Twenty-two billion quid is a lot of money. That’s how much the government is proposing to invest in carbon capture technology. Which sounds like a remarkably determined response to the challenge of combatting climate change. Yet it is encountering an equally remarkable lack of enthusiasm from many environmental campaigners.
There are two very good reasons for the cynicism. One is that it is very hard to make the finances of carbon capture work when you have to use energy to extract the carbon, transport it to a safe location and then store it away for geologically lengthy time periods. The economics of that simply aren’t plausible, unless you are making a lot of money out of doing something else that covers the cost.
Is carbon capture just greenwashing?
It is that something else which most worries those of us with heavy doubts and constitutes the second major concern. If carbon capture is simply used to cling on to otherwise dirty technology then we are looking at a giant greenwashing scam, not a helpful solution. It might be possible to make a case for deploying carbon capture for a short period of time in industrial processes that don’t have clearly available alternative green technologies, but it is not possible to make a rational case for persisting with the vast majority of activities where it has been deployed so far or is likely to be deployed.
Drax is a case in point and one that matters a great deal to people in Yorkshire because of the jobs that depend on it. The business model for that power plant is for trees to be cut down in distant countries, their biomass to be shipped across oceans, trains to carry them from Liverpool to north-east Yorkshire and then for the material to be burned to generate power.
The only way that can count as being carbon neutral is if the consequences of the removal of trees and the transportation go on some other country’s carbon budget and Britain only takes responsibility for the last part of the process. Channel Four ran an exposé of the extent to which some of the trees knowingly came from mature natural woodland.
Little of what is burned consists of things that might be considered more acceptable, such as waste wood left over from industrial processes. On any rational analysis the best way to store all that carbon is to leave the trees standing. Replanting lots of young trees doesn’t compensate for burning old ones containing masses of stored carbon.
All of which leaves Drax with a huge problem. It can only function with the benefit of huge public subsidies and the public is getting less and less keen on spending shedloads of money on unconvincingly green projects. The government is now partly following suit and reducing some of those subsidies. There has always been a high probability that sooner or later Drax was going to run into a politician who could do basic maths.
A greener role for Drax?
There are, however, some useful aspects to the Drax site that might point the way towards a genuinely more sustainable future. If the bulk of modern industry is going to be directed towards locations like the Oxford Cambridge corridor then power has to be moved there. Some of the other facilities at Drax that are either already in use or a long way through the planning process provide a critical link in the chain of transmission of power that is generated in the North Sea and is then moved south.
The Drax complex also has a potentially huge role to play in energy storage and release. All those offshore wind farms generate power night and day. Currently there are times when the grid is paying the generators to turn off the flow because there are not enough users. One of the cheapest and most effective ways to deal with our country’s peak time energy shortage is to store the energy that represents spare capacity at two in the morning and release it at 5.30 on a Friday night.
Do that on a big enough scale and the overall demands on the grid would be radically reduced. Storage and release technology is much quicker and cheaper to implement than wasting money on new nuclear projects, just one of which has already cost more than half the cost of HS2 and been every bit as scandalously subject to cost over-runs. The problems with new nuclear can’t be legislated away by weakening planning laws and ramming projects through. Does anyone seriously think light-touch regulation of building nuclear power stations is a great idea?
Local solutions for energy generation and storage
A repurposed and rethought Drax facility could play a constructive part in a low carbon future. It is, however, almost certain to be a smaller facility. Huge clumsy set piece power plants are unlikely to end up as the best future technology for energy. A dispersed and localised model of generation and storage is much more promising.
It is far better to generate power and store power in every house, office, school, shop, warehouse and factory and use that power locally than it is to build large new nuclear power stations or depend on gas. It is also better to incentivise industry to move to where the power is via offering lower energy prices than it is to move energy hundreds of miles over a grid system that will lose large chunks of that power.
If all the money that is scheduled for carbon capture and new nuclear was switched to supporting local generation and storage we’d be able to cut demand on the grid far quicker, more cheaply and more effectively than we could by trying to increase production. Lower and more even consumption accompanied by more localised small-scale production is the best way forward. If power usage was made cheaper in the places where the wind blows and batteries can even out supply, then it would reduce the transmission challenge and create a real boost for local Yorkshire businesses.
So the bad news is that much of what Drax does is based on an outdated concept which is unlikely to be sustained. The better news is that there is a potential for some genuinely sustainable employment within the overall Drax complex without relying on carbon capture or dodgy carbon accounting. The much better news is that places like Hull could be sitting at the start of a new golden age for industry and commerce. If only the government has the vision to make energy users in the south pay more for the wasteful and expensive transfers of energy to them that are currently necessary whilst the users in the North get the full benefit of having energy arrive from off our coasts and from our hills much more cheaply.
Please note. These are Andy’s personal views not those of the Green Group on North Yorkshire council or the Green Party of England and Wales.
