Thirteen years ago, on this day, June 30, 2010, DECC Minister, Gregory Barker, stated that the Government was committed to 5 GW of CCS by 2020 in a debate on 30 June 2010:
“… the coalition Government are committed to carbon capture and storage, which will be a major plank in our efforts to decarbonise our energy supply by 2030; we are committed to the generation of 5 GW of CCS by 2020. We see the potential of CCS, not just for our domestic use and as part of our plan to decarbonise the economy, but as a huge potential export industry for the UK in which we can not only capture new markets for British jobs, but help the world in striving to decarbonise the global economy.42”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the new coalition government was making the right noises after the previous Brown government had established a CCS competition in 2007.
What I think we can learn from this is that the promises around CCS have been persistent. The delivery, not so much.
What happened next
The first competition was abandoned. A new competition set up in 2012 was unilaterally abandoned in 2015 and there has been a long slow process of getting CCS going again since then.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..