fossil fuel industry

Study Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C, Even Temporarily

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Houses destroyed by the rising sea level are shown at the Port-Bouet beach in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire on September 2, 2024. (Photo by Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images)

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages.”

Just over a month away from the next United Nations climate summit, a study out Wednesday warns that heating the planet beyond a key temperature threshold of the Paris agreement—even temporarily—could cause “irreversible impacts.”

The 2015 agreement aims to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, relative to preindustrial levels.

“For years, scientists and world leaders have pinned their hopes for the future on a hazy promise—that, even if temperatures soar far above global targets, the planet can eventually be cooled back down,” The Washington Postdetailed Wednesday. “This phenomenon, known as a temperature ‘overshoot,’ has been baked into most climate models and plans for the future.”

“The earlier we can get to net-zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts.”

As lead author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said in a statement, “This paper does away with any notion that overshoot would deliver a similar climate outcome to a future in which we had done more, earlier, to ensure to limit peak warming to 1.5°C.”

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages,” stressed Schleussner, an expert from Climate Analytics and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis who partnered with 29 other scientists for the study.

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, states that “for a range of climate impacts, there is no expectation of immediate reversibility after an overshoot. This includes changes in the deep ocean, marine biogeochemistry and species abundance, land-based biomes, carbon stocks, and crop yields, but also biodiversity on land. An overshoot will also increase the probability of triggering potential Earth system tipping elements.”

“Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to millennia even if long-term temperatures decline,” the study adds, projecting that every 100 years of overshoot could lead seas to rise nearly 16 inches by 2300, on top of more than 31 inches without overshoot.

The scientists found that “a similar pattern emerges” for the thawing of permafrost—ground that is frozen for two or more years—and northern peatland warming, which would lead to the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane. They wrote that “the effect of permafrost and peatland emissions on 2300 temperatures increases by 0.02ºC per 100 years of overshoot.”

“To hedge and protect against high-risk outcomes, we identify the geophysical need for a preventive carbon dioxide removal capacity of several hundred gigatonnes,” the authors noted. “Yet, technical, economic, and sustainability considerations may limit the realization of carbon dioxide removal deployment at such scales. Therefore, we cannot be confident that temperature decline after overshoot is achievable within the timescales expected today. Only rapid near-term emission reductions are effective in reducing climate risks.”

In other words, as co-author and Climate Analytics research analyst Gaurav Ganti, put it, “there’s no way to rule out the need for large amounts of net negative emissions capabilities, so we really need to minimize our residual emissions.”

“We cannot squander carbon dioxide removal on offsetting emissions we have the ability to avoid,” Ganti added. “Our work reinforces the urgency of governments acting to reduce our emissions now, and not later down the line. The race to net-zero needs to be seen for what it is—a sprint.”

While the paper comes ahead of COP29, the U.N. conference in Azerbaijan next month, co-author Joeri Rogelj looked toward COP30, for which governments that have signed the Paris agreement will present their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to meet the climate deal’s goals.

“Until we get to net-zero, warming will continue. The earlier we can get to net-zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts,” said Rogelj, a professor and director of research for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “This underscores the importance of countries submitting ambitious new reduction pledges, or so-called ‘NDCs,’ well ahead of next year’s climate summit in Brazil.”

The U.N. said last November that countries’ current emissions plans would put the world on track for 2.9°C of warming by 2100, nearly double the Paris target. Since then, scientists have confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year in human history and warned that 2024 is expected to set a new record.

The study in Nature was published as Hurricane Milton—fueled by hot waters in the Gulf of Mexico—barreled toward Florida and just a day after another group of scientists wrote in BioScience that “we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.”

Those experts emphasized that “human-caused carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases are the primary drivers of climate change. As of 2022, global fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes account for approximately 90% of these emissions, whereas land-use change, primarily deforestation, accounts for approximately 10%.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Continue ReadingStudy Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C, Even Temporarily

Fix the climate or appease the fossil fuel industry – we can’t do both

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Jack Marley, The Conversation

Britain ended more than 140 years of coal power when it closed its last generator in September.

Coal emits more heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere than any other fossil fuel, so its demise as a source of electricity is an unalloyed good for the climate. Yet, with another announcement a week later, the UK government has helped extend the reign of fossil fuels well into the 21st century.Read more: How mainstream climate science endorsed the fantasy of a global warming time machine

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Less than six months from polling day, the UK Labour party (then the official opposition) scrapped a campaign commitment to provide an annual stimulus of £28 billion (US$36.6 billion) for green industries.

Read more: Labour’s £28 billion green investment promise could be watered down – here’s why

Six billion pounds shy of this figure will now be raised over 25 years, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has revealed, but for a specific purpose: carbon capture and storage.

“The technology works by capturing CO₂ as it is being emitted by a power plant or another polluter, then storing it underground,” says Mark Maslin, a professor of natural sciences at UCL.

The Guardian reports that oil companies BP and Equinor will invest in a cluster of carbon capture and storage installations in Teesside, north-east England. Eni, an Italian oil company, is expected to develop sites in north-west England and north Wales. In each case, emissions will probably be pumped via gas pipes beneath the seabed.

Starmer anointed “a new era” for green jobs when announcing this funding, but experts claim he is actually offering symbolic and strategic support to climate-wrecking energy sources that have dominated for centuries.

A new error

“This announcement represents a massive bet on a still unproven technology, and will lock the UK into fossil fuel dependence for decades to come,” Maslin says.

Read more: The UK’s £22 billion bet on carbon capture will lock in fossil fuels for decades

“The Climate Change Act mandates the UK should achieve net zero emissions by 2050, yet this will be impossible if carbon capture leads to the UK building new gas power stations instead of wind and solar farms.”

Four smokestacks at a power plant.
Our ability to capture all this carbon is not guaranteed. DimaBerlin/Shutterstock

Maslin was one of several scientists who wrote to energy secretary Ed Miliband criticising the plans. As he sees it, the government would not fund these projects if it did not see a future for fossil fuels beyond the middle of this century, by which time scientists have said our interference in the climate must end.

The message is clear: expensive imports of natural gas (essentially methane, a potent greenhouse gas) are here to stay. Even successful deployment of carbon scrubbers at the point of burning this gas would not erase its climate impact, Maslin says, as it leaks at all stages of its production and use.

But Maslin also doubts carbon capture and storage can siphon off the emissions of gas-fired power plants without adding to climate change. This is why climate scientists often describe carbon capture and storage as an unproven technology for decarbonising electricity and heavy industry: most of its applications have been in natural gas processing facilities where CO₂ is extracted for commercial uses.

“The track record of adding carbon capture to power plants is much worse, with the vast majority of projects abandoned,” Maslin explains.

More damning still, almost 80% of all the CO₂ captured by existing installations has been reinjected into oil fields – to pump more oil.

Could carbon capture and storage tech turn natural gas into zero-carbon hydrogen, as some hope? Again, Maslin is dubious. Water is a cleaner source for hydrogen and using this fuel to heat homes or decarbonise factories is a second-rate solution compared with renewable electricity, he says.

The fruits of appeasement

Maslin and his co-signatories say that carbon capture and storage should be limited to reducing emissions from existing fossil power plants or steel furnaces while these emission sources are rapidly phased out.

Marc Hudson at the University of Sussex is a historian of climate politics and policy in Australia, the US, UK and internationally. He has encountered policy proposals for carbon capture dating back to the 1970s and in his view, their overwhelming effect has been to prolong the use of fossil fuels by justifying investment in their expansion.

Read more: Relying on carbon capture and storage may be a dangerous trap for UK industry

“It’s the equivalent of smoking more and more cigarettes each day and gambling that a cure for cancer will exist by the time you need it,” he says.

Read more: Cumbria coal mine: empty promises of carbon capture tech have excused digging up more fossil fuel for decades

When trying to explain why rational climate policies like the mass insulation of draughty homes tends to lose out to investment in carbon capture and storage, Nils Markusson, a lecturer in environmental politics at Lancaster University, found something similar:

“Home insulation does nothing to shield the profits of fossil fuel companies or landlords in the large and growing private rental sector,” he says.

Read more: Does carbon capture and storage hype delay emissions cuts? Here’s what research shows

In other words, appeasing the fossil fuel industry is a proviso of policies drafted to address climate change. This limitation has also infiltrated scientific assessments of the climate.

A new report shows that “overshoot” scenarios – that is, projections of future climate change which accept the global target of 1.5°C will be at least temporarily breached – are rife in mainstream climate science.

This is despite evidence of the permanent damage such a breach would cause – and our doubtful ability to reverse warming once it has exceeded these dangerous levels using speculative carbon removal technology.

Metal pipes over Icelandic earth with a steam chimney in the distance.
There is not enough land or energy to rapidly restore the carbon we have emitted. Oksana Bali/Shutterstock

What has led us here? Comprehending the climate crisis and its solutions on terms favourable to the fossil fuel industry say Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, political ecologists at Lund University.

“Avoiding climate breakdown demands that we bury the fantasy of overshoot-and-return and with it another illusion as well: that the Paris targets can be met without uprooting the status-quo.

Read more: How mainstream climate science endorsed the fantasy of a global warming time machine

“One limit after the other will be broken unless we manage to strand the necessary fossil assets and curtail opportunities for continuing to profit from oil and gas and coal.”

Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingFix the climate or appease the fossil fuel industry – we can’t do both

On Heels of Helene, Milton Explodes Into Category 5 Hurricane

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

The expected path of Hurricane Milton is seen in a graphic released on October 7, 2024.(Photo: National Hurricane Center)

“The Gulf of Mexico is so warm that the models couldn’t predict how strong Milton has gotten so quickly,” said the Sunrise Movement. “This is a climate emergency.”

“This is not normal,” said climate advocates Monday as they expressed the same shock as weather experts who were reporting on the rapid strengthening of Hurricane Milton, whose winds sped up to 175 miles per hour as Florida residents struggled to recover from last month’s devastating storm, Helene.

Milton was classified as a Category 5 hurricane Monday afternoon—just five hours after it had been designated a Category 2 storm with 100 mile-per-hour winds and 48 hours after it became a tropical storm churning eastward over the Gulf of Mexico.

The winds “explosively” intensified over a matter of hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As the hurricane gathered strength, weather analyst Colin McCarthy of U.S. Stormwatch said that “not a single weather model predicted the storm would strengthen this quickly.”

The storm was expected to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—who vehemently denies scientists’ consensus that human-caused climate change is causing more extreme weather—called for widespread evacuations ahead of “life-threatening” hazards.

“If we knew exactly where it’s going to hit, we probably would evacuate fewer people,” DeSantis said Monday morning. “But we don’t know that.”

President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida Monday afternoon and ordered federal assistance to the state.

The New York Times reported that Milton could weaken before Wednesday as it makes its way through the Gulf, but that could be accompanied by a widening of the hurricane’s size, threatening a greater portion of the vulnerable state.

“The entire peninsula, the entire west coast, has potential to have major, major impact because of the storm surge,” said DeSantis on Sunday.

Milton is expected to be the second hurricane to hit Florida in two weeks, with parts of the state still reeling from the damage left by Helene.

DeSantis said Monday that emergency workers had picked up 180,000 cubic yards of debris across the state, and said, “There’s still a lot of it.”

The Tampa Bay area, where residents were warned by National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Davis on Monday that Milton could be “the worst hurricane in their lifetime,” was inundated last month with record-high storm surges.

Barrier islands were damaged by Helene, and the destruction of sand dunes has left the area especially exposed to hazards, Davis told The New York Times.

“Just after our latest hurricane, we are extremely vulnerable, especially to surge,” said Davis. “Our ground is extremely saturated from several hurricanes already this year, and we’re going to have river flooding. So people that may be 20 miles inland from the coast won’t get storm surge, but they could get rainfall flooding, river flooding, retention ponds could flood creeks.”

Climatologists have warned that warmer oceans and bodies of water including the Gulf of Mexico are likely to cause more intense hurricane seasons. The Gulf has reached an average surface temperature of nearly 90°F—the hottest it’s been since modern records have been kept, Brian McNoldy, a climate researcher at the University of Miami, toldVox in August.

“The Gulf of Mexico is so warm that the models couldn’t predict how strong Milton has gotten so quickly,” said national climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement.

Officials called on residents to evacuate Monday rather than waiting for the hurricane to get closer to making its expected landfall. More than a dozen school districts in the state announced they were closing ahead of the storm.

But as pro-labor media group More Perfect Union reported, workers on Monday were already sharing stories online of how companies are planning to stay open until at least Tuesday night, making it impossible for people to obey evacuation orders.

One person working in retail management said that “after waiting all weekend to see if the corporate overlords would say we’re closed until further notice, I got notice today that we’re business as usual until Tuesday night… This gives me no time to evacuate or prepare accordingly.”

“Workers died during Hurricane Helene because they weren’t given time to evacuate,” said More Perfect Union. “This must stop.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Continue ReadingOn Heels of Helene, Milton Explodes Into Category 5 Hurricane

Florida Meteorologist Breaks Down Reporting on Milton’s Growing Strength

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Florida meteorologist John Morales warns residents to evacuate and says the rapid intensifying of Hurricane Milton is due to the climate crisis and planetary heating in a news report on October 7, 2024. (Image: NBC6)

“The warming world has forcibly shifted my manner from calm concern to agitated dismay,” said John Morales. “Now I look at storms differently. And I communicate differently.”

As NBC6 hurricane specialist John Morales in Miami reported on the rapid drop in barometric pressure as Hurricane Milton gained strength in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday, the veteran meteorologist’s voice broke.

“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” Morales said, becoming visibly emotional. “I apologize, this is just horrific.”

The storm is expected to make landfall on the west coast of Florida on Wednesday as the state struggles to recover from Hurricane Helene.

Morales spoke as the hurricane’s winds reached 160 miles per hour and climate experts noted that the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean’s waters have been abnormally warm.

“The seas are just incredibly, incredibly hot, record hot, as you might imagine,” said Morales. “You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you. Global warming, climate change [are] leading to this and becoming an increasing threat.”

Morales posted the clip on social media later, saying he “debated whether to share” the emotional moment in which he reported on what is likely to be further catastrophic damage to his home state as well as parts of Mexico.

“Frankly, you should be shaken too, and demand climate action now,” said Morales.

A week ago, the meteorologist wrote in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 230 people across six states, was “a harbinger of the future.”

“For decades I had felt in control. Not in control of the weather, of course. But in control of the message that, if my audience was prepared and well informed, I could confidently guide them through any weather threat, and we’d all make it through safely,” wrote Morales. “Today as a result of so many compounding climate-driven factors, the warming world has forcibly shifted my manner from calm concern to agitated dismay. Now I look at storms differently. And I communicate differently.”

“No one can hide from the truth,” he added. “Extreme weather events, including hurricanes, are becoming more extreme. I must communicate the growing threats from the climate crisis come hell or high water—pun intended.”

Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.), who is running for Senate, was among those who applauded Morales’ frank assessment of the crisis facing his state and the country.

“I’ve never seen someone like John Morales get emotional about a storm before. He understands these systems better than most and it should be a warning for all of us to get ready now,” said Mucarsel-Powell. “We MUST have the courage to stand up to climate denialists and take action before it is too late.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Continue ReadingFlorida Meteorologist Breaks Down Reporting on Milton’s Growing Strength

UK’s £22 Billion Carbon Capture Pledge Follows Surge in Lobbying by Fossil Fuel Industry, Records Show

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Original article by TJ Jordan republished from DeSmog

Drax power plant in Yorkshire. Credit: A.P.S. (UK) / Alamy Stock Photo

Scope of corporate influence underscores concerns the technology will be used to prolong demand for planet-heating natural gas.

This story is the third part of a DeSmog series on carbon capture and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe and published in partnership with the Guardian.

The UK government’s move to award £22 billion in subsidies to carbon capture projects followed a sharp increase in lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, DeSmog can reveal.  

Oil and gas giants such as Equinor, BP, and ExxonMobil attended 24 out of 44 external ministerial meetings to discuss carbon capture and storage (CCS) in 2023, according to official transparency records. 

That represented a surge in activity relative to 2020-2022, when ministers held about half as many meetings to discuss the technology, and oil and gas companies would attend seven to 10 of these discussions each year.

Meeting notes obtained via freedom of information requests showed how oil executives were involved in shaping policy, and used their access to underscore the need to continue developing oil and gas. 

During a call in December with three Equinor executives, one of the company’s team told Jeremy Allen, then director of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, that Equinor “appreciate[s] the…collaborative approach to policy development.”

An executive from ExxonMobil’s Low Carbon Solutions division “spoke of the outstanding need for oil and gas, at the same time as needing to lower emissions” in a meeting with then energy minister Graham Stuart in March last year at the CERAWeek oil trade show in Houston.

The growing engagement by oil and gas companies has sharpened concerns among climate advocates that industry is skewing the UK’s carbon capture strategy to justify building new gas-fired power plants — prolonging demand for natural gas, a source of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions.

“Fossil fuel companies often have the engineering know-how to build these projects, so the government naturally has to meet with them,” said Laurie Laybourn, environmental policy researcher and associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank. “But that might create a risk whereby these companies unduly influence policy and roll-out in a way that benefits them.”

Others engaging regularly with ministers on CCS policy include heavy manufacturing companies, CCS technology firms, lobby groups, and investment funds.

Researchers, climate groups, and local councils were less well represented, the transparency records showed. No individual organisation from these sectors has attended more than three meetings with ministers on carbon capture since the start of 2020. 

Meanwhile, lobby group the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) — which represents dozens of fossil fuel companies — attended 20 meetings, and Equinor 16. BP, ExxonMobil, Scottish power company SSE, and Drax, a biomass power plant and the UK’s biggest CO2 emitter, also attended nine meetings each during the same period.

‘Wrong Pathway’

The new Labour government announced plans last week to extend £22 billion in subsidies for carbon capture over 25 years, saying the strategy can help meet climate goals and support a broader revitalization of British industry.

The policy builds on the previous Conservative administration’s plans to establish four CCS “clusters,” where carbon capture would be used to trap some of the CO2 emitted by fossil-fuel burning factories and power plants. Pipelines would then carry the captured gas underground to be stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs under the North and Irish Seas.

The government’s plans include backing proposals by Equinor and BP —  two of the companies that have met most frequently with ministers since January 2020 — to build new “low-carbon” gas-fired power stations fitted with carbon capture units, which are slated to be among the first to receive state support.

A group of scientists and campaigners warned last month that such projects would allow the companies to continue extracting and burning natural gas based on the promises of unproven and expensive carbon capture technology — at the taxpayer’s expense.

“Putting the UK on the wrong pathway could be catastrophic,” said the letter, addressed to Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband.

Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank, warned in a March report that building new gas-fired power plants “could lock consumers into a high-cost and fossil-based future” and urged the UK to focus on deploying carbon capture in hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as cement. 

“These ‘low-carbon’ gas projects are not really low carbon if you look at the whole supply chain,” said the report’s author Lorenzo Sani, referring to the large amount of natural gas, which is mostly comprised of the potent greenhouse gas methane, that leaks during the extraction and transport of the fuel.

“They also continue this paradigm that we have today of linking our economies with fossil fuels, whose markets are volatile and often controlled by external actors to the UK,” Sani added.

‘Struggle to Keep Investors Upbeat‘

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and International Energy Agency envisage significant deployments of carbon capture for reaching net zero emissions by mid-century.

However, many environmental groups are sceptical. Researchers point to the frequent failure of projects to meet carbon capture targets, cost-overruns, the need for multi-billion dollar subsidies, and the tendency of the oil and gas industry to use the technology to justify investments in new fossil fuel projects — rather than focus on cleaning up existing dirty industries.

The surge in lobbying by companies seeking public money coincided with the previous Conservative administration’s pledge of £20 billion in subsidies for carbon capture projects in March 2023.

Three months after that funding was announced, lobby group the CCSA told ministers its members were concerned about delays and there was a “struggle to keep investors upbeat”, according to meeting notes. 

The CCSA has attended more government carbon capture meetings (20) than any other organisation since January 2020, including two meetings between January and March 2024, the latest period for which records are available.

The organisation had a presence at both this and last year’s Labour party conferences. The CCSA’s Head of Communications Joe Butler-Trewin has held various organising and research roles within the party, while CEO Ruth Herbert worked as a civil servant under Miliband, when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2008 to 2010. Miliband was a guest speaker at the CCSA’s annual meeting last year.

Now Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Miliband and the new Labour government announced plans last week to extend £22 billion in subsidies for carbon capture over 25 years, saying the strategy can help meet the country’s climate targets and support a broader revitalization of British industry. 

When asked to comment on concerns that their CCS projects may “lock in” fossil fuel dependency, BP and Equinor gave almost identical statements, saying that CCS is essential for the UK’s transition to net zero and will create jobs.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said CCS will play a “vital role” in its plans for a clean energy system by 2030. The department also pointed to independent government advisor the Climate Change Committee’s description of carbon capture as a “necessity, not an option”.

The CCSA did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Outstanding Need for Oil and Gas’

Two meetings with ExxonMobil designated for the discussion of “carbon solutions” were used by both the company and then senior Department for Energy Security and Net Zero minister Graham Stuart to reaffirm the need for continued oil and gas production in the UK, meeting notes show.

On March 8, 2023, Stuart met with at least one executive from ExxonMobil’s Low Carbon Solutions division at the CERAWeek oil trade show. Representatives from the North Sea Transition Authority regulator and the Department for Business and Trade were also present.

According to notes from the meeting, the ExxonMobil executive “spoke of the outstanding need for oil and gas, at the same time as needing to lower emissions.”

Just over three months later, on June 15, Stuart met with representatives from ExxonMobil again to “discuss carbon solutions”.

However, after discussing ExxonMobil’s CCS capabilities, Stuart then told attendees “that the UK government has championed the need for new oil and gas licenses.” An ExxonMobil executive replied that “this was important in attracting new investment.”

Later in the meeting, minutes show that Stuart “reiterated that the Government supports the continued development of oil and gas resources on the UKCS [UK Continental Shelf].”

Four months later, the then Conservative government announced it was granting hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

‘Easily Spun‘

In the March 2023 meeting, ExxonMobil touted the success of carbon capture projects in the United States that had been used to pump more oil using “enhanced oil recovery” — where CO2 is injected into the ground to extract hard-to-reach oil and gas.

Meeting notes show an ExxonMobil executive told Stuart that the company had “captured 40% of all the CO2 that has ever been captured”.

The ExxonMobil employee’s statement appeared to refer to the approximately 120 million tonnes of CO2 captured by its Shute Creek gas-processing plant in Wyoming, which opened in 1986 and often features in ExxonMobil’s promotional materials.

However, 47 percent of the CO2 captured over Shute Creek’s lifetime had been sold for enhanced oil recovery, according to a 2022 study by U.S.-based think tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Another 50 percent of the gas was vented back into the atmosphere when it couldn’t be sold. Just three percent was stored.

The meeting notes did not record any discussion of these caveats.

“CCS is technically complex and difficult for anyone but industry experts to fully understand,” said Lindsey Gulden, a former ExxonMobil climate and data scientist. “That means it can be easily spun to give cover to the oil industry as they attempt to navigate the growing public concern over climate change.”

ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment.

Original article by TJ Jordan republished from DeSmog

dizzy: A new government was elected 4 July 2024 while the lobbying will mostly have been with the previous Tory government. It follows that our current government has accepted and progressed with the previous government’s decisions. Is it fair to accuse them of simply rubber-stamping the previous government’s decisions?

Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Continue ReadingUK’s £22 Billion Carbon Capture Pledge Follows Surge in Lobbying by Fossil Fuel Industry, Records Show