A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London
CAMPAIGNERS slammed the government for “not talking seriously” about health service funding today, after it emerged that the bill to fix crumbling NHS buildings has soared while patients and staff are left in harm’s way.
New figures show that the cost to eradicate NHS repairs in England jumped to £13.8 billion in 2023, up by a fifth compared to the previous year.
Costs amounting to £3bn were attributed to “high-risk” repairs, which could cause injury if left unaddressed.
NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said: “Vital bits of the NHS are literally falling apart after years of underinvestment nationally.
“The safety of patients and staff is at risk.
“The list of essential repairs across the NHS waiting to be done keeps getting longer and the costs are rocketing.”
The spiralling maintenance backlog outstrips the cost of running the NHS estate itself, which also increased by 11 per cent to £13.6bn.
King’s Fund chief executive Sarah Woolnough said the backlog has grown due to the “repeated raiding” of capital budgets to shore up day-to-day running costs, coupled with “short-term sticking plaster solutions.”
Greenpeace activists light up a mock bomb labeled “CO2” during a campaign in front of the German Chancellery in Berlin on March 25, 2009. (Photo: Michael Gottschalk/DDP/AFP via Getty Images.
As attendees gathered in the south of France Thursday for the start of a European Union-hosted summit on carbon capture and storage, an international coalition of green groups warned against funding “reckless, unscientific, and lobbyist-driven” false climate solutions and instead urged investment in “a just transition that prioritizes renewable energy, energy demand reduction, and energy efficiency.”
“Today the Industrial Carbon Management Forum (ICMF) kicks off in Pau, France,” 43 organizations wrote in a letter to the European Commission. “This forum has been revealed to be dominated by fossil fuel interests to the exclusion of civil society stakeholders and other expert voices with critical views.”
🚨 As the #ICMForum kicks off, civil society groups blow the whistle on the Europen Union’s reckless, unscientific, lobbyist-led Carbon Capture and Storage plans!
— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) October 10, 2024
The letter points to a report published Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), which concluded that “most of Europe’s planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) applications are too expensive to work on a commercial basis and are nowhere near ready to be rolled out.”
According to the report, Europe’s planned CCS projects will cost an estimated €520 billion ($569 billion), which IEEFA energy finance analyst and report author Andrew Reid said “will force European governments to introduce eye-wateringly high subsidies to prop up a technology that has a history of failure.”
The green groups’ letter also notes widespread criticism of CCS, which has been panned by Food & Water Watch—whose European branch signed the letter—as a “false climate solution” and a “lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.”
The signers wrote that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “has labeled CCS as one of the most costly and least effective emissions reduction methods, and an Oxford study found high-CCS pathways could cost $30 trillion more globally than renewable alternatives,” the signers wrote, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The letter continues:
As well as being prohibitively expensive, plans for carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale face overwhelming technical challenges and the records show 50 years of failure. Even with $83 billion in investment since the ’90s, research found that nearly 80% of large-scale projects fail. The industry itself has acknowledged that for all these efforts, only 52 metric tons of carbon dioxide have ever been stored long-term, highlighting the unlikeliness of achieving the E.U.’s stated goal of storing 280 metric tons of CO2 by 2040…
The union has already spent over €3 billion ($3.3 billion) on CCS and hydrogen projects—hydrogen is often paired with CCS to attempt to capture the carbon dioxide emissions released during hydrogen production from fossil fuels in order to label hydrogen a low-carbon fuel. However, this ignores the ineffectiveness of CCS to reduce emissions and the continued use of fossil fuels in the process.
“We cannot afford to give further investments to the fossil fuel industry to gamble with our future and our tax money,” the green groups stressed. “Money allotted to CCS would be better spent on the communities and countries that need it most and on ensuring a full and fair phaseout of fossil fuels.”
In stark contrast, E.U. Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said during the opening session of the CCS summit that the 27-nation bloc’s climate target plan “underlines that industrial carbon management is not just an alternative, it is a vital complement to renewable energy and energy efficiency.”
The letter’s signers are calling on E.U. policymakers to:
Stop wasting money on CCS projects and commit to a full phaseout of fossil fuels;
Reject the influence of the fossil fuel industry;
Commit to a full consideration of the scientific and real-world evidence of CCS’ failures, limitations, and challenges; and
Invest instead in real climate, health, and nature solutions that deliver a transition to a clean, healthy, and safe economy.
“The current fossil fuel industry influence on the E.U.’s carbon capture policy undermines the E.U.’s ability to meet its climate goals and responsibilities, and is damaging its reputation and leadership,” the groups asserted. “Rejecting the influence of the fossil fuel industry and investing in climate action that can actually deliver emissions cuts and steer a just transition from the fossil fuel economy is crucial if the E.U. is to deliver real solutions for climate, nature, and people.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his talks with Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte in Downing Street, in London, October 10, 2024
LABOUR and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s approval ratings are still nosediving as the government marks 100 days in office tomorrow.
New Ipsos polling reveals Sir Keir’s net popularity has fallen to a record low of minus 26 points — worse than Reform leader Nigel Farage.
Rachel Reeves was doing even worse at minus 30 points with four in nine saying she is doing a bad job as Chancellor.
Experts blamed No 10 “turf wars,” scandals over ministerial freebies and cutting pensioner benefits as the Labour Party’s net popularity also plummeted 13.5 points to minus 21 points since the general election.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.
This will be Keir Starmer’s HS2: a hugely expensive scheme that will either be abandoned, scaled back or require massive extra funding to continue, after many billions have been spent. The government’s plan for carbon capture and storage (CCS) – catching carbon dioxide from major industry and pumping it into rocks under the North Sea – is a fossil fuel-driven boondoggle that will accelerate climate breakdown. Its ticket price of £21.7bn is just the beginning of a phenomenal fiscal nightmare.
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An analysis by Oxford University’s Smith School shows that a heavy reliance on CCS massively increases the costs of cutting emissions. By contrast to other technologies such as solar, wind and batteries, its costs have not fallen at all in 40 years. When I asked the government what guarantee it could provide that construction costs would be capped at £21.7bn, it gave me a woolly answer about “value for money”, but no such reassurance.
And this is just the start of it. Buried in an obscure ancillary document is a government commitment to pay a “premium” for the hydrogen component of the CCS programme for 15 years. How much will the total cost of this be? Again, no clear answer. Cutting cost-effective measures in favour of an open-ended, staggeringly expensive programme is the very definition of fiscal irresponsibility.
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Starmer campaigned on a platform of “change”. But there has been no change from this demented Tory policy, no change in the influence of the fossil fuel industry, no change in the perverse justifications. And, I suspect, there will be no change from £50bnfor this profligate CCS scheme.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, talks of a fiscal “black hole” of £21.9bn. But this is a real black hole: a long tunnel into the rocks, down which £21.7bn and more will be poured. A more reliable and cost-effective means of sequestering carbon would be to bundle up the money (roughly 1,100 tonnes in £20 notes) and shove it down the pipe.
