You may have read a bit about Carbon Capture and Storage recently. CCS is (still) being used as a way to avoid asking really hard questions about our future as a species (that is not hyperbole). A thread.
1/13
200 yrs ago, in 1824, a French scientist, Fourier, proved that SOMETHING in the atmosphere was trapping some heat from the Sun. If not, the planet would be much much colder. 30 yrs later Eunice Foote and John Tyndall showed carbon dioxide (C02) was a ‘greenhouse gas’.
2/13
The basic problem is when humans burn oil, coal and gas (“fossil fuels”) for energy, heat, making stuff, carbon dioxide is released as a by-product. Levels of C02 in the atmosphere have gone from 280ppm 200 yrs ago to 422 today. And climbing. Heat is trapped.
3/13
CCS is supposed to stop some of the C02 getting into the atmosphere. But even if (and it is a HUGE IF) it worked perfectly, at scale, it would be merely slowing down the increase of C02 in the atmosphere. Again, C02 traps heat. Too much heat is Really Bad.
4/13
CCS as a set of technologies is simultaneously old and new (as I call it here – Schrodinger’s Cat of a technology.
In the UK, there was brief interest in CCS in the late 1980s, but it really only kicked up in early 2000s.
5/13
Oh, who am I? I’m the guy who “wrote the book” about the “CCS in the UK: History, politics and policies”.
Anyhoo. BP tried to get taxpayer support for a pilot project (DF1) in 2005-7. Treasury said nope.
6/13
Then there was a competition (b/c they always provide efficient winners, oh yes). It ran from 2007 and fizzled out on this day in 2011.
(This was the era of the battle over “capture-ready” coal plants. Another thread…)
7/13
More funding and another competition followed. In November 2015 George Osborne, then Treasurer, dismissively kneecapped it. Industry was furious. No, FUCKING FURIOUS. It looked like CCS might be dead. Then came the Kipling Manoeuvre….
8/13
From 2018 to now, there has been rhetorical support for CCS. And endless consultations and dribs and drabs of (big) money. But the future is not clear.
9/13
My guesstimate fwiw is
a) some projects will be begun
b) there will be fierce opposition from some locals and NGOs
c) There will be very entrenched positions
d) The winner will be … ???
10/13
This matters because we have
a) Limited money
b) Policy bandwidth and
c) Even less time (actually, net zero time)
To sort all this out.
11/13
I will be trying to point out the gaps and silences in the positions of pro and anti-CCS types.
(My position – defo a case for industrial ccS, but oil & gas sector will use that as figleaf).
My writing on CCS is here.
12/13
Meanwhile, emissions climb, concentrations climb, temperatures cli… rocket. And the consequences move from the innocent to the culpable.
Only you buying my book can prevent catastrophe.
13/13