The government said the move would give industry confidence to invest in the UK, attracting £8bn of private investment, directly creating 4,000 jobs and supporting 50,000 in the long term.
It will also help remove 8.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year, officials said.
The projects are expected to start storing captured carbon from 2028.
Although much of the money will only start flowing after carbon capture operations begin, billions will have to be spent in the next few years, building the infrastructure needed. Yet nobody in the world has yet proven that carbon capture can work commercially at scale. So we could end up chucking billions down the drain.
And only 8.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will end up being captured a year. The UK’s total emissions total 327 million tonnes, so wasting £22 billion of our money will barely make a dent.
To make matters worse, carbon capture projects don’t capture all of the carbon dioxide, so the saving will likely be even less than claimed. Then there are the upstream emissions to take account of – using natural gas from, say Qatar, involves methane emissions at the well heads, pipeline losses and emissions resulting from liquefying and transporting the stuff. When these are taken into account, net emission savings will be tiny or non-existent. The government is only concerned about emissions that appear on the UK’s balance sheet.
Of course the admission that the UK will still need natural gas makes a nonsense of Miliband’s desire to shut down North Sea gas as soon as possible...
