From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
Who would have guessed we have a £22bn black hole?
The government has pledged nearly £22bn for projects to capture and store carbon emissions from energy, industry and hydrogen production.
It 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 UK meet climate goals.
Sir Keir Starmer, due to visit the North West on Friday 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”.
Up to £21.7bn will subsidise three projects on Teesside and Merseyside to support the development of the clusters, including the infrastructure to transport and store carbon.
It will also support two transport and storage networks carrying captured carbon to deep geological storage in Liverpool Bay and the North Sea.
The government said the move would give industry confidence to invest in the UK, attracting £8bn of private investment, directly creating 4,000 jobs and supporting 50,000 in the long term.
It will also help remove 8.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year, officials said.
The projects are expected to start storing captured carbon from 2028.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o
Although much of the money will only start flowing after carbon capture operations begin, billions will have to be spent in the next few years, building the infrastructure needed. Yet nobody in the world has yet proven that carbon capture can work commercially at scale. So we could end up chucking billions down the drain.
And only 8.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will end up being captured a year. The UK’s total emissions total 327 million tonnes, so wasting £22 billion of our money will barely make a dent.
To make matters worse, carbon capture projects don’t capture all of the carbon dioxide, so the saving will likely be even less than claimed. Then there are the upstream emissions to take account of – using natural gas from, say Qatar, involves methane emissions at the well heads, pipeline losses and emissions resulting from liquifying and transporting the stuff. When these are taken into account, net emission savings will be tiny or non-existent. The government is only concerned about emissions that appear on the UK’s balance sheet.
Of course the admission that the UK will still need natural gas makes a nonsense of Miliband’s desire to shut down North Sea gas as soon as possible.
As for who will pay for all of this, Sky News say that the funding is to come from a mixture of Treasury money and energy bills, but the government has been coy about the split so far. Almost certainly though, while the initial infrastructure will be paid for out of taxation, the ongoing costs will be subsidised via Contracts for Difference and added to bills.
What is certain though is that producing electricity using carbon capture is more expensive than not using carbon capture, not least because the process itself wastes a lot of energy. Similarly hydrogen produced from gas with carbon capture is much more expensive than just using the gas itself in the first place. All of this inefficiency will add to energy bills.
It is hard to think of a more stupid waste of public money.
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