Carbon Capture and Storage support questioned

Government claims it hasn't "closed the door" on supporting the technology's development

Industry has slammed government reassurances that it has not abandoned the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Energy minister Andrea Leadsom said in a letter to the chair of the Commons energy and climate change committee, Angus MacNeil, that the government “has not closed the door” on CCS, and that it has a potentially important role to play in the decarbonisation of industrial and power sectors. 

The letter follows the publication of the committee’s report that heavily criticised the government for pulling funding for two big CCS projects late last year.

The letter said that funding still includes £1.7 million for three companies developing cheaper CCS technology, through the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Energy Entrepreneurship Fund. A £2.5 million project is also investigating potential CCS storage sites in the North and Irish Seas. The department is also supporting a £4.2 million research and development project for a clean energy plant at Grangemouth, Scotland.

Dr Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said that the government’s cancellation of the
£1 billion CCS fund late last year had damaged investor confidence in the technology for the long term and left a “policy vacuum”.

“The government doesn’t want to ‘close the door’ because the UK is going to need CCS in the future. Instead it’s recycling other initiatives and overstating the ability of these activities to deliver cost-competitive CCS,” he said.

“We need cross-party consensus and a credible policy that can deliver industrial-scale CCS. Developers need a route to market for power sector CCS with energy-intensive industries. For cost-effective CCS in the mid-2020s, we also need to start working on carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure.”

The decision last December to cancel the £1 billion CCS ‘commercialisation’ competition surprised many close to the projects.