Ten years ago, on this dy, February 5th, 2014, the rather interesting trade association the Carbon Capture and Storage Association was busy throwing more words and evidence at policymakers, in a tie-in with the TUC.
RE: CCSA Additional Written Evidence to Energy and Climate Change Committee Inquiry into Carbon Capture and Storage
The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) submitted evidence to the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s Inquiry into Carbon Capture and Storage in September 2013. Since then, the CCSA and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) have published the joint report “The Economic Benefits of Carbon Capture and Storage in the UK” on the 4th February 2014 and we would like to bring this report to the attention of the Committee as additional evidence to the Inquiry into CCS.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/48637/pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398.2ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context here was that CCS had already spent 10 years being a “yeah we’re definitely interested” technology in the UK. BP had given up on Miller field in 2007. And the first competition had fizzled out. But now the second competition was well underway. And people were beginning to look beyond the second competition to building an actual ecosystem of facilities, pipelines, storage. And the CCSA and the TUC, while their members probably fought like tooth and dog and cat and nail on issues such as well, wages and terms and conditions etc, they had a common interest in promoting CCS as the saviour of the coal industry and of heavy industry.
What we learn is that technology can have multiple meanings to different organisations, who realise that they have to make common cause.
What happened next. On 25th of November 2015,UK Chancellor George Osborne shat all over CCS. It then took a serious effort to revivify it. And despite that effort, here, we are still without any clarity.
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.
Also on this day:
February 4, 1963 – A UN conference on technology for “less developed areas” starts
February 4, 1993 – Australian business versus the future (spoiler: business wins)
Feb 4, 2002- Global Climate Coalition calls it a day (“Mission accomplished”)