black hole

George Monbiot: Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/11/labour-carbon-capture-climate-breakdown

 Illustration: Eleanor Shakespeare/The Guardian

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 £50bn for 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/11/labour-carbon-capture-climate-breakdown

Continue ReadingGeorge Monbiot: Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions

Chancellor’s ‘black hole’ claim ‘unnecessary and unhelpful’, says ex Bank of England economist

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https://news.sky.com/story/chancellors-black-hole-claim-unnecessary-and-unhelpful-says-ex-bank-of-england-economist-13213523

Andy Haldane

Former senior economist Andy Haldane told Sky News that Rachel Reeves’s comments earlier this summer had spooked consumers, businesses and investors.

The chancellor’s claim of a £22bn “black hole” in government finances was “unnecessary and probably unhelpful economically”, a former Bank of England chief economist has said.

Andy Haldane told Sky News’ Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge that Rachel Reeves’s statement in July was a “bad idea” because it generated a sense of “fear and foreboding” just when there was a new-found confidence in the UK.

Ms Reeves made the claim within weeks of taking office in what was widely seen as a warning that her first budget in October would be a painful mix of spending cuts and tax rises.

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He said: “The black hole event was unnecessary and probably unhelpful economically.

“It’s one thing to reveal a black hole, if that indeed is what it is. But just leaving that to sit for three months I think was a bad idea.”

Asked what the government should have done, he said it was “much better to say nothing until you provide solutions”.

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https://news.sky.com/story/chancellors-black-hole-claim-unnecessary-and-unhelpful-says-ex-bank-of-england-economist-13213523

Continue ReadingChancellor’s ‘black hole’ claim ‘unnecessary and unhelpful’, says ex Bank of England economist