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The UK government has cut winter fuel payments to pensioners while committing £22bn for carbon capture, raising concerns over fiscal priorities.
The government has pledged nearly £22bn to fund projects that capture greenhouse gases from polluting plants and store them underground, as it races to reach strict climate targets. [emphasis, links added]
The plans are designed to generate private investment and jobs in Merseyside and Teesside, two industry-heavy areas that will be home to the new “carbon capture clusters”.
Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News that “today a new era begins”, with a new industry that stops carbon going into the atmosphere providing “good jobs” and shows the government is investing in the country.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the move was “reigniting our industrial heartlands by investing in the industry of the future”, though there are questions about how best to use this expensive technology.
Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) has been developed to combat climate change.
It captures the planet-warming carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels or from heavy industry and puts it to use or stores it underground.
How CCUS can work, by capturing the carbon dioxide emissions from something like a gas plant or cement factory, transporting them through existing gas pipes, and storing them in a depleted oil or gas field under the sea.
It is expensive and difficult, but the UK’s climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), and United Nations scientists say it is essential to get the world to net zero, which the UK is targeting for 2050.
Net zero means cutting emissions as much as possible and offsetting or capturing the stubborn remaining ones.
Today the government has committed up to £21.7bn ($29B) over 25 years, to be given in subsidies to sites in the Teesside and Merseyside “clusters” – from 2028. …snip…
How about the £22bn black hole?
The £21.7bn the government has committed to the project is notably about the same amount as the £22bn black hole Labour says the Conservative government left it with.
But, Sir Keir insisted the CCUS scheme “will unlock billions of private investment” and is certain he will soon be announcing more private investment.
Defending some unpopular decisions the government has made in its first three months, such as cutting the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners, Sir Keir added: “I’m absolutely convinced that only by stabilizing the economy can we attract the investment that we need.”
Will CCUS help jobs and businesses?
The government hopes to fund the first large-scale hydrogen production plant in the UK, and help the oil and gas sector and its transferable skills move over to green industries.
It has been welcomed by industry and the unions, coming just a week after job losses from the closures of Port Talbot Steelworks and Ratcliffe coal power station.
GMB general secretary Gary Smith said the news “shows what leveling up can really mean: good, well-paid jobs reinvigorating communities”.
Does carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) work?
CCUS has made slow progress: promised for decades but barely scaled, with just 45 commercial sites globally, according to the International Energy Agency.
However, it began to pick up in the last few years, with 700 plants now in some stage of development around the world.
The world’s first CCUS plant has stored CO2 under Norway’s waters since 1996, though elsewhere a few concerns linger about whether some projects leak gas.
James Richardson, acting chief executive of the CCC, said: “We can’t hit the country’s targets without CCUS, so this commitment to it is very reassuring.”
Pictured above: LondonEnergy facility will be demolished with the land planned for carbon capture equipment. Photo by Rose Galloway Green on Unsplash
Read rest at Sky News
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