The Sun reports this morning that:
The PM is announcing a £22billion cash injection over 25 years for “game-changing” carbon capture technology in Merseyside and Teesside.
It also notes Starmer saying:
To those drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists I say: I will never sacrifice Great British industry.
Apparently, industrial growth and brickies come first - and apparently, they cannot do so without burning fossil fuels.
This is absurd. Effective carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has been offered for decades. We still do not have it. The number of plants operating in the world is limited. The costs are very high. The outcomes are variable, to say the least. And all this is motivated by the desire of the old companies, in particular, to keep burning their output when we know that to be dangerous.
Of all the options to go green, CCS is a poor one, with arguments almost as weak as that for offsetting, which is now increasingly discredited as being entirely unable to manage or permit the further burning of fossil fuels.
Starmer is, in that case, sending the clearest possible signal today, which is that what he cares most about is maintaining the economic status quo, with some totally foolhardy and highly likely-to-fail projects stuck on the side of its existing destructive activities to offer the pretence that he is interested in saving human life on this planet when he clearly is not.
Starmer did have a plan for green investment a couple of years ago. He abandoned it, saying it was unaffordable.
Now, he can afford to provide a sticking plaster over the pollution to be generated by the fossil fuel industry for some time to come when everyone from the Climate Change Committee onwards knows that this is the wrong course of action. He's denying the science. He's pursuing lousy economics, with the likelihood that most, if not all, of this money will be wasted. And he's gambling with our security in a way that we cannot afford. That is unforgivable.
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Good lord!!
Which worm-tongued political advisor gave him that to say?
Even Hollywood writes better scripts than that.
Woeful.
Starmer is clearly having a go at you and me when he talks of finger-wagging extremists, and Rachel Reeves has already reminded the world that Labour is no longer a party of protesters. The cloth eared phraseology of Starmer’s quote, and the dead-eyed delivery of Reeves’ remarks at conference suggest these are not spontaneous utterances of intelligent minds. It’s either Pat McFadden, channeling his inner Mandelson, or more probably AI, that is feeding them this nonsense.
The message is that Labour doesn’t challenge big money and its climate change denying shills. It doesn’t listen to those who disagree with it. Instead it ridicules protest and manhandles protesters, and nods approvingly at lengthy prison sentences for peaceful protesters, and facilitates the release of violent criminals to make room for them.
And they have already purged from the party anyone who might disagree with all this dangerous indulgence. How on earth did it come to this?
In fairness to Starmer for once he was not lying:
“I will never sacrifice Great British industry.”……because there is very very little left to “sacrifice” post Thatcher/Tories/LINO I/Camoron etc.
LINO/Starmer/Reeves talk about growth, I wonder where this will come from.
As for CCS, I leave it to one of my European Commission contacts to summarise the technology: “like holding a fart for centuries” (referencing underground storage).
Billions have been thrown at the tech – for modest results. Main application: cement production (which as part of the process produces CO2). The oil&gas mafia live in hope that mugs like Starmer will throw yet more good money after bad – nothing like a bit of state socilaism for polluting capitalists eh!
Fracking Hell!
Next.
Another day another pearl from Brave Surrkeer, the GKD.
I suppose this means even more cash for the ecocidal confidence trick, Drax.
Not just lousy economics but very poor grasp of energy management. Before you start introducing new technologies always do everything possible to reduce demand and consumption. A lot of that money could have gone towards demand reduction. The industries that are difficult to decarbonise could be targeted with funds to help change their production process. CCS is the last resort, not the first choice suggested by lobby groups.
Agreed
He is clueless about every policy you can think of. An abysmal approach. The election resulted in one group of five year old delinquents being replaced by another group of five year old delinquents.
Plenty of reports have been produced which set out the best ways of cutting emissions – insulation in homes for example. But we also need to cut out flying and drive less. It can be done but if we don’t do it, future generations will wonder what an earth was going on in policy makers minds!
That is really insulting to five year old delinquents everywhere.
There is nothing clueless about what is being done here.
It is deliberate and it is knowing.
Having made everything so hard to do, now vulture capitalism swoops in and cleans up – making a huge self-interested profit out of the market it has helped to manufacture.
Corrupt Starmer still at it!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/04/dont-do-it-again-miliband-tells-labour-over-30000-breakfast-with-minister
“…future generations will wonder what an earth was going on in policy makers minds!”
Me, me, me and specs, frocks and suits. Taylor Swift concert tickets and an Arsenal executive box.
Thank you, AC.
As a long suffering gooner, born there, but living in Buckinghamshire since a few months old, may I point out that Starmer used to support Palace.
Imagine if you will that you had a magic wand and it could be used only once and for one thing: by waving the magic wand a technological advance would occur allowing Carbon Capture and Storage to be possible for under £10 per tonne of CO2 extracted.
Would you wave that wand?
They don’t exist
I live in the real world
Given such a magic wand, commercial, efficient fusion power is what I would want.
Thanks for your comments on CCS. As you say, a very weak green policy, second only to carbon offsetting. We really need to get away from burning carbon.
But I’m an optimist. All the technology is in place for a carbonless future. A few decades ago that was not the case, but it is now. And the economics are moving inexorably in that direction too. It is now cheaper to build solar power stations than fossil fueled ones. (Though why is it not mandatory to put solar panels on all new buildings?). Soon it will be cheaper to build renewable energy than to keep operating fossil fuel power stations (our last coal fired station has just closed). We already have the technology for storing energy. Liquified air is one possibility that is an old mature technology. Battery technology is improving rapidly. Green ammonia can be used for both shipping and aviation. Hydrogen, which can either be made from renewable energy or found naturally (in vast quantities it is beginning to seem), can be used for industrial processes. All the technology exists.
Which is why this governments policy of CCS is so weak. They should be concentrating on encouraging and promoting the good solutions that exist or are emerging.
However, as an optimist I think this will happen anyway through sheer economics.
And not to forget the huge part Regenerative Agriculture should play in this too. The ability to store /restore carbon into soil is so often overlooked. But like all these sensible straightforward lower tech solutions it requires a change in mindset that so far humanity has not reached
Open Democracy reported on £4 million donated to Labour Party by Quadrature, a tax haven based hedge fund registered in the Cayman Islands, which has huge investments in fossil fuels, private healthcare companies and arms manufacturers. This seems to cover Starmer’s policies pretty well.
That thought has been expressed in the Murphy household this morning….
“Game-changing”?
[citation needed], as Wikipedia would say.
Spot on Richard – of all the big public investment programmes that should be on the agenda this would be at the bottom of the list , or off it completely.
But it is entirely expected, given the £19m dark money funding Labour – including fossil fuel interests – and given Starmer’s/Blair and most of the government’s scientific ignorance .
Oil and gas companies love CCS . If it’s so good , as with nuclear – why dont they fund it themselves?
The Blair people are all over this government – Blair admits he hasnt a clue about science – including about AI – which is now his recipe for everything.
This kind of announcement seems a way of trumpeting their own ignorance – another virility symbol , along with pretending Sars- covid is still not killing people.
We have to triple the rate of investment in wind and solar if we are to reach the 2030 target,
In an Israeli metaphor we are now bombing ourselves .
It’s madness.
,
“£22billion cash injection over 25 years for “game-changing” carbon capture technology”#
In other words, they are going to give a lot of public money to a private company.
I think the money would be much better spent if they gave everyone a £1 for planting a tree.
It’s proven technology, improves the environment, cleans the air, expands habitats, can stabilise land, and can produce food, oxygen and wood.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
“And he’s gambling with our security in a way that we cannot afford.”
Is Starmer aware of the internal and external mass migration that will result from climate change? He’s not keen on migrants. The reason I ask is that Starmer said he saw no link between scrapping the winter fuel allowance and people falling ill, not being productive etc.
He seems to either be blissfully unaware of it, or he in a state of denial, or he is stupid.
Thank you, Richard.
I wonder how Starmer rose to such professional heights.
Indeed….
Richard, you say of Starmer
“He seems to either be blissfully unaware of it, or he’s in a state of denial, or he is stupid.”
All three, I’d say, Richard.
What a situation to find ourselves in, governed by an ignorant, denialist, idiot!!
But, then, as I’ve said, he’s presiding of a Cabinet of Keystone Kops 4th-raters, so it’s par for the course.
Keir Starmer is a human wipe-board, offering himself forward to any oligarchy who wants to write their version of reality on him.
That’s how he has got where he has, Colonel.
That’s all it take these days, in most places.
Totally agreed. £22 billion for a technology that hasn’t been effectively proved and probably won’t work. This is such a white elephant project, when that money could have been spent on green retrofitting housing and renewables.
I thought that there was a £22 billion ‘black hole’? That has soon been filled by this misguided nonsense. (It is telling that it seems Labour got the Sun newspaper to reveal it as an ‘exclusive’.)
If we were also investing in all the more effective ways to mitigate climate breakdown I would be totally supportive… in the long term CCS is the only way we will reverse the damage humans have done to the environment, and it would be cool to be global leaders in this field. However, there are thousands of higher priorities, and anyway countries like China are going to outspend us on CCS by orders of magnitude, so we’ll end up being a bit player anyway.
And why invest so much in a technology that is going to be unprofitable for the foreseeable future, when we could encourage energy efficiency industries that would be immediately profitable? Starmer’s policy is pure greenwash!
I note that ““game-changing” carbon capture technology” is treating the “symptoms” — like the pharmaceutical industry, which makes lots of money by prescribing drugs.
Prevention is usually better than cure, but I suspect the fossil fuel industry and “prove” that they don’t contribute to global warming.
I am reminded, when thinking of our government, of the “Italian Job” and the following quote:
‘Camp’ Freddie:
But Mr. Bridger, what if the Professor’s not bent?
Mr Bridger:
Camp Freddie, everyone in the *world* is bent!
As they say, “everyone has their price”. It appears that we must accept that Starmer and his pals have been bought! There can be no other explanation for their actions. Stupidity, ignorance and incompetence cannot account for the consistency of their dangerous and damaging policies and decisions.
I am not convinced by the argument
I reached a point a few weeks ago when any faith I had I this government evaporated and I came to see Starmer’s Labour Party as something of a Trojan Horse. Time will tell.
https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/heavy-dependence-carbon-capture-and-storage-highly-economically-damaging-says-oxford-report
“To those drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists”. Are they not voters, too? Are they not members of the electorate, citizens, human beings worthy of respect? This kind of comment, and there are many of these issuing from Westminster, demonstrate the contempt that elected MPs have for those who put them there.
Starmer is either a fool, shill, or both. Either way he’s dangerous.
I am one of the finger wagging extremists, I am sure
We’ve had carbon capture capability for millions of years. It’s been proven to work, and offers not only CCS but invaluable ecological and wellbeing benefits as well. Most people know about it, but refer to it as ‘trees’. Sadly, there’s no money in trees, so we have to go with the option that is more expensive than unicorn tears, barely works, but makes lots of cash for people who already have lots of cash.
That is offsetting and it cannot work given the scale of the problem we face.
It’s not clear who Starmer is referring to as ‘finger-wagging extremists’?
CCS technology has been ‘fully fledged’ for decades and the oil and gas companies don’t use it because of the power consumption to do so. Which would suggest some fairly simple regulation could reverse that decision, and make it economical for them to do so. Huge subsidies aren’t necessary. It’s also not clear how these subsidies are discharged, do they go to the companies who have made record profits (and given record dividends) for the past 2 years?
Your second para is opaque as to its meaning.
https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/news/heavy-dependence-carbon-capture-and-storage-highly-economically-damaging-says-oxford-report
Heavy dependence on Carbon Capture and Storage ‘highly economically damaging’, says Oxford report
I feel that Starmer could stand to listen to this explanation of the problem of CC&S by Vaclav Smil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SIjlZQf28I
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something Blue
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/25/uk-cancels-pioneering-1bn-carbon-capture-and-storage-competition
Carbon Capture and Storage is the preferred can to kick down the road by the fossil fuel industry, (now that Starmer/Reeves capture and storage has been achieved pretty cheaply.)
CCS technology has been there for 30 yrs and more, yet has never been developed on a commercial scale.
It is not even physically possible to retrofit all current oil and gas extraction to achieve a serious % of CO2 through CCS by 2050.
Its proponents are seeking to defer net zero, not achieve it. CCS is a diversionary tactic.
It is a red herring and only has a minor role in emissions reduction.
And £22bn over 25 years is barely a peanut in the size of the investment needed to reach net zero in the UK.
In 2022 the North Sea fields alone flare 84 cu.ft of gas for every barrel of oil extracted.
Add to that two billion cubic feet flared at UK onshore terminals. What a waste ?
140 billion cubic metres of ‘waste’ gas are flared globally every year, just in the extraction process.
That is 3.4% of global gas production, and would be just enough to supply both the UK and Germany every year – the 9th and 10th largest consumers globally.
Fossil fuel companies are incredibly wasteful in their production processes, and the marginal % gains in the last few years conceal the fact that fossil fuel consumption globally is still increasing, and growth since 2000 has outpaced the development and installation of renewables.
This is yet another smoke and mirrors measure designed to conceal and perpetuate fossil fuel growth and consumption.
Unfortunately, the cap and trade lobby who push for saleable carbon credits, have already fallen foul of the casino capitalists, and so the possibility of non transferable carbon taxes has been hi-jacked by fossil fuel interests.
Much to agree with
You watch he’ll be promoting hydrogen next… bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry is the Labour Party. Meanwhile he’s going to keep throwing climate protesters in jail for disproportionate times compared to real criminals because he wants to look “hard on crime”. I despair. I would like to know what we can do in the face of such reckless indifference!
@ Richard Benjamin,
Hydrogen, like CCS, is late stage stuff.
Global demand for hydrogen, by industry, is approaching 100 megatonnes per annum. Almost all of it comes from fossil fuel feedstocks, which will have (at some point) to be be replaced by production by electrolysis: currently 4% of global production, with no breakdown of the energy sources usd being available; about ⅓ of global electricity supply coming from renewables, we can hazard a guess that its between 1-2% is “green” hydrogen. It’ll have to be produced, at scale, anyway and if its done with clean energy, its another reason to extract less coal, gas and oil.
However, it only becomes feasible after we’ve gone beyond saturation in supply from renewables; meeting peak demand under suboptimal conditions, where some redundancy has been built in, to partly offset low output. At that point we’ll be looking for solutions to oversupply at other times (which outside of peak demand, will be most of the time). The naysayers will point to the loss of thermal value (its ~50%); glass half empty. I’m of the glass half full view; a 50% return on otherwise unutilised supply. It does offer a part solution to known intermittency issues: it can be burned, neat, in present generation gas turbines; it’ll have to produced at scale for other reasons, so most of the infrastructure costs will have been met; electrolysis also produces oxygen, a useful byproduct.
Hydrogen will have its place, if not for a while yet.
As a chartered engineer and environmental scientist who has been looking at climate change for decades, giving public talks & having been involved in major landscape scale restoration projects ever struggling for funds, I am incandescent at the stupidity of throwing £22 bn at CCS. Correct: CCS is magic wand stuff. Totally unproven at scale anywhere in the world. This is a donation to the fossil fuel industry, under the banner of creating jobs.
For the UK, one of the most ecologically degraded countries on the planet, funding is needed to turn farmers into genuine landscape stewards; national parks need a paradigm shift in restoring ecosystems; we need a herculean effort in energy efficiency schemes within communities & industry; and why by now isn’t the top speed on roads 50mph instead of 70mph; tidal schemes to be kick started; how many sq km of warehouse roofing has no PV? In 2022, the UK electrified less than 3km of the rail network. Our society needs to be using far less energy, accelerating renewables and a have diverse ecological plans for carbon sequestration: soils, peatlands, re-afforestation, saltmarsh.
What this demonstrates is that so-called Labour, under Starmer, have done no serious strategic planning to prepare for Government. No detailed industrial strategy. This is what happens when politicians are ignorant in science and economics. It really does confirm the utter pathetic calibre of this Government.
Thank you, and much to agree with
Thank you, both.
Most of the then shadow cabinet’s engagements were with Big Finance, so this sort of thing is not a surprise. New (Starmer) New (Blair) Labour often talk about their outreach to business and imply no role for the likes of civil society, unions, experts like both Richards etc.
@Richard We The People: Please have a look at what I have written:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/tony-blair-and-his-associates-are-waiting-in-the-wings-to-seize-back-power-in-the-uk.html and
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/02/why-is-tony-blair-so-desperate-for-the-uks-national-health-service-to-sell-off-its-patients-health-data.html
This may part answer your amazement.
Absolutely spot on. RWP It is all so piece meal and reactive.
There is no UK wide energy strategy.
There is no UK wide energy consumption reduction programme.
There is no agricultural sector energy reduction programme or carbon sequestration initiaives.
There are no significant energy performance upgrades to Building Regs. just a bit of tinkering.
There is no national insulation retrofit strategy or programme
(We do get 3 yearly revisions in scotlland, but they are fairly unambitious)
There is no coherent public transport strategy linked to net zero targets, just a few damp squib local initiatives.
There is no renewables technology investment worth a canclle for next generation technologies.
We’ve had workable tidal stream technology for almost 20 years with major potential for skill transfers from N Sea oil and gas into marine renewables, yet only relatively small schemes in Pentland Firth and Sound of Islay demonstration projects anywhere near on stream.
MeyGen has had a pathetic level of government support. Only 6MW onstream and the rest still ” in development”. Pah !
Massive potential for baseload, and cheaper than nuclear, yet the technology has clearly been suppressed, presumably by competing corporate interests., just as the Salter Duck was by nuclear, in the late 70s.
Yes, there is a climate crisis; yes, it is urgent; and yes, we are way behind our net zero commitments.
Yes, this government has opened up some wind development potential but Starmer’s government doesn’t even really get an E for Effort. Pathetic.
… and, linking the latter paragraph to another post’s comment thread, the incompetence of those in leadership in respect of knowing and planning about such things demonstrates the failure of a remuneration ‘system’ based on status rather than competence, expertise, productivity, added value etc.
This is so obviously Labour’s retirement plan in action, creating (for them) a future brimming with non-executive directorships, murky consultancies etc. they might as well publicly announce they have no intention of hanging round for any second term. Note too how all mooted plans including those for the NHS are said to be bearing fruit only in the dim and distant future. By the time it becomes apparent this nor anything like it will be the case, the perpetrators (perpetraitors?) will be snug deep in their Olympian boardrooms, far beyond any meaningful reproach.
It’s looting, and that’s all it is.
Hello Richard, I’ve got a bit of a question for you.
I noted, in the Financial Times, that the £21.7bn would “be funded by a mixture of levies on energy bills and Treasury funding”.
Overlooking the tautological statement (surely “Treasury Funding” includes taxes on energy? “Treasury funding” surely means any money spent that’s not part of the private sector?)
(Taking off my MMT hat and pretending that taxes create revenue for gov spending for a moment)
Why is it that the government seems to believe that any gov spending has to be funded from the relevant sector?
For example levies on energy pay for renewables, in the manifesto, VAT on private schools pays for new teachers.
This isn’t how a company, for example, would operate. A cafe might choose to spend its revenue made selling coffee on a new coffee machine, but it could equally use it to hire staff or spend on advertising.
It’s also bizarre to me because it implies that it’s even possible to “earmark” certain bits of spending for certain things, when any accountant knows money is commensurate so it’s simply checks and balances.
I struggle to think it serves any purpose other than to give an appearance of “fiscal responsibility” and “sensible spending.”
Can spending for the NHS only be funded by healthcare related taxation? Why not fund it through capital gains, etc etc.
Bit of a ramble, hope that makes some sort of sense.
The answer is that, as I think you know, that all of this is utter nonsense promulgated to support their claim that money is in short supply and only comes from the private sector, which is drivel.
The Earth dies screaming……..
not with a bang but a whimper
Starmer is obviously clueless about the climate emergency and that we are already over the IPCC of1.5c degree temperature limit for climate stability and that co2 emission are still rising despite all the greenwashing rhetoric of recent years. Drasitic action is needed even for any sort of moderate mitigation. The £22 billion would be far better invested in insulation and clean energy projects. Starmer is clearly in the grip of the fossil fuel lobbyists.
If Keir Starmer came across an overflowing bath, would he rush to find a mop and bucket or turn the taps off?
The second I hear ‘Great British’ whatever, the person who uttered it has lost any respect I might have had for them
So, he really has joined the dark side. There are so many other options which could have +ve effects rather than kowtowing to the major, polluting, tax dodging, subsidy receiving, lying, corporations…
LINO does not cover it, he is new conservative…
Even if CCS worked and even if we manage to find new sources of energy, the only result would be a faster and more efficient destruction of the biosphere and rundown of available resources (including water).
The uncomfortable truth is the the modern way of life is fundamentally unsustainable and we will regress, possibly back to hunter-gatherers, given that even agriculture is not sustainable over long time periods.
Professor Tom Murphy’s “do the math” blog covers all this in great detail with the figures to back it up if people want to find out more. I can’t link to it because I’m a smartphone (sorry).
@ MTH
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen certainly proved that “Green Growth” was not possible, and man’s activities had to shrink to exist within planetary limits, but I do not think Palaeolithic reversion is the necessary end result.
Yea, there are some extreme degrowth biocentrics who favour hunter gatherer reversion, with only a few hundred thousand post apocalypse survivors, but most simply want sustainable lifestyles, environmentally sustainable, but not back to the Stone Age.
I am sure that it is possible to even have future urban civilisations, as many Middle East cities have lasted thousands of years without necessarily degrading resources.
Eco-cities would be very much urban villages in scale and organisation, and social life would need to be based on reciprocity in both human and material relationships, so pretty much an absolute duty of care.
Of course, you are right in that the Ponzi approach integral to growth based capitalism cannot survive more than a relatively short transition as infinite growth is physically impossible anyway
Yet, for some strange reasons, and maybe odd existential logic, I am still optimistic that humans can thrive within planetary limits in a positive way.
I suspect this will require a major and probably semi-catastrophic quasi collapse of much of current global economic and political systems, (and wasn ‘t all that shareholder value great while it lasted?) , rather than a considered peaceful transition within the next few hundred years, it just depends on man’s capacity for genuine learning, under stress, and how much the philosophies, principles and practices of social ecology manage to survive the successive disruptive crises. It is all in the balance.
I don’t actually see post capitalism as regression either.
However, the way we are headed geopolitically, let alone environmentally, does look pretty bleak right now, and I would not want to be of my grandchildren’s generation at all, but I do think gold topped Armageddon will be averted. Just.
Dunno where global sea level will end up either, but somewhere between the 25 and 50m contour mark should be okay in 2500.
You’re failing to note what the fossil fuel beneficiaries intend to do with the gas their CCS technology produces. As Jamie Driscoll points out:
“[T]he oil companies intend to pressurise this gas, inject it into oil seams below the sea, to force out the otherwise unrecoverable dregs of oil in a process called “Enhanced Oil Recovery”. Yep, that’s correct. In the name of climate policy, Rachel Reeves is giving three of the world’s richest oil companies £billions to extract otherwise economically unrecoverable oil.”
https://majorityuk.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=611019&item_id=106347
He is right
And I should have mentioned that.
The Carbon Club has generous benefits for members.
I can add nothing more that wouldn’t require editing
Fully agree with the blog article. Would add that eve if blue hydrogen production (i.e. making hydrogen from fossil gas with CCS) was to work as assumed, which is highly unlikely, the overall greenhouse gas emissions would still be worse than those of burning fossil gas directly: https://corporateeurope.org/en/dirty-truth-about-EU-hydrogen-push.
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