UK is right to trial carbon capture

Whatever you may feel about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), at least we now know where we are here in the UK. Ed Miliband’s statement to Parliament yesterday announced three things:

that the Government has signalled its support for up to four demonstration plants, of up to 300 Mega Watts each, at about a billion pounds each;that these will be paid for via a levy on our energy bills, amounting to around 2% on the average bill;that, assuming the technology is demonstrated to work, CCS would have to be retrofitted to any coal-powered power station approved from this moment on. This would be mandatory.

As the Energy and Climate Change Secretary put it, “the era of new, unabated coal has come to an end”.

After years of dickering around, coming up with one half-baked proposal after another, to the growing fury of those companies most closely involved, the Government has now nailed its CCS colours (or most of them) to the mast.

That won’t reassure those who hate the very idea of CCS any more than the dickering around did. And their arguments are strong: these are not completely proven technologies; it’s a very costly way of abating CO2 in comparison to investment in both energy efficiency and renewables; it’s a very energy-intensive process; there are many unresolved liability issues, and so on.

They’re largely right – but still wrong, despite that, to oppose the full-scale trialling of CCS to see what the real strengths and weaknesses are in practice. The reality is that the implications of having to get to an 80% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 are unforgiving. Globally, countries like China, India and even the US (with very high dependence on very large coal reserves) just can’t do what they have to do without CCS, and CCS could be making a big difference in that respect just ten years or so from today - far quicker than nuclear power.

That doesn’t necessarily make it right for the UK, but it does make it a big potential market for UK engineering.

I can’t say I feel much enthusiasm for CCS. Its arrival will be testament to humankind’s utter folly in ignoring the build-up of greenhouse gases over the last twenty years, and a signal of desperate policy measures still to come. The imminent climate crisis means that there are a lot of things we’re going to have to do that we won’t be very keen on. Which makes it right for Ed Miliband to get this particular ball rolling.

Click here for the full statement.