by Mike Robinson, RSGS Chief Executive

This week, UK Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced up to £21.7bn of funding over 25 years to launch a carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme which she described as a “major new industry for our country in a new era for clean-energy investment and jobs.” She went on to state that “this game-changing technology will bring 4,000 good jobs and billions of private investment into Teesside and Merseyside – and support 50,000 jobs in the long term, while powering up the rest of the country.”

Clearly it is seen as potentially providing a lot of traditional heavy industry type jobs, so the appeal to Labour seems obvious. But what is CCS, how does it work, does it work and is it the right thing to do?

Truthfully, there's a lot of criticism and uncertainty about carbon capture and storage, but to start with, maybe it makes sense just to remind everybody what it actually means.

What is CCS?

Carbon capture and storage is in essence the process of ‘capturing’ greenhouse gases and sticking them underground, for example using the network of undersea reservoirs that have previously housed oil and gas.

Wherever it is stored, it is vital that it is stored in as chemically stable a way as possible. Solid would be best but it is difficult to do at scale, liquids next, and gases least preferable (but currently most likely). Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be collected wherever they are produced in large quantities, and stored and pumped underground in order to remove them from the atmosphere and seal them away so they no longer influence global warming. To be meaningful, CCS needs to ‘trap’ these gases for hundreds or even thousands of years. Most models of how the world achieves net zero include some CCS.

According to the UK Government’s North Sea Transition Authority, “Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is critical to the UK achieving net zero – government aims to capture and store 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 and over 50 million tonnes per year by 2035.”

So should we celebrate this investment of £22 billion in carbon capture and storage? Well, unfortunately it’s complicated. Carbon capture is still new technology. Although we have a lot of academic expertise in Scotland, it is still not entirely understood, and nor has it ever been demonstrated at scale to the degree that the world needs. So although it may sound like a no-brainer, it isn’t as simple as that.

What are the pros and cons?

For one, CCS is very expensive to do, so it is important that we understand the pros and cons. During a period of persistent austerity, it is even more true that if we choose to invest the multiple billions in CCS we are choosing to prioritise it over other forms of carbon reduction activity. This expense may well also increase the cost of energy in the longer term – and again, is that what we want to see happen?

Probably the biggest concern though is that CCS might not work. Even if we can capture the emissions consistently, and even if we can ‘inject’ them underground, the big question is, will they stay there? Even a relatively small leak would negate the whole process.

CCS is very energy intensive as a process in and of itself. It will only work where there are very significant levels of concentrated emissions from burning fossil fuels, so at cement plants, steel works, power stations or future hydrogen plants. Many very heavy industries with large greenhouse gas emissions are the ones that are most enthusiastic for this technology. And the oil industry sees it both as a way to utilise their knowhow of geology and drilling and as a means to extract more oil and keep burning fossil fuels. This is because injecting pressurised gases underground would facilitate more efficient oil extraction, by re-pressurising existing oil reserves. So whilst there is uncertainty about whether it might successfully store emissions, there is absolute certainty that it will begin by making the problem worse.

There is a question mark too over whether investing in CCS instead of directly in low carbon innovation simply gives carte blanche to heavily polluting industries to carry on with business as usual. It has actually proved possible to simply replace the greenhouse gases in the first place, and clearly the best way to avoid emissions is to not make them in the first place. As a result, some of those areas where CCS seemed inevitable have now reduced, as innovation improves. For instance, the UK no longer has any coal-fired power stations, steel has developed electric arc welding, and low carbon alternatives to cement already exist.

So the other big question is whether this is the best use of our money? With the continuing era of austerity, money is tight in every sphere, every local authority, every school, college and university, the police, the fire service, the NHS… everybody is strapped for cash.

So if we're going to find a large amount of money to invest, how do we best channel it to make the biggest difference to carbon emissions and to people’s lives. Is carbon capture and storage the first thing to do if you have £22 billion available, or are there better uses of that money?

That is the question we should be asking. CCS is something that uses a huge amount of energy in itself, costs a lot to do, might not actually work, and could inhibit further innovation.

Perhaps we should properly insulate every home in the country, fuel our cities through private grid networks, or develop zero carbon energy sources like geothermal and invest more in solar. Perhaps we could invest more in the innovation to do away with the need for greenhouse gases in the first place. We could transform our transport network at a scale and rate that we haven't really managed to do. All of these are legitimate and necessary steps towards net zero.

When money is tight, and given the plethora of things we could and should be doing on climate, is CCS, with all its attendant risks and uncertainties, the right priority?