I will put my cards out there I think carbon capture or CCUS as it’s called – the U is utilisation and the S storage – is a vital part of the net zero path. Others disagree – many others. It’s said to be too expensive, unproven and worst of all a licence to keep burning fossil fuels.
This episode I chatted to Olivia Powis the boss of the CCUS association representing companies working to bring this tech to the party. So what’s her view on the role of CCUS right now?
“We can’t afford to wait until we have alternatives to all these products that are low carbon, We’ve got to we’ve got to act now. And I think this is the point when we’re talking with critics, so those that are saying, you know, we mustn’t do this, this is the licence to to continue.
I think the message here is this isn’t instead of any of the other low carbon technologies, this isn’t instead of offshore wind, instead of other renewables, it works alongside them.
“And when you look at the Climate Change Committee, the pathways that they’ve set out, we have to deploy all of these if we’re going to get to net zero and particularly towards meeting the target by 2050.
Olivia says CCUS can speed up the net zero pace.
“We’re looking at greenhouse gas removal. So these are the engineered removals that are going to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. So some of the system is about decarbonising plants and making sure what you make is low carbon, say cement. Others are about making sure that we have a negative CO2 impact. So we believe that is incredibly essential for those hard to abate sectors – but aviation etc. aren’t going to get to net zero on that road.
“So I think, this is a transition. But we’ve got we’ve got to act now. And perhaps if we if we’d acted ten years ago, we may in a very different place. But we still need cement. We need to build hospitals, coal etc and so to get there, we need to decarbonise them now.
We don’t have time to wait. But we do know that CCUS is essential in getting us there.
“So if CCUS, can be used to decarbonise fossil fuels, which of course can. Then of course, you know, that’s the route we should go.”
But she is clear the technology is not about keeping the status quo.
“I don’t think this is about saying we can just continue with fossil fuels forever. We’ve still got to tackle climate change, we’ve still got to meet net zero, we have to keep those targets in mind. But we we can’t get away from the fact that we still are incredibly reliant on fossil fuels and we’ve got to transition that”
Listen to the whole chat now.
