The UK government's carbon capture and storage (CCS) programme is projected to cost £264bn by 2050, according to climate experts Dr Andrew Boswell and Simon Oldridge.
This far exceeds the £21.7bn figure often cited in government press releases.
The cost will be split between the public and private sectors, but history suggests the public will bear most of it.
A House of Commons public accounts committee found that roughly 25% of public CCS costs will come directly from the government, with the rest added to energy bills.
This could mean up to £198bn in extra levies on household bills.
Additionally, an uncosted commitment to pay a “premium” for hydrogen produced by CCS for 15 years could add tens of billions more.
CCS: Not a Climate Solution but a Fossil Fuel Lifeline
Despite government claims, CCS is not essential for cutting carbon emissions.
The Climate Change Committee says its role is “limited to sectors where there are few, or no, alternatives,” but its own data shows only 5-6% of UK CCS deployment will address hard-to-abate industrial emissions.
The majority of CCS will be attached to new fossil fuel-burning power stations, wood-burning power stations, and hydrogen production from fossil gas.
Almost all projects in the first tranche are fossil fuel-based.
Alternatives exist. Battery technology is evolving rapidly, enabling a balanced electricity supply without fossil fuels.
Producing hydrogen from electrolysis using renewable electricity will cost half as much as from gas with CCS by 2050.
New CCS plants will increase gas use, leading to more imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Methane leakage along the LNG chain makes its emissions higher than coal, with two-thirds of its greenhouse impact occurring before arrival in the UK.
If the goal were to cut emissions, the UK would push fossil fuel use in electricity to zero and scale up renewables and battery storage.
Instead, the CCS programme ramps up both emissions and costs.
Influence of Fossil Fuel Lobbying
The programme appears to result from massive lobbying by fossil fuel companies. In 2023, Equinor, BP, and ExxonMobil attended 24 meetings with ministers to discuss CCS.
For them, CCS is the only way to keep burning gas.
The scientific credibility of CCS was shaped by BP.
Investigative work by ProPublica and Drilled found that BP financed and helped steer the influential “Wedges” climate paper in 2004, which presented CCS as “already deployed at an industrial scale” when it was barely tested.
Since then, CCS has a record of failures.
In the UK, three attempts—the 2005 Peterhead plan, a 2011 demonstration project, and a 2012 funding competition—were abandoned due to cost escalation and infeasibility.
The public accounts committee notes the government is taking a high-risk approach by backing unproven technologies with large amounts of taxpayer and consumer funding.
The lead operator of the first CCS cluster is BP, completing a cycle of appeasing the fossil fuel industry.
