UK Plans First Carbon Capture Project For Mid-2020s

The UK plans to launch its first carbon capture, utilization and storage project by the middle of next decade after the initial CCUS momentum died out earlier in the current decade. That’s according to S&P Global Platts, which quoted the UK’s energy minister, Claire Perry, who spoke ahead of next week’s COP24 conference on climate change in Poland.

The idea of the new carbon capture drive, which has won the support of the International Energy Agency’s head, Fatih Birol, is to capture carbon emissions from carbon-intensive industries--which account for almost a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions--and power plants and either reuse it or store it. One type of storage site could be depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Perry’s spending plans in this respect include US$25 million (20 million pounds) to be allocated for the installation of carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies at relevant sites and US$401.57 million (315 million pounds) for decarbonizing these sites. The goal is to start implementing carbon capture, utilization, and storage at scale in the 2030s.

The announcement from the UK energy ministry comes on the heels of a UN report that warned carbon emissions are on the rise again, for the first time in three years. The United Nations Environment Programme reported that carbon emissions were up last year, after three years of declines. This means governments around the world will need to boost their efforts in the direction of arresting this trend and eventually reversing it if there is to be any hope of the world ever accomplishing the goal stipulated in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of curbing the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.

UNEP’s Deputy Executive Director commented at the time that “If the IPCC report represented a global fire alarm, this report is the arson investigation. The science is clear; for all the ambitious climate action we’ve seen – governments need to move faster and with greater urgency. We’re feeding this fire while the means to extinguish it are within reach.”

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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