Thirteen years ago, on this day, December 19, 2010, the CCS dream dies.
“The announcement by the Queensland Government that it plans to transition out of the Zerogen vehicle, does not signal a significant impediment to the continued development and demonstration of CCS technologies in Queensland,” Mr Hillman said. In its announcement today the Queensland Government makes it clear that it remains committed to the development of CCS and will continue to be a significant funder of this technology along with the Commonwealth Government and industry.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2023 it is 421ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the CCS bubble was bursting because promises were not being backed up and investors were taking a long hard look at the numbers and of course by this time it wasn’t clear when or even if there would ever be a carbon price in Australia, and whether it would be high enough. But you’d need a seriously high carbon price to make CCS work and if you had a really high carbon price you’d incentivise other forms of electricity generation such as wind and solar ahead of coal-supported CCS – just the facts of life.
What I think we can learn from this
CCS keeps falling over and it keeps being put back up on its feet, a bit like nuclear, because there are strong lobby groups trying to help it to happen, and it helps the numbers add up.
What happened next
CCS died in Australia but as all has been put on life-support and is now still being supported in 2023 by people who who either too thick to know better or do know better.
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..