Eight years ago, on this day, February 3, 2015, a workshop brought together industry types with government types to talk through how to accelerate the reduction of carbon emissions during the making of steel and glass etc.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 401ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The UK Government had started paying a little bit of attention to the need for not just power sector decarbonisation, but also decarbonisation of the industrial processes. In 2013 the Department for Energy and Climate Change and Business Innovation and Skills had launched a process of consultation for eight sectors.
This workshop was the culmination of those efforts.
What happened next
In November 2015, George Osborne pulled the plug on CCS and then there was a process of reconstruction of the CCS image. For more about this and what happened next, see my blog on the Sussex Energy Group website “how carbon capture was brought back from the dead, and what happens next”
What I think we can learn from this
Decarbonizing industrial processes is incredibly complicated, there are many moving parts. Energy efficiency and material substitution will take you so far but, beyond that we need some carbon capture and storage. Building that infrastructure without more customers, i.e. power sector and greenhouse gas removals, is “difficult.”
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References