From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
Paul Homewood
Miliband’s £22bn carbon capture spree is a waste of money, warns Octopus boss
The Green Blob is arguing amongst itself about carbon capture, reports the Telegraph.
Greg Jackson, boss of Octopus, thinks Miliband’s £22 billion bung is a waste of money, and should be spent building more wind farms instead.
He said: “Some of the stuff we’re doing on climate or in energy at the moment is the equivalent of trying to defend the abacus industry once calculators had been invented.
“I don’t think there are any examples in the power sector globally of cost-effective carbon capture and storage.
“We’d be better off spending any money that we’re putting into that on building out more renewable generation in more locations.”
Talk about pots and kettles! Wind mills are hardly the height of technology. But Jackson is of course right that carbon capture is still unproven and will inevitably be a waste of money.
But Jackson did not seem to realise the irony when he commented that it was competition rather than subsidies that should be driving the UK’s energy transition.
Does he not know that subsidies for renewable energy have cost close to £100 billion already, and will continue to rise?
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Hard earnt tax payers money, it’s criminal.
Hard
earnt borrowed tax payers money, it’s criminal.Hard
borrowedstolen taxpayers’ money…Elections have consequences!
They don’t unless a non-captured party wins. Uniparty ding-dongs change nothing.
Wind and solar are subsidy mines.
And it’s mines in the military sense not resource.
Trump says if they put up a windmill within sight of your house, your house will lose half its value.
The over-taxed, over-regulated, already impoverished UK people are super-screwed, trying to make ends meet in a near-zero, real growth UK economy, with lots of low-pay, bullshit jobs and lots of woke, leftist bureaucrats, while also paying for illegal aliens of different cultures from all over, who have no skills, no training, no education, and often are good at crime, murdering and creating chaos, the dregs of foreign societies sent by their governments, in cahoots with NGOs, to Maine, getting free housing, free food, a never-empty credit card, free healthcare, free education and whatever else they want.
These UK people often have to put up with the visual ugliness of hundreds of windmills, that are often idle, because of too little wind year round, and many acres of solar panels, that are often covered with snow in winter
Same old nonsense: “We’d be better off spending any money that we’re putting into that on building out more renewable generation”
We most certainly would not. The figures say it all.
Coal – 24 MegaJoules/kg
Oil – 45 MJ/kg
Gas – 55 MJ/kg
Uranium – ~4,000,000 MJ/kg
As against…
Lithium ion battery – < 1 MJ/kg
Wind – 5 to 20 watts/metre^2
Solar – 2 to 3 watts/metre^2
But then, he would say that…
In spite of its drawbacks, CCS does allow 24/7 operation of a power plant as opposed to wind and solar.
Is that a joke?
No, it’s true. It’s a technical point, I admit.
No, it’s a joke.
CCS doesn’t work, – and even if it did it is wholly unnecessary.
Agreed. As I said, it is a technical point.
No, it isn’t. You have convinced yourself that it is.
I’m sorry, but it can work, witness the PetraNova project in Texas and the Saskatchewan project in Canada. Both were heavily subsidized and PetraNova shut down for economic reasons in 2020. It was later restarted in 2023 after NRG’s 50% stake was purchased for a song by a Japanese company.
The Sask project has had a number of problems. It is also owned and operated by Sask Power, a government owned company. They were told by the Canadian government all fossil plants had to reduce their CO2, so they had no choice. But it remains the only CCS project in Canada.
The vital point to understand is quite simple
“even if it did [work] it is wholly unnecessary.
I hope that’s cleared any confusion up.
I agree, strat.
That’s not quite true….from a power plant, yes…but there are other projects capturing industrial CO2 emissions and injecting them into mature oil fields for enhanced recovery, Shell’s Quest, Enhance’s Clive, Whitecap Resources Weyburn come to mind. The sequestered CO2 is the equivalent of tens of thousands of vehicle tailpipe emissions. Really the CO2 molecules from combustion of the original hydrocarbons are being collected and reinjected underground with a net combustion of the hydrogen only….admittedly not very efficiently but closer to economical than farming biofuels by photosynthesis….and much more efficiently than say…collection of dry cow dung…
PetraNova is a great example of CCUS (vs CCS). They sequestered ~90% of the CO2 from a coal-fired power plant in Fort Bend County by injecting it into an old oil field 80 miles to the west. This increased production from a few hundred bbl/d up to over 3,000 bbl/d.
Indeed. And in certain circumstances, you can actually re-capture CO2 that gets produced when doing a CO2 flood in an oil or gas well. I visited such a site in Wyoming. Also, of some the injected CO2 from EOR stays in the ground.
I attended a conference where the Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy supported EOR for just that reason. He said if we spun up EOR, we would get large amounts of oil and sequester large amounts of CO2 for much less cost and trouble than CCS (although he was talking about CCUS). I generally leave out the “U” since most people don’t understand.
Recycling the CO2 is the norm. Denbury (now part of ExxonMobil) actually produces “Carbon negative” oil from ~25% of their CO2 EOR fields.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/29/energy-transition-blue-oil-edition/
strativarius and oeman50 – I wish you two would stop squabbling. What really matters is that the greenies think it works, thus giving their blessing to the use of fossil fuels instead of the unreliable alternatives. Who cares if it doesn’t actually work?
Squabbling?
You can show me at your leisure how…
CCS works
CCS is actually required
Startivarius: I’m not for it – it’s probably a waste of money but you seem to have missed my point: if it gives us a more-reliable electricity supply becuase it has the blessing of the eco-loons, why complain?
It’s not even a truthful “technical point”, clearly, as many fossil-fueled power plants are currently operating successfully 24/7 without CCS.
It is ridiculous to state, in today’s real world, that “CCS does allow 24/7 operation of a power plant as opposed to wind and solar.”
It looks like I have to get pedantic. In a CO2 constrained regulatory environment, like “zero by ’50,” it can be used. In fact, almost ALL fossil fueled power plants operate without CCS.
And there is still a Biden-era regulation on the books that requires CCS for fossils plants to continue operating past certain deadlines. Thank goodness, Trump has promised to get that withdrawn.
Certainly had me ROTFLMAO
Power plants operate 24/7 with and without CCS.
Power generation from unicorn farts can allow 24/7 operation, as well, and it’s no less feasible than CCS. Who knows, maybe we can raise unicorns in the ‘carbon’ (sic) storage bins.
Yes, but unicorn farts are harder to store than hydrogen…
Right up there with Demon’s Breath
Apparently Demon’s Breath comes in a bottle: https://www.facebook.com/demonsbreathGHS/ 🙂
He just wants to go from one stupid “solution” to another stupid “solution”. And thinks he is clever for doing so.
No he just wants to keep the subsidies coming in – he’s got very rich on them.
Too much mixing of energy, power, mass and length in the units. I probably agree with the general point but the data does not speak for itself.
“Greg Jackson, boss of Octopus, thinks Miliband’s £22 billion bung is a waste of money, and should be spent building more wind farms instead.”
What a twonk.
“the equivalent of trying to defend the abacus industry once calculators had been invented”
This from a builder of wind farms has to go down as the stupidest comment ever! Wind farms are not even at the level of an abacus – they are like counting on your fingers.
When I need to do complex mathematical computations… I take my socks off (:-))
I have an old trusty slide rule…. No batteries or electricity needed.
Have you tried sliding it lately? I’ve several, wanted to show my physics major daughter, all were stuck!
It slides still
My three plastic ones still work.
Taking your socks off only lets you count to 24, there are 24 hours in a day
Err… how many toes have you got, Redge?
Just the usual – 12 fingers and 12 toes
Bet you’re a great swimmer!
If you do it in binary, you can count up to 1024.
Don’t you have to be LBGT MGT RAM BAM THNK U MAN (OR PEEPS WID WUMES – let’s not be sexist here) to be binary or is that non-binary – sorry I can’t keep up with the new designations
Ah, but someone in the wind farm loop harvests a lot of money.
A lot of taxpayer money.
Carbon capture is just the latest scam to part a fool from his money.
Is it any wonder that Ed Miliband is buying into it!
Not in the slightest.
re: “Carbon Capture A Waste Of Money, Says Octopus Boss ”
Well, they’re not ‘capturing carbon‘, per se, anyway, so its a lie to begin with.
Said in a squeaky Monty Python type voice: “Well, really, we’re going to capture ALL COMBUSTION GASES”
As the saying goes: *Good luck with that. (And like, where are you going to put them?)
*intending to be sarcastic here
Good point. One of CCS’s major drawbacks is the “S” part, storage. Many places do not have access to geologic storage unless they build an expensive pipeline. And try to build a CO2 pipeline in a populated area? The crazies will come out and fight tooth-and-nail.
I doubt any geologic storage would be safe. Who wants to volunteer to live next to one?
You’d actually be living above it, not next to it… 😉
Not if you are a cave dweller !!
Until it leaks.
How about played out oil fields in the North Sea, for example, like what is being done by the Sleipner Project?
And the fact that natural gas has accumulated in geologic storage for eons indicates it is technically possible. Don’t get me wrong, it would still be upsetting to anyone nearby. This has been demonstrated a number of times for proposed projects.
The problem with depleted oil and gas fields is the presence of abandoned oi and gas wells. Unless the wells were properly plugged and abandoned, they pose serious risks as leak pathways.
The ideal location would be in synclines, away from the old fields, usually on anticlinal structures.
I’ll bow to your considerable expertise in this field. The regulations governing storage sies (at least in the US) require identifying and avoiding abandoned wells as potential leak pathways. But slips ups occur…..
The CCS regulations in the US are extremely strict (UIC Class VI) The funny thing is that the regulations for CO2 injection wells for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) are fairly lax (UIC Class II)..
https://www.epa.gov/uic
The UK contributes a bit less than 1% to annual world wide man-made CO2 emissions. Even if the nation could cease all such emissions and even if the modeled temperature increase are correct the net result would be a 0.02 or 0.03 degree reduction – in no way even measurable. Why not simply make a deal with China – give them all of the money being spent by the UK on climate change to build more windmills and the result might be detectable, possibly, and the UK will strengthen its virtue signal while going bankrupt nonetheless. Virtue is what the country is going for right? It can’t be anything else.
Carbon capture is a waste of money, and so is building windmills.
How about building a nuclear reactor or two? Ever thought of that?
I wondered a few comments above… what would the relative danger be, living above an underground CCS vault and living a few miles from a nuclear reactor or two? Likelihood of CCS rupture seems unknowable. In both situations, the worst (yes unlikely) case is death, so I fell back on what’s the almost-worst result, cancer vs brain damage, then landed in a happy capitalist place – how much does the house cost, and are the appliances nice?
There are some new much safer nuclear reactor designs becoming available.
Here is a link to one in China.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6241/china-pebblebed-reactor-passes-meltdown-test/
Whether or not it’s a waste of money, a coal or natural gas power plant can generate electricity irrespective of the weather, with or without CCS.
The windfarm can only generate electricity when the wind velocity is just right.
Enter Goldilocks…
And remember that Goldilocks was a trespasser and a thief.
They operate just the same without it, and the CO2 emissions are a great benefit to the world. The attempt to drive down CO2 emissions is not founded on science. No actions to attempt this have affected the measured atmospheric CO2 one bit.
With CCS its net generation is much lower.
If the police saw this person why would a strip search not be justified?
If it were left to competition, there would be no energy transition.
There is no energy transition… Never has been… Never will be.
Someone explain me like I’m 5 what the benefit of CCS is? It cost money and in return what do you get? We could also 3 people, one dig a hole, the other fills it with carbon emission and the third fills the hole. Look, green jobs!
The reason why the west is bankrupt and buried with never enough taxes is because we produce nothing. CCS produces nothing. Green technologies (wind and solar) produces nothing. The reason why China is thriving is because they produce stuff, creating wealth they call it. It seems no one has a basic understanding of those things anymore. But but you are wrong they always say. Yes, I’m wrong, that’s why currently everything is going so well.
It’s easy to explain it to a 5 year old – Because I told you so.
When the government tells industry that it has to reduce GHG emissions, CCS is pretty well the only way to consume fossil fuels while reducing net GHG emissions. CCS only makes sense in a regulatory environment where GHG emission reductions are mandated.
That is the regulatory environment in much of Europe. It was the regulatory environment here in the USA from 2009-2016 and 2021-2024. It won’t be the regulatory environment here for the next 4-12 years.
Before we go looking for “examples”, how about we first look for logic?
Earth’s atmosphere is considered to be well-mixed, particularly across the northern hemisphere and separately across the southern hemisphere. Therefore, no matter how much “carbon” (i.e., CO2) is effectively captured and stored (hah!) in the UK, it is a simple fact that China and India are all too happy to emit many times that amount, on any foreseeable time basis, far into the future.
Cost-effective or not, CCS is a pipe dream given a global atmosphere and the attitudes of the nations involved.
How can it possibly be cost-effective. It raises the cost for less electricity available for the grid.
China will fire up a few more coal plants and gladly produce and sell us all of the carbon capture plants that we want. The West relies on a science community that has been corrupted by Marxism to guide our energy policy. Chins and a few undeveloped countries are the prime beneficiaries of this policy.
Minibrain is totally out of his depth and a real problem for the integrity of the uk
Geez just when you think they might be seeing the light they say something even more stupid.
At the MLO in Hawaii the concentration of CO2 in dry air is 425 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has 0.839 g of CO2. Why is the concentration of CO2 in the air so low? Because there are at least six sinks for capture of CO2. These are:
No. 1 Plants on the land.
No. 2 Plants life in the oceans and in fresh water
No. 3 The oceans and surface fresh water.
No. 4 Shellfish and corals
No. 5 Snails on the land and in the waters
No. 6 Micro organism whole skeletons are made from CaCO3
The pH of the oceans is about 8.2. A portion of the CO2 that is absorbed by the oceans
is converted to bicarbonate anion, which is used to make shells.
A liter of cold water can contain up to 3.3 g of CO2. A can of soda pop or beer contains
about 1 g of CO2.
We really do not have to worry about CO2 because Mother Nature is capturing and storing most all of the CO2 produced by the use of fossil fuels, and 8 billion pounds of CO2 exhaled by humans everyday.
Because there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on our global climate system. The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by science.
Perhaps he realized it quite well that if the subsidies go then the wind and solar and tree burning go, so there will be a chance to return to a rational power system.