without it the Earth would be too cold to support life.

It is the supposed increase of water vapour caused by the supposed warming effect of CO2 making the seas boil, that is causing global warming.

Cutting out the middle man, CO2, and directly creating more water in the atmosphere will cause more global warming.

Such is the logic of Climatism and the Net Zeroids.

Westfieldmike
Westfieldmike
11 months ago

The very peak of insanity, capturing vital plant food for the planet, and to sustain life. You couldn’t make it up.

Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
11 months ago

Carbon capture? Isn’t that what plants do, for free? The more you give them the more they capture. And the results are often edible. At least by cows.

psychedelia smith
psychedelia smith
11 months ago

…Ergo it’s a giant tax payer looting scam to bankrupt the economy so our government’s globalist mates can swoop in hoover up the wreckage cheap.

Climan
Climan
11 months ago

There should be some green-on-green conflict over carbon capture.

In a well run economy, X pounds would be allocated to Net Zero, any money spent on CC would be less money spent elsewhere.

Greens should also worry that CC might work, causing devastation in the rest of the green economy.

Of course there is no need to worry, the economy is not well run, and CC is hopeless.

Arum
Arum
11 months ago

Sounds like a lot of money – until you remember the government is spending 111 billion a year on interest payments for money it has previously borrowed. I’m no economist but it seems impossible that this project (and all the rest) is going to reach 2050 intact, even if it were scientifically feasible. Odd, given how keen they are on ‘sustainability’, how little regard they have for financial sustainability. By 2050 we will be breaking up the furniture to burn on winter nights to keep warm.

Art Simtotic
Art Simtotic
11 months ago

Menawhile Ole Humlum, Emeritus Professor of Physical Geography, University of Oslo, reaches the usual conclusions in his latest annual scholarly analysis…

https://thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2025/10/The-State-of-the-Climate-2024.pdf

“…Believing that one minor constituent of the atmosphere (CO₂) controls nearly all aspects of climate is amazingly naïve and entirely unrealistic.

…There is no observational evidence for any global climate crisis.

…Our world should consider focussing on much more pressing problems.”

Dinger64
Dinger64
11 months ago

“despite the potential benefits?”

sorry!, potential benefits? What potential benefits? 0.04% of earth’s atmosphere is co2 that’s 400ppm! And of that humans are responsible for 0.0016%!
Micro Milibrain might as well spend £400million catching rainbows 🌈
On top of immigration, Muslim take over,as seen in Whitechapel, and all the other monumental wastes of public money,
Britain is Fu@ked! Leave

Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
11 months ago

The best way to capture carbon is to let nature do it. By flooding the country with immigrants, then building houses will increase CO2 emissions and at the same time reduce photosynthesis by destroying natural habitat. The same goes with windmills and solar farms. Add the high cost of immigration and it will finish the country off.
Labour have destroyed the country and it’s doubtful whether we will ever recover from the actions of these low intelligence morons in government.

The lunacy is now recognised worldwide and there will be an exodus of young people to other countries, not the EU of course, anyone with a brain will leave. Here’s an article to prove that the UK is now recognised as a failed state.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/10/25/3-4-million-foreign-born-people-claiming-welfare-benefits-in-britain/

The morons in Westminster are trying to stoke up fear over Ukraine and make us believe Russia will invade Europe, Putin must be laughing his head off watching Western Europe including the UK destroy themselves. All he has to do to win is just stand by and watch as we are gradually destroyed by our own traitorous politicians.

They are clowns.

MajorMajor
MajorMajor
11 months ago

So, once they have captured the CO2, what do they do with it?
Store it in pressured containers? Forever?

Westfieldmike
Westfieldmike
11 months ago
Reply to  MajorMajor

Pump it into greenhouses, that’s what it’s used for now.

WillP
WillP
11 months ago

I can’t be bothered to do the maths again, so I used grok:
“To extract 1 metric ton (1,000 kg) of CO₂ from the atmosphere, approximately 1,198,000 cubic meters of air is needed, based on the current global average CO₂ concentration of about 425 ppm by volume (as measured at Mauna Loa Observatory in mid-October 2025).”

Thats a 3rd of the whole of Wembley Stadium, pitch to roof.
In 2023, the UK emitted 302.8 million metric tons of CO₂ 
So to neutralise the UK Ed’s going to have to suck 100 million Wembleys.

Arum
Arum
11 months ago
Reply to  WillP

You mean he’s going to be the world’s biggest sucker?

Purpleone
Purpleone
11 months ago
Reply to  Arum

Going to be?

CrisBCTnew
CrisBCTnew
11 months ago
Reply to  Arum

Wonderful!

James.M
James.M
11 months ago

It’s unbelievable the ideological capture of these morons. Have they absolutely no critical thinking skills that would tell them they are simply chasing unicorns?

Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
11 months ago
Reply to  James.M

I think they’ve already spent £400bn on ideological capture, which might explain it. All added to taxpayers’ bills.

BevGee
BevGee
11 months ago

Anyone would think that CO2 is dangerous [shakes head in despair].

FerdIII
FerdIII
11 months ago
Reply to  BevGee

Beyond stupid isn’t it. Trace chemical, human emissions are 20 parts per million. We need more of it not less for plant life and life in general.

China emits more ‘Carbon’ in a few weeks than the UK in an entire year.

I wonder if these arselings have read Cervantes. But then again, this cult is about money laundering and totalitarian control.

PRSY
PRSY
11 months ago
Reply to  BevGee

It’s the ultimate version of The King’s New Clothes fairy tale, except It’s a horror story.

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