On this day, October 6 in 2005, 17 years after the World Coal body said the greenhouse effect was greatly exaggerated, some people meet in Cambridge to discuss “carbon capture and storage”
This paper summarises the key points from a discussion meeting held at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, on Thursday 6 October 2005. The meeting was held in response to the UK Government Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into carbon capture and storage.
“VIABILITY OF CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE (CCS) AS A CARBON ABATEMENT TECHNOLOGY FOR THE UK: FEASIBILITY AND COSTS”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 377.19ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – the Department of Trade and Industry had just published its “Carbon Abatement Technologies Strategy,” and carbon capture and storage was in the mix… The recent G7 meeting had also hyped it. BP was saying it could do this on its Peterhead facility. It’s all gonna happen, right?
Why this matters.
Technologies go through a long ‘incubation’ period. Lots of workshops, seminars etc. By this time, CCS had already been talked about for a long time…
What happened next?
BP pulled out of the first CCS project in the UK in early 2007. In late 2007 the government announced a competition. That didn’t end well. They announced another. That ended very badly indeed. Third time lucky?