Climate scientists and oil industry agree: carbon capture is no 'fairytale'

Oil industry expertise at the St Fergus gas plant and elsewhere in the North East makes it a good place to refine carbon capture and storage technology. Picture: Andy Buchanan | AFP via Getty Images

The debate over carbon capture and storage technology is sometimes framed as a battle between environmentalists and the oil industry, with the former dismissing it as a smokescreen deployed to obscure the need to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels and the latter insisting it has a viable future.

However, the reality is that climate experts and the oil industry are, to an extent, on the same page. For example, after campaigning journalist George Monbiot wrote an article in the Guardian about what he supposed was a “great carbon capture con”, suggesting climate change could be tackled without it, Oxford University Professor Myles Allen – dubbed "the physicist behind net zero” – and others wrote a letter saying “physics says otherwise”.

Furthermore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UK Climate Change Committee and the International Energy Agency, among others, have also expressed the view that it is part of efforts to reach net zero and deal with the problem of global warming.

READ MORE: Only £12m of promised £200m of UK grant funding will be handed over to Acorn carbon capture project

‘Delivering results’

Carbon capture is a proven technology, the problem has been making it a commercially viable one. However, a recent report identified 113 commercial facilities worldwide, up from 77 the previous year, which the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, a trade body, said demonstrated that “the technology is delivering results at scale”. “The UK’s first projects have already awarded more than £4 billion in supply chain contracts, supporting around 350 UK companies and 5,500 construction jobs,” it added.

It is, therefore, highly regrettable that Labour appears to be getting cold feet about the Acorn carbon capture project at St Fergus near Peterhead, with a promised £200 million grant turned into just £12m with loans making up the rest.

Given the oil industry expertise in Aberdeenshire and the proximity to wells that could be used to store the captured carbon, there are few better places to develop and refine the technology.

While the SNP government may be over-relying on carbon capture to meet its climate targets without actually doing the necessary hard work, it is not the “fairytale” that some suggest. Instead, it is a genuine industrial opportunity and a vital weapon in the fight against climate change.