Claim: Carbon Capture Vital to Meeting Climate Goals

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Carbon capture vs Renewable Energy? Proponents of contradictory green visions for Britain’s future are fighting over British PM Boris Johnson’s renewable energy policy largesse.

Carbon capture is vital to meeting climate goals, scientists tell green critics

Supporters insist that storage technology is not a costly mistake but the best way for UK to cut emissions from heavy industry

Robin McKie

Sun 17 Jan 2021 04.36 AEDT

Engineers and geologists have strongly criticised green groups who last week claimed that carbon capture and storage schemes – for reducing fossil fuel emissions – are costly mistakes.

The scientists insisted that such schemes are vital weapons in the battle against global heating and warn that failure to set up ways to trap carbon dioxide and store it underground would make it almost impossible to hold net emissions to below zero by 2050.

“Carbon capture and storage is going to be the only effective way we have in the short term to prevent our steel industry, cement manufacture and many other processes from continuing to pour emissions into the atmosphere,” said Professor Stuart Haszeldine, of Edinburgh University.

“If we are to have any hope of keeping global temperature [increases] down below 2 degrees C then we desperately need to develop ways to capture and store carbon dioxide.”

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But campaigners at Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland said last week that a reliance on CCS was not a reliable way to decarbonise the energy system, and published a paper last Monday from the Tyndall Manchester climate change research centre that they said proved that CCS has a “history of over-promising and under-delivering”.

Both groups claimed CCS would not make “a meaningful contribution to 2030 climate targets” despite the investment, and instead urged the construction of more renewable energy plants to be given priority.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/16/carbon-capture-vital-meeting-climate-goals-scientists-cut-emissions

It is all kind of entertaining in a macabre way, once you get past the sadness of watching such a stupendous waste of all that taxpayer’s money.

In my opinion there is no chance either camp will achieve anything useful.

At 50 degrees North, Britain will never build enough renewables to replace fossil fuel. Even if I’m wrong, at best Britain would end up with what they already have – the ability to produce electricity.

Carbon capture – what can you say? If you pump all the empty North Sea gas wells full of CO2, you provide a cash bonanza for people who thought their exhausted fossil fuel claims were worthless – kind of like a lottery win for billionaires, where ordinary taxpayers pay for the tickets.