David Toke on Tory leader contenders move against climate action
[First published in the print magazine prior to the Conservative leadership election completing]
It looks like the Conservatives” commitment to net zero is nearing its end, judging by statements from the only two candidates left in the “race” to become the next Tory Leader. Of the two, Kemi Badenoch seems the least worst option, having been quoted by Lewis Goodall as saying “I’m not a climate sceptic. But I am a net zero sceptic. I did not become an MP to deliver a plan led by @Ed_Miliband.” Robert Jenrick is even worse than this (yes, it’s possible!) as he is quoted as saying, by the bulletin Desmog, that the net zero target is “dangerous fantasy green politics unmoored from reality”.
This is depressing to greens who are used to Tory leaders at least going through the motions of support for the 2050 net zero target. Remember this was set up by the Government during the latter days of Theresa May’s reign and apparently vigorously embraced by her successor, Boris Johnson. The target was kept on during Rishi Sunak’s time in office, although the green Conservative minister Ben Goldsmith resigned his ministerial position on account of Sunak’s “disinterest” in environmental policies. Since then, and the new barely hidden Tory mission of becoming Reform not-so-lite, the anti-climate action rhetoric of Tory leaders is increasing!
I must say that the attacks on the alleged impracticality of net zero policies stack up in contrast to the ambitious targets for cutting immigration that the Conservatives proclaimed election after election. They did not have a clue how to achieve their immigration targets, but they still proclaimed them. At least with the net zero target we have an excellent idea of the good progress that can be made to the targets by pursuing some very practical policies. Some of these are being pursued by Labour, but other allegedly “net zero” initiatives may be not so helpful…..
Carbon capture and storage?
We’ve heard a lot in the news recently about how carbon capture and storage (CCS) of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major solution to decarbonisation. The current government has picked up the file from the last Government and projected £22 billion spending on this. But the global figures suggest CCS is a big-almost-nothing. The results so far are that this is having an almost insignificant effect on global decarbonisation. (Please see some data analysis on David Toke’s “Energy Revolutions” blog). Rather it is looking like CCS funding from Governments is a good way of funnelling money into the fossil fuel and chemicals industry with very little to show for combatting climate change. Indeed, this CCS sector is eerily technologically redundant in many of the same ways as nuclear power.
What is striking about CCS processes is that they are seriously dogged by environmental problems – the biggest of all simply being the fact that they do not capture all the carbon produced from the fossil fuels that the technologies they are “cleaning” use. So far the power plant that have been operational have struggled to get close to the target of 90% CO2 removal that their design specifications have involved. Yet 90 per cent removal is simply not good enough in a world where we are looking for zero greenhouse gas outputs. There will be increasing pressures to improve this outcome so that the removal rate approaches 100 per cent. But doing this will increase costs. A similar problem afflicts the production of so-called blue hydrogen from methane. Proponents of the technology argue that CO2 capture rates can be improved beyond 90 per cent. That may well be the case. But the issue here is that this will be at extra cost. The result will be, in commercial terms, a rate of negative productivity for CCS technology.
Moreover, the whole fossil fuel CCS activity adds no intrinsic value to the product – energy services – that is being sold already. Indeed, the various add-ons only reduce the efficiency of use of the raw materials (the fossil fuels) in the first place to generate useful energy. The technology starts off as an inferior commercial proposition to conventional fossil fuel commercial activities, and the pressures for improvements are going to increase costs, not reduce them.
CCS is not going very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers. No commercial operation is going to contract for the CCS “product”. There is a very limited market for CO2 itself and no commercial market for storing carbon dioxide outside of direct Government support. For how long can this drain on our public spending resources carry on?