By Jeremy Williams
“We have found that carbon capture and storage in the North Sea can reduce emissions from gas and coal power stations by up to 90%,” said the Labour chancellor. “So we are today publishing proposals for industry wide consultation to move this important environmental advance from research to commercial development.”
The chancellor in question was Gordon Brown, speaking in 2006 as he announced government funding for research into carbon capture and storage. He promised that the first full scale pilot project would open the following year, but in 2007 BP scrapped its billion pound plan in the North Sea.
Fast forward a few years, and it was a different government banging the same drum. “By bringing forward CCS, we could save more than £30bn a year by 2050” said Ed Davey of the coalition, restarting stalled state support for carbon capture, this time with Shell as the main partner. Despite being in the Conservative manifesto, this would not survive the election. The scheme was scrapped in 2015, days before the Paris climate talks and having already cost the taxpayer £100 million.
The Conservatives changed their minds very quickly (hardly surprising, because they changed Prime Ministers very quickly too.) Just two years after David Cameron canned CCS, a new strategy was pledging to “demonstrate international leadership in carbon capture usage and storage.”
Progress was slow, and last year the energy secretary was still promising big things just over the horizon. “The rewards will be unprecedented,” said Claire Coutinho MP as she launched another new policy paper.
With the baton passed back to Labour, now it’s their turn. Last week Keir Starmer announced £22 billion for the technology. Ed Miliband is there at the announcement, as he was when Labour last pledged their support for CCS.
Almost 20 years have passed, hundreds of millions have been spent, and Britain doesn’t have a great deal to show for its support for CCS. So it’s understandable that many feel cynical about this latest round. Official comment from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace both decried it as a waste of money that only served to prolong the use of oil and gas.
There is, however, more to the story. Twenty years ago the focus was on capturing the carbon from coal power plants, so that we could continue to burn coal for electricity. Nobody would discuss that now, with coal eliminated entirely from the power grid.
Later rounds looked at carbon capture at gas power plants. They remain an important source of electricity and will be included here too, but not exclusively.
Starmer moved things one step further by announcing the latest round of funding at a glassworks. This was CCS “for our energy intensive industries like glassmaking here, or cement, or steel, or ceramics.” For industrial towns, this is really important: “The necessary mission of decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation.”
This round of investment in CCS, largely a continuation of the last government’s thinking, centres around CCS ‘hubs’ and hydrogen production rather than individual power plants. These will be in Teesside and Merseyside, both industrial areas of the country where jobs are at risk in carbon intensive industries.
If these industries were to be closed down for the climate, there wouldn’t be any net reduction in emissions. Those jobs would simply be moved overseas, because we will still need glass, cement and steel and we’ll be importing them instead. So capturing the carbon from these industries and storing it in the North Sea could be a climate policy that genuinely cuts emissions, while supporting working communities as part of a just transition.
That’s not how it is being perceived in the wider green movement. George Monbiot called it “demented”, aghast that Labour could commit £21.7 billion to carbon capture when it had cut its ‘green prosperity plan’ from £28 billion to £15 billion a year. What Monbiot doesn’t mention is that the government’s proposed investment is £21.7 billion over 25 years – so it’s not really a fair comparison, nor is it an either/or scenario. We can capture carbon from industry and also insulate homes and invest in renewable energy.
I think CCS is worth a second look, and a little more reflection from the green movement. Consider that workers in the oil and gas industry have transferable skills, from extracting fossil fuels to sequestering carbon. We don’t want to see those workers abandoned like the coal miners were a couple of generations ago. CCS can make use of this workforce, and Labour have spotted it. “The carbon capture, usage and storage industry is expected to support 50,000 good, skilled jobs as the sector matures in the 2030s, helping to support the oil and gas sector’s transition away from high emission fossil fuels by using the transferable expertise of their workforce.”
I may be entirely wrong about this. Labour’s interest in CCS may just be the result of fossil fuel lobbying. It may be another expensive failure. But it’s also possible that the environmental movement’s views on CCS haven’t moved far enough in the last 20 years, and still see it primarily as a technology to prolong fossil fuel use. Sure, you can use it that way, but that’s not the only thing it can do. It can also be a tool for the just transition. If the green movement were more constructive in its attitudes, we could work with the government to make sure that the CCS industry it fosters isn’t one geared to propping up fossil fuels, but instead supports communities and jobs in economically marginalised parts of the country.
This article was previously published on October 16th on the EarthBound report.
Joy in Enough 