The UK (UK) authorities’s carbon seize, utilization and storage (CCUS) technique is predicated on optimistic assumptions which are “outdated and unrealistic” and will danger locking shoppers right into a “high-cost, fossil-based future”.
That’s in line with a report from the monetary suppose tank Carbon Tracker, who stated that price estimates for deploying CCUS have greater than doubled, and that the necessity for carbon seize might be “a lot smaller”. The just lately launched report, titled “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, argued that cleaner and cheaper options can be found.
In December 2023, the UK authorities unveiled a plan to make the CCUS market within the nation extra aggressive with a $25.27 billion (GBP 20 billion) funding. The funding helps the federal government’s goal of storing 20 million to 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030.
- Advertisement -
The CCUS Imaginative and prescient plan “units out how the UK will transition from early initiatives backed by authorities assist to turning into a aggressive market on this space by 2035, which means UK firms will compete to construct carbon seize services and promote their companies to the world”, in line with an announcement from the UK’s Division for Power Safety and Internet Zero. The division additionally famous that the UK presents sufficient area underneath the North Sea for as much as 78 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The technique was primarily based on the suggestions of the Local weather Change Committee, revealed in The Sixth Carbon Funds in December 2020.
Since then, market circumstances have modified, Carbon Tracker stated. For instance, the necessity for gasoline crops with CCUS “might be one-third of earlier estimates as a result of progress of renewables, battery storage and versatile applied sciences”, the suppose tank stated.
In one other case, the report argued that plans to make use of CCUS to decarbonize metal manufacturing and gas-fired energy crops needs to be deserted, “with each purposes prone to be out-competed by cleaner options”. The report famous that Tata Metal and British Metal are already transferring away from plans to put in CCUS at their UK services in favor of a transfer in the direction of Electrical Arc Furnaces, whereas hydrogen generators are prone to be cheaper sources of versatile energy technology than gas-CCS crops by 2030.
Additional, the Drax conversion, which is the most important carbon seize undertaking within the UK pipeline, may lock taxpayers’ cash into an extended and expensive contract, whereas “the ensuing electrical energy can be as much as thrice costlier for shoppers than offshore wind energy”, Carbon Tracker added.
The UK authorities authorized Drax Energy Restricted’s plans to transform two of its biomass items at Drax Energy Station to bioenergy with carbon seize and storage (BECCS) in January. The federal government stated that the BECCS undertaking would allow the facility plant to proceed to take away roughly 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per yr when each items are totally operational.
“CCUS expertise has confirmed to be rather more advanced and costly than thought, whereas renewables price reductions have dramatically modified the panorama”, Carbon Tracker Affiliate Analyst and report writer Lorenzo Sani stated. “Whereas the federal government is enjoying an vital function in de-risking new initiatives it urgently must revisit its targets and focus its assets on high-value purposes equivalent to cement and hydrogen”.
“Fixing the UK’s carbon market – both by establishing a rising worth ground or, ideally, linking it again to the EU scheme – is the one most vital motion wanted to ship the federal government’s imaginative and prescient of a self-sustaining and aggressive CCUS sector”, Sani stated.
To contact the writer, e mail rocky.teodoro@rigzone.com
