Wicks defends UK promotion of CCS
UK Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has strongly defended the UK government’s
involvement in promoting carbon capture and storage (CCS) while strongly
criticising environmental group Greenpeace for its “head in the sands”
attitude towards the fast-emerging technology.
Wicks told Upstream at the highest level, the very urgent thinking, was that
the world is going to be burning fossil fuels – whether oil, gas or coal –
for decades to come. “If you look at the IEA projections – 80% plus of our
energy is going to be from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future,”he said
“As far as I can tell the only technology in town which can help us square
that circle is CCS. It is one of the reasons that tomorrow after the Houston
visit we are going to Jackson Dome in Mississippi which is an example of
using naturally occurring CO2 from a volcano and injecting into a field for
enhanced oil recovery,” Wicks said.
Greeenpeace yesterday made a strong call on policymakers to stop pumping
vast amounts of taxpayers money into the “elusive promise” of CCS and
instead to prioritise sustainable energy solutions as the way to stop the
climate crisis
In a new report entitled “False Hope” Greenpeace concluded that the unproven
technology for capturing the global warming gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from
power station smokestacks and then dumping it underground is still on the
drawing board.
Over 100 non-governmental organisations from more than 20 countries have
joined Greenpeace in demanding that CCS not be used as an excuse for
building new coal-fired power plants. Governments should instead give
priority to investing in sustainable energy solutions.
”Fraught with uncertainties over practicality and cost, CCS technology is
not expected to be technically feasible before 2030 at best. If it ever
matures, CCS will therefore arrive on the scene too late to play a role in
combating climate change over the crucial next few years, or even decades,”
said Greenpeace.
Wicks, who strongly criticised the Greenpeace report, said that going
forward “we have to find ways to have more CCS around oil, gas and coal”. He
added, “We need to develop CCS as a way of decarbonising fossil fuels. The
idea all of the energy in the world is going to come from renewables, or
renewable plus energy efficiency, is just ridiculous.”
Wicks also rebuffed fresh calls from the Scottish National Party for oil
revenues and taxation to fall under the remit of the Scottish parliament
rather than Westminister. “The UK government is the government for energy
policy across the UK and that is the way it is going to stay,” he said.
The Greenpeace report was also condemned as a “scam” by the Member of the
European Parliament (MEP) responsible for steering the CCS legislation
through the European Parliament.
Chris Davies, the Liberal Democrat MEP who is leading the CCS negotiations,
described the Greenpeace comments as “ill-informed, divisive and dangerous”.
He claimed that CCS can help to buy the world time to develop zero carbon
power technologies which are not yet available.
05 May 2008 20:18 GMT
| last updated:
05 May 2008 21:28 GMT
Latest jobs
