The UK Government has released plans this week, following the closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power station, for a £22 billion carbon capture and storage industry.  

Prime Minister Keir Starmer claims this investment will fund a shift towards clean growth and that “clean energy is a golden opportunity for our country”.  

The “carbon capture cluster” extending from North Chester to Merseyside will feature a blue hydrogen production plant and will capture and store carbon from the area, piping it under the sea.  

Carbon sequestration (or capture and storage) removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in underground geological storage. This has significant benefits such as reducing the impacts of CO2 on human health, creating jobs and economic prosperity and mitigating the harmful effects of global warming such as extreme weather and wildfires.  

There are some drawbacks, from the time and money needed to create effective technology and infrastructure, to countries and industries using carbon sequestration to “greenwash” their harmful impacts on the environment.  

Blue hydrogen production is increasingly controversial as it is produced from natural gas (consisting mainly of methane, carbon and hydrogen) and CO2 and methane are major byproducts. 

Campaign groups such as High Not say that the production of blue hydrogen “commits us to using twice as much fossil fuels well into the future”.  

Energy Scientist Robert W. Howarth’s work on blue-hydrogen suggests it is not a “low-emission”, clean energy alternative as “the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat.”  

Despite significant criticism over these plans, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband argues that rather than “burning unabated gas”, “if we’re going to carry on using gas, we’re going to capture the carbon [and] not emit it into the atmosphere”.  

Although many argue that natural gas and abated fossil fuels are an important first step towards Net Zero by 2050, Mark Radka, head of the UN Environment Programme’s Energy, Climate, and Technology Branch, states that natural gas isn’t necessarily a “clean” alternative as “methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, about 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide measured over a 20-year period, so any emissions undermine its credentials as a better fossil fuel.” 

Radka argues that gases “special role in the energy transition is as a backup to a renewable-based power system because gas boilers can be turned on almost instantly”, but “there’s a lot of research and deployment of energy storage technologies so this role for gas will diminish.”  

And in addition to this, “the rapid decrease in the cost of solar, wind and other renewable energy technologies makes these an even better alternative than gas in more and more locations.” 

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