It’s baffling that a government strapped for cash is willing to pour billions into speculative projects that could lock the UK into a reliance on imported gas.
The Labour government’s recent commitment of £21.7 billion over 25 years to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects reportedly aims to support net-zero goals and boost jobs in industrial regions.
But the government is risking those billions on an unproven, costly technology that will give fossil fuel companies an excuse not to shift to renewables with the urgency required.
READ: Starmer backed CCS 'an absolute fraud'
Labour’s pledge is slated to cover undersea carbon storage sites and infrastructure, including two major storage facilities. The first is at Liverpool Bay and is run by Italian oil giant Eni.
The second is off the coast of Teesside - this is a £1.5 billion Net Zero Teesside Power project, a gas-fired plant aiming to capture up to two million tonnes of CO2 per year. This is a flagship venture of Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil giant, in conjunction with BP.
Extraction
CCS aims to capture CO₂ at emission sources - primarily factories and power stations. Advocates claim that preventing new emissions from entering the atmosphere makes it more efficient for industrial applications, although its application to fossil fuel power stations suggests that the government is not serious about mothballing them any time soon.
There is currently an acceptance from some scientific quarters that we can't rely wholly on geological carbon sinks to draw down our emissions if we want to meet net zero targets and that we will need at least some artificial carbon capture in the mix.
However, alternative technologies are becoming increasingly viable - threatening to render the government’s strategy obsolete before CCS technology is scaled up. In steel production, for example, electrification is already offering a cleaner solution.
While CCS is seen as a potential climate solution in hard-to-decarbonise sectors like cement, the government’s CCS strategy remains misguided if it throws all its eggs into one basket and ignores the primacy of natural CO₂ sinks in favour of processes such as 'blue hydrogen' as the means of CO₂ extraction.
Accountability
Robert Howarth, a biogeochemist and environmental scientist at Cornell University, questions the logic: “The greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20 per cent greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60 per cent greater than burning diesel oil for heat.”
Blue hydrogen production involves reforming natural gas (predominantly methane) to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide as a byproduct. In an ideal blue hydrogen setup with CCS, a significant portion of the CO₂ emissions is captured and stored underground.
It’s baffling that a government strapped for cash is willing to pour billions into speculative projects that could lock the UK into a reliance on imported gas.
However, a Carbon Tracker report reveals that CO2 emissions from blue hydrogen projects could be two to three times higher than reported when considering upstream leakage in many places in the supply chain including at extraction, liquefaction, transporting, and re-gasification stages.
It is also estimated that two thirds of the greenhouse gas pollution will occur from fugitive methane which has a very powerful global heating impact, and the problem will only get worse as the UK increasingly relies on Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) as its North Sea supplies diminish.
These emissions can never be captured: this is not clean energy!
Baffling
Alarmingly, the companies involved initially failed to disclose these potential upstream emissions to planning inspectors.
Indeed, subsidy plans under review suggest that CCS projects will be exempt from providing evidence of real emissions reductions because funding applies only to plant construction, not operations, which raises concerns about the government’s commitment to emissions accountability.
Critics warn that without stricter emissions regulations, the UK’s CCS strategy could deliver only marginal climate benefits while diverting billions in taxpayer funds to fossil fuel infrastructure, extending the life of carbon-intensive systems at a time when rapid decarbonisation is crucial.
Laith Whitwham, senior policy adviser at the think tank E3G, criticises the Teesside gas project, warning it could “lock in fossil fuel dependency for years". David Cebon, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cambridge University, called the plans “unproven and far too expensive".
Certainly, Equinor’s track record with CCS has been uneven, with technical difficulties and setbacks in previous projects casting doubt on the scalability of this technology.
Cebon added: “It’s baffling that a government strapped for cash is willing to pour billions into speculative projects that could lock the UK into a reliance on imported gas when renewables offer a ready path to decarbonisation.”
Hurdles
Some of the £21.7 billion promised by Labour will be used to subsidise Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) the idea of which is to capture CO₂ already present in the atmosphere, supposedly tackling past emissions as well as those ongoing.
The process deals with very low concentrations of CO₂ (about 0.04 per cent in the air), which makes the capture process energy-intensive and more costly, as it requires filtering massive amounts of air.
The UK’s Net Zero Strategy envisions capturing and storing “up to 29 million tonnes of CO2” per year through DACCS by 2050, but the promise of DACCS as a climate solution comes with serious hurdles.
Cheaper
Achieving this would mean building DACCS facilities equivalent to five times the capacity of the world’s only operational plant in Iceland every week from now until mid-century.
Extracting CO2 from the air and sequestering it underground demands vast amounts of heat. If 'green' hydrogen is used, it requires huge electricity inputs—which, until renewable capacity expands, would likely come from gas-fired power stations. One step forward, two steps back…
As things stand, DACCS powered by gas could emit over one tonne of CO2 for every tonne it removes.
And DACCS is prohibitively expensive. Spending billions on a technology unlikely to be scalable before crossing planetary tipping points makes the exercise moot.
Re-capturing CO2 will never be cheaper or more efficient than simply switching to low-carbon energy sources and reducing fossil fuel use in the first place.
Renewables
While DACCS could play a role in reducing CO2 levels once renewable energy supplies are sufficient, deploying it in the UK today would be highly premature and a misplaced virement of investment from where it would be far more effective: renewable energy infrastructure.
The Climate Change Act requires the UK to hit net-zero emissions by 2050, but experts say this goal will remain elusive if CCS investment leads to new gas infrastructure rather than wind and solar farms, thus keeping Britain at the mercy of volatile energy prices that contributed to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Renewables, by contrast, offer a homegrown solution, as the sun and wind don’t need importing. In fact, in an ideal economy, they would be eminently exportable commodities.
The scientific consensus is that renewables alone could meet all of the UK’s energy needs without CCS.
Vocal
Professor Doyne Farmer, from Oxford University, observes: “There is a pervasive misconception that switching to clean, green energy will be painful, costly and mean sacrifices for us all – but that’s just wrong...Completely replacing fossil fuels with clean energy by 2050 will save us trillions.”
So far, most CCS projects in the energy sector have been abandoned, and the few that do exist - like Boundary Dam in Canada and Petra Nova in the US - have struggled with chronic underperformance, technical issues, and rising costs.
James Dyke, associate professor in earth system science, University of Exeter, warns that the quest to remain under 1.5 degrees is “becoming detached from reality as it is increasingly relying on science fiction levels of speculative technology".
Additionally, around 80 per cent of captured CO₂ in global CCS projects is currently injected into oil fields to enhance oil extraction, a practice that hardly aligns with a clean energy transition.
By incorporating DACCS and CCS in its strategy now, the UK government risks deflecting from the urgent need for direct deep emissions reductions. Unsurprisingly, oil companies are vocal supporters of both, which would give them a free pass to continue operating and maintain control of their circumstances.
Misguided
And now that it is going ahead, NGOs and activists are questioning why the public should fund CCS technology at a time when oil companies are reporting record profits.
Why should taxpayers bear the burden of dealing with pollution caused by private corporations that have shown limited commitment to transitioning away from fossil fuels?
Once again, this is where the value of citizens’ assemblies becomes clear. With expert witnesses from the fields of science and economics informing such an assembly, the conclusion can only be that the government’s strategy is misguided and that the oil companies are taking advantage of us.
This Author
Tom Hardy FRSA has over 40 years of experience in education, serving as literary editor for the International Journal of Art and Design Education, a columnist for the Times Educational Supplement, and author/editor of several academic works on educational practice. He has worked as an education consultant for the Prince's Teaching Institute and subject lead for the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency reporting to the Department for Education. Since 2018, he has been part of Extinction Rebellion's media and messaging team.
