Project To Suck Money Out Of Taxpayers Begins In UK

First, I asked perplexity.ai about the project costs and assumptions. Here’s the answer:

===

The SeaCURE carbon capture project, a UK government-funded initiative, aims to remove CO₂ from seawater with a pilot plant at Weymouth’s SEA LIFE Centre. Here’s a detailed breakdown of its costs, scale, and processes: 

Project Cost and Funding

• The pilot received a£3 million grantfrom the UK government[1][5].  

• Operational energy costs are estimated at £100–£258 per tonne of CO₂ removed, depending on technological optimizations (e.g., offshore deployment or pH manipulation)[4].  

CO₂ Removal Capacity

• The pilot plant will process3,000 litres of seawater per minute, removing100 tonnes of CO₂ annually[1][2][5].  

• At scale, the technology could theoretically extract 14 billion tonnes of CO₂ yearly by processing 1% of the ocean’s surface seawater, though this remains speculative[2][3][4].  

CO₂ Handling

• Captured CO₂ is concentrated using charred coconut husks and either repurposed for industrial applications(e.g., building materials) or sequestered underground[2][3][5].  

• The treated seawater is neutralized and returned to the ocean, where it absorbs atmospheric CO₂ until chemically balanced with surrounding water[4][5].  

Cost Inclusions

• The £3 million grant covers pilot construction and operation, but it is unclear if this includes long-term sequestration expenses[1][5].  

• Energy cost estimates from government reports (£100–£258/tonne) focus on capture and processing, not necessarily storage infrastructure[4].  

In summary, SeaCURE’s pilot phase focuses on proving feasibility, with costs and scalability dependent on future optimizations and renewable energy integration. While sequestration is part of the design, detailed cost breakdowns for storage are not explicitly provided in available sources[1][2][4][5].

Citations: 

… omitted because WordPress limits comment length …

===

Great. No mention of sequestration plans or costs.

Next, they say the cost of the scheme ranges up to USD$340 per tonne, not including sequestration. I’ll use the higher figure based on a huge number of historical underestimates of the cost of this kind of nonsense. Then we have to add something on the order of USD$35 per tonne for sequestration. Total, USD$375 per tonne.

Global CO2 emissions are on the order of 39 BILLION tonnes per year. So just to stay even without reducing atmospheric CO2 would cost FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR.

By comparison, the UK annual budget is on the order of USD$1.7 trillion, so it would only cost over eight times the total UK government currently spends each year…

Grrr …

w.