Billions Spent, Atmosphere Doesn’t Notice

Guest Post By Willis Eschenbach (@WEschenbach on X—they said “oops, our bad” and reactivated my account. Go figure.)

Let’s take a deep, calming breath and contemplate the economic magic trick of the decade: carbon capture à la King Charles and Prime Minister Starmer. Picture this: The UK government throws £21.7 billion with a B (which happens to be nearly $29.3 billion Yankee bucks) into two grand, green steel-and-concrete machines in Teesside and Merseyside. These beauties, when (if) they fire up in 2028, will snatch up to 8.5 million tonnes of CO₂ out of the slipstream every year. This is called “CCS”, for Carbon Capture and Storage.

Oh, and did I mention that they’re pumping the CO2 offshore and injecting it underground? The CO2 will be injected into the Endurance saline aquifer, a geological formation under the North Sea around 1,300–1,500 meters below the seabed … and they say there’s a “99.9% chance” that this method will actually work. And they know that because their whiz-bang computer models say so, so shut up and go along with the plan.

Now, I can already hear the thunderous applause from the well-meaning climate crusaders. Brace yourself. That annual haul? It’s a minuscule 0.02% of global CO₂ emissions—yes, friends, two hundredths of a percent. For those playing along at home, even if the plant runs flawlessly for two decades, the lifetime grand total is 170 million tonnes of CO₂—a drop in the atmospheric bucket.

Here’s where the mathematical calculations graduate from tragicomedy to farce.

The estimated running costs are $270 per tonne, not counting the up-front building costs. Stack up the running costs and the $29 billion capital outlay, and the UK is staring down the barrel of $75.2 billion total over 20 years, or about $443 per tonne captured.

Eight and a half million tonnes per year times $443 per tonne is an ongoing UK expense of $3.8 billion each and every year. Call it four billion dollars per year—the government’s involved, so you know it will be that much, probably more.

Think of all the good that money could do. People don’t realize how big four billion dollars is. Here’s an example.

Putting in a village-level water well in Africa costs on the order of fifteen thousand dollars. Call it twenty kilobucks once all the palms are greased.

Four billion dollars is enough to put in a village-level well in a total of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND VILLAGES.

Or to put it another way, the UK has about eight thousand towns and cities that have a population of 1,000 to 100,000 people.

Four billion is enough to give each of those eight thousand towns and cities half a million dollars each (£375,000)… every year. You reckon your city could do with half a megabuck every single year to fix potholes or whatever?

And instead of drilling water wells or fixing potholes or doing any of the other hundred things that would actually make a difference in the real world, that four BILLION dollars is getting blown, not once, but on average every year for the lifetime of the plant, to sequester a sliver of the world’s atmospheric CO2.

How small a sliver? Too small to even measure.

Let’s get ambitious. Suppose, for a moment, that the planet’s policymakers lose their collective minds and try to scale this millions of tonnes of sequestered CO2 up to planet-sized billions of tonnes of CO2.

To capture and store an entire year’s 37 billion tonnes worth of emissions at these rates would cost a cool $16.3 trillion a year. You read that right. That’s “trillion,” with a “t,” not a typo. Per year. Forget new schools, roads, or hospitals. We’ll be laying pipeline to Greenland and borrowing from Martians just to keep the CCS meters spinning.

To recap: the UK’s flagship CCS installation will sequester annual emissions so tiny you’d find bigger fractions in a decimal quiz, at a price per tonne you’d expect to see on a luxury cruise. Multiply that by global scale, and you’re deep into the financial badlands.

But take heart! Even if you can’t afford gas, groceries, or electricity, for a trifling $16 trillion a year, we might—maybe—keep the atmospheric needle from twitching.

Or you good UK folks could simply exhale quietly, let someone else fund the revolution, and fix your potholes.

Best to all,

w.