Carbon capture misses the mark
by William Bradley
George Osborne announced today that up to £1bn of government funding will be available for a single commercial scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project. This is a reduction from the original four demonstration plants originally planed, which, according to the Guardian, is bad news due to ‘ministers' talk of the industrial and economic potential of the technology’. Really? Also announced today is E.ON’s withdrawal from the Government’s CCS competition, for reasons that building a new CCS plant would not be economically and commercially viable in the current climate, given depressed power prices.
So why commit such a large amount of money (DECC’s spending for 2009/10 is only £2.5bn) to a technology that has ‘potential’, but is far from being proven? According to the UN, CCS may not become commercially viable for decades. Worse still, as admitted by ministers, there remains the possibility that CCS ‘will never even work.’
So could the money be better spent? Yes. How? On developing our renewable energy infrastructure. Renewable energy is already economically proven but also has enormous potential for the future: the UK is currently the global leader in installed off-shore wind capacity. But we will not reach this potential without investment – almost £200bn over the next 10-15 years. Let's focus our efforts on this clean and secure energy future and not get distracted by the potentially dangerous diversion of ‘clean’ coal.
David Vinter
Renewable energy by any route is not cheap, wind power when you count the huge capital costs is more than double some cheaper conventional sources.
I remember many years ago, France building a major 'free' energy tidal generating system on the Rance estuary. Strangely, they have gone almost exclusively nuclear since then. Apparently with little hostility!
umm
good
Paul Miller
I used to be pretty sceptical about CSS too but then looked at Calera's technology and changed my mind (http://www.calera.com/). It's a very neat solution - effectively reducing emissions by cutting the amount of CO2 needed to make cement while at the same time sequestering CO2 from other sources. It's also pretty close to commercially viability - certainly less than a decade.