On 18th February, Professor Myles Allen, the “physicist behind net zero”, spoke to Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC radio’s The Life Scientific. Professor Allen has a simple solution to climate breakdown. We just need to get the large oil companies to clean up their mess.
It works like this. For each 1 tonne of carbon sold in the form of liquid oil or natural gas, an oil company should be required to capture and store 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This amount of CO2 contains 1 tonne of C. On the basis that the end use of the oil or gas will almost certainly lead to a release of CO2, this rule would ensure that net emissions fall to zero. Simple. Additionally, we should get the oil companies to hoover up at least some of the excess CO2 that has accumulated since the Industrial Revolution.
Myles Allen comments that he recently raised the idea in front of a group of young recruits at a large oil company, amongst whom the sentiment was, apparently, that this vacuum cleaning exercise is possible on a global scale. The technology exists, and it would be so much simpler and more effective than relying on eight billion people’s individual life decisions.
Practical issues
There is, however, a however. Three howevers in fact: scale, cost, and timing.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new idea. In 2007, the Labour government of Tony Blair launched a competition, with a subsequent budget of £1 billion, to support a number of CCS demonstration projects in the UK. The aim was to work with private companies in the power sector to get CCS up and running. The eight projects were whittled down to four, then two, then one … and in 2011 the competition was finally cancelled without any projects to show for it.
The current Conservative government has promised in its election manifesto to spend £800m on CCS. Just a few days ago (4th March), Nicholas Stern urged the government to use this money to encourage private sector investment. Is history repeating itself 13 years later (albeit with a smaller budget than previously)? Why would a CCS public/private partnership work now when it didn’t before?
There are currently no CCS projects in operation in the UK power sector. Most people in the industry expect little action before 2030. In their technical report from May 2019, the UK Committee on Climate Change developed an ambitious pathway for achieving ‘net zero’ by 2050. As part of this pathway, the CCC envisages 176 MtCO2 captured by CCS in 2050 (almost all of the progress being after 2030). That’s about one-third of our current annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the CCC, to be captured in 2050, i.e. thirty years from now.
Scaling up the CCC’s target by the UK’s share of global primary energy consumption in 2019 (1.4% according to the BP Statistical Review) implies the world would capture 12.6 billion tCO2 in 2050. That might be around one fifth of the total emissions in 2050 (say 10 billion people emitting 6 tCO2 per annum on average) – if we decide that ‘business as usual’ for the world’s citizens is fine because CCS is coming to the rescue. There are a few simplifications here, but it’s fair to say the CCC ambition for CCS falls a long way short of curbing emissions to the atmosphere. It would appear that the CCC’s net zero trajectory is far too slow for CCS to be a comprehensive solution in time, which is ironic given that it appears vastly ambitious in light of government inaction.
The CCC estimates the cost of CCS to be circa 100 £/tCO2 (they give a range of 50-160 £/tCO2). So that would imply a cost of around £6 trillion in 2050, or £600 per annum per person on the planet. Presumably we would want to remove another 1000 billion tCO2 or so to get back to pre-Industrial levels, at a CCC-implied further cost of £100 trillion, or around £10,000 one-off payment per person. Those of us living in rich countries might have to pay a few times the global average, for both the one-off payment and on-going annual expense. Think thousands of pounds per person, each year, in today’s money values.
Other physicists, including David Mackay in Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, have estimated the energy requirement for CCS to work. From first principles, it appears that the global vacuum cleaner would add around 20% to global primary energy consumption.
I am concerned that the viability of CCS at scale has not been proven, that it is expensive, and that it may be too late to the party. I am concerned that people are quick to think ‘nothing to do with me’ if someone proposes a technological miracle. And even if it transpires that CCS is the best option we’ve got, everyone will end up paying for it. I foresee tabloid headlines along the lines of Fat Cat Oil Execs Cause Pensioners To Die In Their Homes.
There is, of course, a clear appeal in forcing a relatively small number of large companies to take action, instead of trying to persuade a significant chunk of the world’s population to change its behaviour. But we need to be honest about the scale, timing and cost of CCS. Meanwhile, reducing consumption and travel, and changing diet, are either free or cost-saving, do not rely on unproven technology, can be implemented immediately, and can be reversed when our Technological Saviour finally shows up.