New life for #CCS in UK Clean Growth Strategy

Humans aren’t quite done with finding ways to release carbon into the atmosphere just yet. However, the emergence of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) means the harmful impacts of mankind’s love affair with carbon-intensive activities can be mitigated significantly.

In the UK, the technology has recently resurfaced as a key element of the government’s environmental agenda. With £100 million earmarked for investment in the technology, Climate Change Minister Claire Perry has announced that she will be convening a taskforce to devise ways of delivering carbon capture and storage plants more effectively.

And the government’s aim isn’t only to improve how the UK manages its carbon problem, but to become a leader in the field globally, with Perry saying:  “We want the prize of global leadership in the area: we want to be the people who break the deadlock, deploy CCS in the UK and capture the export opportunities.”

This is certainly ambitious given the amount of catching up the UK has to do in this area when compared with other countries. Carbon capture plants are progressing in the US, albeit falteringly at times. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Southern Company, for example, has announced that it has completed an initial demonstration phase of carbon capture at Southern’s coal-fired Plant Barry in Alabama, in which it was able to recover more than 90% of carbon dioxide, send it through a 10-mile pipeline and then inject it underground.

And in Iceland, innovative Switzerland-based start-up Climeworks has successful completed its “moonshoot” by introducing the first system that directly sucks CO2 from the air and converts emissions to stone, ensuring that they can’t leak back into the atmosphere.

As such, the UK and EU have a distinctly lacklustre record in this area. The UK was roundly criticised in 2015 when it pulled the plug on £1 billion worth of funding for CCS technology after – for the second time – getting cold feet following a costly competition to find bidders wishing to develop CCS plants. According to a business department representative, this was partly due to the belief it would be more politically expedient to send this money in the direction of vote-winners such as ‘flood defences, schools or the health service’ rather than the environment.

The EU has also spent money on CCS technology yet been left with nothing to show for it. In the last decade, it has spent at least €587 million on grants and subsidies for 63 projects and five public procurement projects relating to CCS. Yet because of a litany of issues ranging from the inability to acquire environmental permits in certain countries, to public opposition to storing carbon underground, all of these projects have floundered and the EU has zero CCS demonstration plants.

This is evidence of remarkable short-sightedness, environmentally as well as economically. After all, CCS could not only help the UK cut emissions in line with its own targets, it could also boost job creation and help preserve existing ones. For example, a planned CCS plant in the industry-heavy area of Teeside, in the north-east of England, is estimated to have the potential to create 5,900 permanent new jobs and 1,200 construction jobs as well as futureproofing many more chemical and processing roles in the area.

And the economic benefits need not be limited to the areas surrounding these plants. While Britain may have stated its aim to phase out its use of fossil fuels, not many countries are coming along for the ride – especially in the developing world where coal is fundamental to their development. Which is why the US decided this summer to push the World Bank to reverse its stance and finance clean coal projects, seen as key for developing markets.

For instance, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the amount of coal-generated electricity in non-OECD countries will grow by nearly 43% to 2040. As a result, the market for CCS in the developing world will be substantial, and making development funding available for such technologies is needed now more than ever. Carbon capture remains one the most effective tools in the world’s armoury to cut the 14% of emissions by 2060 in order to limit the global rise in temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Japan has already realized that the value of developing carbon-reduction technology goes far beyond the domestic sphere, and is supporting industry players’ attempts to export low-emission gas and coal thermal power generation systems to developing counties. If Japan has spotted this gap in the market, why are the UK and the EU not similarly enthusiastic about carving their own niche in CCS technology?

According to Eric Masanet, the head of the IAE’s Energy Demand Technology Unit, the time for prevaricating is over: the world needs to ‘get real’ on CCS. And, he emphasised, the clock is ticking: "We need to go from where we are today, from negligible amounts of CCS deployment, to capturing more than 10,000 million tons of CO2 (that's 10 gigatons) per year by the year 2060.”

We know what we need to do, and we know broadly what technology is required to do it, yet so many projects to develop viable CCS technology seem to be abortive. The UK government’s new commitment to the development of CCS technology should give us hope that the tide is turning and the need for carbon capture is being taken more seriously. If coupled with a more flexible policy from multilateral development banks such as the World Bank, such projects would take off. The long term gains – environmentally and economically – should not be underestimated.

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