Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Scottish Carbon Capture Bombs

Longannet Power Station (Wikipedia)
The flagship £1bn Carbon Capture and Storage experiment at Longannet Power Station in Fife has been abandoned.  The UK government are maintaining that they will use the £1bn to fund other CCS projects under a new bidding process.

This Reuters report points out
"CCS is still a commercially unproven technology . . . "
Well obviously it is commercially unproven if you can't even begin to make the books balance on the project even with £1bn of subsidy.

The project is an example of rational thinking which has been subverted by an irrational expectation of catastrophe.  That expectation is based on poor science, bad politics and, above all, exaggerated and ill founded fear.   Cue Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond:
"At a time when North Sea revenues are coming in at record levels, it was surely not too much to expect that the Treasury would make the necessary funding commitment for Longannet to go forward," said Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, who supported the Longannet CCS project.
The BBC report can be found here.   The side bar analysis comments in this BBC report suggest CCS public policy has been influenced by Sir David King, Prime Minister Tony Blair's scientific advisor for 7 years.  As I said, poor science, bad politics and exaggerated and ill founded fear.

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