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14 September 2023
This series of papers from the Green Steves is to discuss key elements of the green agenda in the context of local government and to highlight opportunities for action.
In the last paper (Paper 9 – The Role of Hydrogen in Decarbonisation Plans), we said that the subject might be seen as marginal; this theme continues in this latest paper, but CCUS will certainly have a role to play in reaching the Climate Change Act targets and so it is only right that we should cover it.
Bearing in mind its importance to decarbonisation plans, it is necessary for local authorities to understand what CCUS actually is, trace its links to other parts of the green agenda (particularly hydrogen), look at the policy agenda underpinning its development and, of course, look at the relevance of this particular technology or process to local councils.
As time marches on, the targets set down in law by the Climate Change Act 2008 become ever harder to reach. The 2008 Act did not just create the target of 100% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 against a 1990 baseline, but also introduced a whole machinery of carbon budgeting, independent advice from the Climate Change Committee and regulation.
Whilst there has been progress in addressing emissions, the pace has been slower than required to comfortably meet the targets. Evidence of this is presented by the current inability of the Government to confirm it can actually meet the Fourth and Fifth Carbon Budgets. As the position regarding emissions grows ever more serious, the attraction of any potential solution that will improve the position grows. CCUS has actually been around for a long time, but its momentum has recently grown, perhaps out of desperation about the slow progress of decarbonisation to date.
Purists will, of course, advocate solutions that are totally rooted in behaviour change (use less energy), improving energy efficiency to much higher levels and rapidly expanding renewable energy (excluding nuclear power). However, the Government is intent on taking a broader view, even including solutions that involve the continued burning of fossil fuels.
This is the obvious starting point. It is likely that most local government officers will not have come across this area yet as part of their day job.
Edie has published a useful guide to this area – Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage as part of the Edie Explains series. It states:
“Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage is the collective name for a set of technologies which deal with the process of removing carbon dioxide from industrial emitters and power generators, and transporting it – via pipeline, ship or road tanker – to a site where it can be stored in underground formations …”
The actual process involves the use of solvents to extract the CO2 from flue gases and converting them into liquid with a compressor. The change of mass from gas to liquid simplifies the process thereafter of both transport and storage.
As Edie points out, there are three main type of CCUS technology:
This analysis demonstrates that there are close links between CCUS and the process of CDR (carbon dioxide removal), which describes the engineering process to try and extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Such solutions are often met with alarm by environmentalists, partly because they suggest that the position can be recovered later by technology (when this may not be the case) and because most such treatments (for example artificially re-freezing the poles) are completely unproven at this stage.
There are also links to other areas, particularly the development of hydrogen (see Paper 9 – The Role of Hydrogen in Decarbonisation Plans). It was explained there that the difference between green hydrogen (made using renewable energy) and blue hydrogen (which comes from fossil fuels) is that CCUS – if commercially available – would result in the emissions from the resultant gases in the latter example staying out of the atmosphere and not making the global warming problem worse.
It should also be noted that there is a difference between CCS (carbon capture and storage) and CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage). It has been stated that the utilisation of the carbon
as part of the process makes the process more acceptable in the eyes of the public. There are a number of commercial and industrial processes that require CO2 in order to operate and they are favourites for being part of this solution.
The focus of this paper is on more traditional CCUS, involving burning fossil fuels and then treating the gases to remove the CO2.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made clear that it sees CCUS playing an integral role in meeting worldwide emissions targets. It has published a number of detailed reports, each emphasising the urgency more and confirming the existence of anthropogenic climate change, and what needs to be done to combat global warming.
This theme has been taken up by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the Government’s independent adviser, which has also confirmed its belief that CCUS has a key role to play in reaching the stretching emissions targets. In a 2019 paper it described CCUS as …“a necessity not an option” with up to 75-175 million tonnes of CO2 being captured and stored by the UK annually by 2050.
The focus of the CCC for CCUS is on the hard to treat areas of the economy, such as steelmaking, cement manufacture, glass and ceramics and refining chemicals. There are no obvious energy alternatives to these areas, as indicated in the paper on hydrogen (where that is seen as a fuel that can be utilised in such processes).
As industrial emissions are some 35% of the total CO2 emissions across the world, it is obvious why solutions have to be found for these areas. As pointed out last time, this also fuels the arguments for blue hydrogen, which is a potential energy source for these processes.
Well known consultants McKinsey published a report in 2023 on CCUS, claiming that the capacity of the technology must increase by 120 – fold by 2050 in order to reach the emissions targets. Its view is that the CCUS sector has struggled to find its footing over the past three decades and its success is scaling up is by no means guaranteed.
A number of familiar reasons for this are given, such as the policy landscape being wanting, the potential funding not being in place and a proper regulatory backdrop being absent. It is for this reason that the report comments that many supporters of carbon capture are opting for nature based solutions at this stage, rather than industrial processes.
The Government has had more than one bite at this particular cherry. In 2015 the Government launched a £1bn fund for CCS (as it then was) development. Bids were canvassed for pilot projects to come forwards and help demonstrate commercial viability of carbon capture and storage. However, in November 2015 the competition was unceremoniously cancelled before any of the money had been distributed, with The Guardian reminding readers of the fact that this broke a pledge in the Conservative Party’s election manifesto.
The reasons for this were not clear but the potential role of CCUS (as it now is) has not been diminished. As the urgency has grown stronger, the Government has revisited its policy position on CCUS. The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution of 2020 contains a new target for the UK to capture at least 20 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2030, but many see this target as unachievable already. As can be seen below when projects are under consideration, these schemes take years to plan and organise. The target is supported by the introduction of the CCS Infrastructure Fund of £1bn.
In 2022, the Government announced that 20 projects had passed through to the next stage of the CCUS programme. As Edie reported: “The programme has been set up to identify projects and solutions that will enable CCUS technology to be deployed at key industrial sites across the country. The UK is aiming to fit CCUS technology at two clusters by the mid 2020’s, with deployment to take place at two additional clusters by 2030.”
As with hydrogen, the Government is eyeing up the potential for a world leading industry to emerge in the UK. Estimates range from 10,000 to 50,000 potential new jobs to come from this if successful. As mentioned above, the links to hydrogen are attractive to the Government, as this allows them to keep the fossil fuel companies on side. They, in turn, recognise that as with blue hydrogen, the more they can stay in the game, the better they can protect their core activities.
As mentioned above, the Government’s intention is to create a CCUS sector by providing funding and encouraging pilot projects to come forwards. It recognises that industry and industrial processes is the key area to focus on and want to create so called ‘clusters’ of projects in key areas. Bearing in mind the industrial backdrop of this particular focus, there is also a strong link with the levelling up agenda, as many of the key industrial areas are in the North.
Two of the leading projects are in the East Coast cluster. Drax, Equinor and National Grid are involved in the Humber region’s zero carbon industrial hub. Similarly, BP, Eni, Equinor, Shell and Total are all involved in the Net Zero Teesside project (which has at its heart a blue hydrogen element). The Northern Endurance Partnership is promoting the East Coast Cluster and believes that this area could support an average of 25,000 jobs between 2023 and 2050.
Having established that CCUS is unlikely to be mainstream in most local authorities it is time to ask the question – how will CCUS be part of the Council’s strategy? The answer is difficult to predict at this stage. The following are some suggested areas of relevance.
The key regulatory role of town and country planning arises again. The industrial ‘clusters’ referred to above will have considerable planning implications. Often these are based on large areas of former industrial (and very probably contaminated) land. This means that it is unlikely that visual amenity or public objection will be a problem, but nonetheless the process has to be properly managed.
There are constant calls for the planning process to be simplified and reformed, but to date this has not really happened. The latest Government U-turn was when Michael Gove was appointed Levelling Up Secretary and drew a halt to the proposed Planning Bill that had been in production. The demand for planning changes is a constant factor in the green agenda and is perhaps one of the modern unsolvable policy dilemmas.
Local authorities could sell or make available land in the cluster areas to facilitate more development. It would also be possible to provide supporting infrastructure (roads, drainage, street lighting etc) for such projects. From where we stand, we see it as unlikely that any Council would be directly involved in CCUS projects as a developer.
Local authorities are, of course, critically sensitive to the health and vitality of the local economy. The suggested employment gains from new large scale CCUS projects will not have gone unnoticed. As more funding is made available by the Government, more opportunities for this will arrive.
In the last paper on hydrogen it was commented that the Government wants to create a new hydrogen sector. The same can be said about CCUS and again the development of the offshore wind sector is seen as a useful precedent. However, whether the Government has similar levels of funding in mind at this stage remains unclear.
This is a more difficult area to call. It seems to us that local authority involvement in CCUS projects is unlikely as most authorities have a climate emergency in place and have climate change strategies and action plans in support which include reducing energy use, improving energy efficiency and developing more renewable energy (rather than burning fossil fuels).
However, nature-based solutions for removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere are likely to scale up considerably. These are considered in detail in Paper 8 – The Importance of Biodiversity as Part of Local Authority Climate Change Strategies.
There is a crossover here with technologies wider than merely planting trees. An example is biochar, a process which was first practiced by indigenous tribes in the South American rainforest thousands of years ago. As Environment Journal reported “using a process known as pyrolysis, a charcoal-like substance applied to the land converts organic biomass into stable soil carbon, with one tonne of the material capable of storing three tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide.” It was recently reported that the NW England firm Positive BioCarbon is looking to recruit local authorities to test the re fertilisation of farmland in this way.
As indicated in the biomass paper, there are many examples of nature based projects across local government, but we are not aware of any CCUS projects involving industrial processes and fossil fuels at this stage.
In order for CCUS to be a successful part of the UK’s climate change plans, certain boxes need to be ticked. Firstly, the technology needs to be in place and commercially proven. Whilst there is no doubt about the actual technology, its place in a wider commercial marketplace has not yet been clarified. The Government’s CCS Infrastructure Fund is a good example of how this is being addressed.
Secondly, the costs of the technology have to work. This is the same point we made about green hydrogen. Costs are currently estimated to be in the region of $45 to $70 per metric tonne of CO2. It is widely recognised that costs need to reduce to around the $30 mark in the UK to bring them in line with carbon pricing.
Thirdly, the contribution to the overall decarbonisation process needs to be clear. Here, there are various estimates, as indicated above, and these need to crystallise further in the work of the CCC and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Finally, this type of project will only be successful when it has public acceptance. Bearing in mind how little effort the Government makes to publicise any of its work on the green agenda, there is a long way to go to achieve this.
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