Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on carbon capture and storage (CCS), providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).
Many of the largest CCS projects in the world overpromise and under-deliver, operating far below capacity.
Carbon, Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCS or CCUS) has a 50-year history of failure. CCS is often presented as a new technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by trapping CO2 from a smokestack or directly from the air and then injecting it into the ground for storage. In fact, CCS was first developed in the 1970s to enhance oil production, and increased oil production remains its primary use. Oil Change International research finds that 79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery).
Yet Big Oil consistently tells us that CCS is central to the fight against climate change. Chevron, for example, says that CCS will make a “lower carbon future possible.”
In the run-up to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, the oil industry and many governments are ramping up their promotion of CCS as an integral part of the collective response to climate change. There has been a flurry of renewed government commitments, conferences, and new industry initiatives, coupled with continuing misinformation. Governments around the world have spent over $20 billion – and have approved up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
In October 2023, ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, whose CEO, Sultan Al Jaber, is the COP28 President, announced that it planned to double its CCS capacity to 10 million tonnes per year. But ADNOC’s existing flagship CCS project, which is supposed to capture emissions from a steel plant, is only designed to capture around 17% of that plant’s maximum CO2 pollution. Furthermore, there is no publicly available information about how much CO2 it has actually captured. What the CCS project does capture is used to increase oil production, leading to more emissions when burned.
As governments prepare to spend up to $200 million of public money on CCS, it must be clear: CCS is a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry, not people and planet.
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Subsidies
Governments have spent over $20 billion – and have legislated or announced policies that could spend up to $200 billion more – of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
Key facts
Ten governments have already spent at least $22 billion on CCS and Fossil-Hydrogen.
This number is likely very conservative due to a shocking lack of transparency on government subsidies and tax credits.
Twelve governments have approved policies that could funnel up to $200 billion more toward CCS and Hydrogen.
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Carbon Capture Serves Oil and Gas Production
A Majority of Carbon Capture Projects Serve To Produce More Oil and Gas, Not Reduce Emissions
Data from our project’s database and analysis from leading experts such as IEEFA and others show that the majority of carbon capture (CCS) projects exist only to enable oil and gas production and fail to reduce overall emissions.
Key facts
79% of operating carbon capture capacity globally sends captured CO2 to produce more oil (via Enhanced Oil Recovery)
67% of operating carbon capture capacity globally captures emissions from processing CO2-rich gas.
The group, which reportedly has UAE state backing, is leading the race to buy the British newspaper.
The Daily Telegraph front page. Credit: Steven May / Alamy
The investment fund that has reportedly reached an agreement to buy the Telegraph Media Group has stakes in several oil and gas companies, DeSmog can report.
U.S.-based RedBird Capital has entered into a joint venture to take control of The Telegraph alongside International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The two groups have reportedly agreed to provide loans to The Telegraph’s existing owners, the Barclay family, to allow them to pay off their £1.16 billion debt to Lloyds Banking Group. The family lost control of The Telegraph and the Spectator magazine, which is also part of the media group, earlier this year due to this outstanding debt.
News reports suggest that the deal is being backed by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, the head of its state-owned investment company, and the owner of Manchester City football club.
Conservative MPs have voiced concerns over the potential purchase and the danger of foreign influence, asking the UK government to use national security laws to investigate the agreement. Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer has echoed these concerns, warning that the deal could undermine “free expression of opinion” and prevent the “accurate presentation of the news”.
The UAE is a petrostate that has the world’s largest oil expansion plans. The state-owned energy company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), intends to increase its oil production by more than any other fossil fuel firm in the world, according to data from the Global Oil and Gas Exit List (Gogel). Adnoc said that Gogel’s data and assumptions were “incorrect and misleading” but has not provided its own figures.
RedBird-IMI has said that, under its proposal, The Telegraph and Spectator will be managed by RedBird Capital “alone” and IMI would be a “passive investor”.
RedBird Capital trades in a number of core investment sectors, including energy. The firm’s website states that it holds investments in at least six fossil fuel firms: Aethon United, CapturePoint, FireBird Energy, Four Corners Petroleum, Lambda Energy Resources, and Tally Energy Services.
All of these companies are based in the U.S., with a majority operating in Texas.
Aethon United was listed by Enverus Intelligence Research as one of the most prolific private oil and gas producers in the U.S. in 2023. It was reported in 2022 that the firm was considering a public listing that would value it at more than $10 billion.
CapturePoint specialises in carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), a favoured technology of the fossil fuel industry that it claims will help to limit global warming. The RedBird website claims that CapturePoint is “building out a carbon capture network on the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest”.
There is limited evidence of the efficacy of CCUS at scale. DeSmog recently analysed 12 large-scale CCUS projects around the world and found countless missed carbon capture targets, as well as cost overruns, with taxpayers picking up the tab via billions of dollars in subsidies. Meanwhile, captured carbon is often merely used to extract more oil.
“If this deal goes through, it will pollute our press and the UK’s fight against climate breakdown,” Alexander Kirk, fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, told DeSmog.
RedBird Capital also holds an investment in Majority Strategies, a political strategy firm that claims to have worked for every official Republican presidential nominee since 2000. Majority Strategies received more than $27 million during the 2022 election cycle, including $9.2 million from the Republican Senate Leadership Fund.
Responding to media speculation about The Telegraph’s future ownership, the paper’s editor Chris Evans sent an internal memo earlier this week. Seen by Politico Playbook, the memo read: “You’ve been asking me how we can be confident that editorial independence would be protected. At the moment I know no more than you will have read.”
Polly Truscott, a foreign policy adviser at Amnesty International UK, told The Times that: “Any Emirati state ownership of the Telegraph may have serious implications for press freedom in the UK and should be carefully scrutinised by the government. In the UAE, anyone who dares to speak out against the Emirati authorities is likely to be at serious risk.”
The UAE ranks 145 out of 180 in the 2023 Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders.
Other sources claim that the bidding process for The Telegraph and the Spectator is still ongoing and that no deal has been finalised. Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, is also reportedly interested in buying the titles. DeSmog revealed in October that Marshall’s hedge fund has $2 billion in fossil fuel investments.
RedBird Capital and the Telegraph Media Group did not respond to our request for comment.
Climate Attacks
A new DeSmog analysis has found that eight in 10 opinion pieces from The Telegraph on environmental issues downplay the climate crisis.
Our analysis, for the six months ending 16 October, found that of the 171 articles covering environmental issues, 85 percent were identified as “anti-green” – attacking climate policy, downplaying climate science and ridiculing environmental groups.
Of the 1,930 opinion pieces published by the paper during this period, nearly one in five (17.6 percent) featured an attack on climate science, policy or environmental groups. Ten writers linked to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s leading climate science denial group, wrote a total of 144 opinion pieces for The Telegraph during the period.
The Telegraph’s print circulation at the end of 2019, when it last released the data, was over 300,000. It had an online audience of 13.5 million in September this year.
World leaders next week gather in Dubai, UAE, to negotiate how to reduce emissions and limit global warming. The COP28 summit is being led by Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of Adnoc, which is the world’s 11th largest oil and gas producer. Al Jaber has claimed that fossil fuels should “continue to play a role in the foreseeable future” – a statement labelled as “very dangerous” by former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres.
The UAE has also attempted to emphasise the importance of CCUS in capturing emissions. However, according to an analysis by Global Witness, based on Adnoc’s carbon capture plans, it would take 343 years for the firm to capture all the CO2 emissions it will produce in just the next six years. This week, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition also revealed that at least 7,200 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN-led climate over the last 20 years.
Total trade between the UK and UAE exceeded £25 billion in the year ending Q2 2023, an increase of 47.3 percent compared to the year before. The Gulf state has also pledged to invest £10 billion in “priority” UK industries.
In the year following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the UK imported £2.5 billion in fossil fuels from the UAE. The average monthly value of fossil fuel imports from the UAE increased from £84.4 million in the year to February 2022, to £195 million the year after.
In total, UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3 billion in the year following the invasion – an increase of more than 60 percent.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Keir Starmer. Credit: DeSmog via UK Parliament (CC BY 3.0)
A trade group for contested carbon capture with close ties to major oil and gas companies is sponsoring over a dozen events at the Conservative and Labour conferences over the next fortnight.
Fossil fuel companies are using the technology as “a fig leaf” to pursue oil and gas drilling, campaigners have warned, as industry lobbyists across the energy sector seek to win over policymakers.
The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), a trade body promoting carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS), is due to host 15 events across the Conservative and Labour gatherings, which begin on Sunday in Manchester.
The London-based CCSA describes itself as the “lead” European organisation for CCUS, promoting the “rapid” and “commercial” deployment of the technology. The process involves capturing CO2 emissions from industrial production and storing it underground. Some technologies allow the captured CO2 to be re-used by converting it into plastics, concrete or biofuel.
The group says that its members are “companies across the CCUS industry” including “support services in the energy sector” such as law, banking and consultancy.
Nearly a fifth of the CCSA’s 100 members are oil and gas companies, including BP, Exxon, Shell and Equinor. Fossil fuels are the largest contributor to climate change, producing 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.
The CCSA board is also dominated by key figures at oil and gas companies, including BP, Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell.
Lorne Stockman, research co-director at the campaign group Oil Change International, told DeSmog: “It’s very clear what carbon capture serves and who it’s a solution for, and that’s the fossil fuel industry.
“This isn’t about the best way of addressing the climate crisis, it’s about keeping the industry in business.”
He said the companies were trying to hedge their bets by winning over both the Conservatives and Labour, in the hope of continued government funding to support the high infrastructure costs.
“They pay both parties as much as they can,” said Stockman. “They’ve got the resources, they’ve got the money, they’ve got the influence, and of course they’re showing up to ensure that the fossil fuel industry continues to get public support even while we try to confront the climate emergency.”
Carbon capture and storage, and the extension of the technology, CCUS, has been touted by major polluters as a way to cut their production emissions to meet climate targets.
But the role of carbon capture in the energy transition is hotly contested. Climate scientists point to the failure of CCS to remove significant amounts of CO2 emissions while campaigners warn of the high costs compared to renewable energy. The vast majority of companies use the captured CO2 to extract more oil through a process called “enhanced oil recovery”.
A DeSmog analysis published this week found the majority of large-scale global CCS projects have spectacularly failed to deliver what they promised, overran budgets and targets, and resulted in a net increase in emissions.
A CCSA spokesperson told DeSmog: “We are proud to bring a wide variety of our members to party conferences this year to engage with politicians, delegates and the media on the vital role carbon capture and storage technology will play in the net zero transition.
“This technology will ensure industry can continue to support jobs making critical products such as steel and cement in the UK, rather than importing them from abroad, as well as creating 70,000 new jobs in green industries.
“Carbon capture technology will be an important part of the solution, alongside reducing energy use and rolling out renewable electricity as we all work together to reach net zero.”
Fossil Fuel Presence
The UK government has committed £20 billion of investment for carbon capture and storage over the next 20 years, and aims to capture and store 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 and over 50 million by 2035.
The “CCUS Investor Roadmap”, updated this year, sets out plans to deliver four CCUS “low-carbon” industrial clusters by 2030, and capture and store nine million tonnes of CO2 from industrial CCS by 2035.
Despite well-documented concerns over carbon capture, industry executives will look to increase the government’s commitments further and showcase its “key role in decarbonising industry”, when they join the Conservatives in Manchester next week, and Labour in Liverpool later in the month.
Experts and MPs – yet to be named – have been invited to the group’s ticketed drinks receptions, while a number of talks are dedicated to promoting the technology as a crucial part of the UK’s “green industrial revolution”.
“Our politics are shot through with oil and gas lobbyists, it’s just at party conferences they come into the light a little bit more,” Tessa Khan, executive director of fossil fuel campaign group Uplift, told DeSmog.
“This is a ludicrous amount of special pleading for a technology, carbon capture and storage, that, on the current trajectory, will play a marginal role in reducing industrial emissions and at worst is a fig leaf for more oil and gas drilling.”
The CCSA reception in Liverpool at the Labour Party conference will feature food, drinks and speeches from industry leaders, with members of the shadow cabinet expected to attend.
Doug Parr, chief scientist and policy director at Greenpeace, told DeSmog that CCS “has been used and continues to be used as a cover for fossil fuel exploitation”.
“If the CCS crew are out and about at party conferences, one has to have a suspicion, given the number of fossil fuel industries that continue to be involved with them, that that’s what’s being attempted in the UK”, he said.
Board Members and Political Influence
Individuals from the fossil fuel industries are well represented on the CCSA board, as well as the group’s membership.
Oil and gas companies TotalEnergies, Wintershall Dea, Uniper, Phillips 66 UK, Neptune Energy and Eni are also members of the CCSA, alongside Drax, the UK’s single largest emitter of CO2. Drax is seeking an estimated £31.7 billion in subsidies for its proposed biomass energy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) plant, which is being trialled in its CCUS “incubation area” in North Yorkshire.
The CCSA board is also dominated by career oil and gas executives who have spent decades working in the industry.
Chair of the CCSA, Jonathan Briggs, is director of a CCS project run by Vitol, a Dutch multinational energy and commodity company which trades oil, gas and coal. Briggs works on the “Humber Zero” project to decarbonise VPI Power’s Combined Cycle Gas Turbine in Immingham, North Lincolnshire.
The board includes Rowaa Ahmar, group head of public affairs, policy and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) at biomass company Drax, the UK’s largest single emitter of CO2.
Other board members include Graeme Davies, a project director at Harbour Energy; Shirley Oliveira, vice president for hydrogen and CCUS advisory services at BP; Dan Sadler, UK vice president for low carbon solutions at Equinor; Gaël Le Parc, UK CCS director for TotalEnergies; and Steve Schofield, head of climate and carbon policy and advocacy at the corporate relations department of Shell.
The CCSA also has political connections. CCSA president, Baroness Liddell, was a Labour minister under former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Joe Butler-Trewin, CCSA’s Public Affairs and Communications Officer in London, worked on Keir Starmer’s 2020 campaign for the Labour leadership.
The Conservative and Labour parties did not respond when contacted for comment.
