Labour would be making a grave mistake pouring money into Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) - Yorkshire Post Letters

I feel for Labour politicians as they take on the mess caused by the last 14 years of Tory government failure and try to chart a constructive way forward through the devastation left behind. They have some tough times ahead and hard decisions to make.

Whether to pour money into Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is due to be decided in September 2024. £1bn of public investment has been earmarked within the new National Wealth Fund to develop CCS, with the hope that an additional £3bn of private finance will follow. Should it go ahead?

Three key reasons why not. First - CCS is planned for the purpose of burning LNG (liquified natural gas) and capturing post-combustion carbon. However, methane is a very dangerous greenhouse gas and the process of extracting, liquefying, transporting and re-gasifying LNG leaks large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, worsening climate breakdown.

Carbon Tracker estimates that just one gas burning electricity plant will have a footprint 20-40 million tonnes of carbon including these leaks.

Second – that’s assuming CCS is 90 per cent effective in capturing carbon when most installations do not achieve anywhere near that.

Third - it is terribly expensive, prohibitively so. To spend £1bn is likely to be a waste of money. To use it at scale would be an astronomical cost better spent on renewables.

Andrew Boswell, a retired scientist, has launched a legal challenge against Net Zero Teesside, a gas fired power station planning to use CCS. He challenged BP’s and Equinor’s carbon calculations as being badly underestimated. The previous Government agreed but still approved the project. This challenge is planned to be decided in October 2024.

For Labour to proceed with this investment would be a very bad mistake. They must reconsider.