That Starmer fella...

it is,

labour took a 4m donation, amongst many, from oil and gas cayman investors, then installed one of their board members in key position on the climate policy board. mere weeks later they announce 22bn investment in carbon capture with eddy saying it can "preserve industries".

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/labour-appoints-climate-envoy-with-links-to-biggest-donor/

Even those in favour of CCS on an environmental front say it's an expensive, better than nothing, ad on to accomapany a steep decline in fossil fuel use. except the main use for carbon captured from the program is drilling for new oil and gas. reserves that wouldn't have been reached otherwise.

https://foe.scot/5-reasons-carbon-capture-should-not-be-relied-upon-to-meet-climate-commitments/
https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/world-cannot-meet-climate-targets-relying-carbon-capture-and-storage/

we can expect these sorts of moves all over our state over the next 5 years, it's just climate science is transparent and immidiate, unlike healthcare impacts.

22bn could retrain and refit a whole lot of concrete and gas plants into green energy production or green construction firms. they're trained workers, they were not born into it.

despite of the murky nature of appointments, overall the approach feels like having your cake and eating it, that never works ..

Tories on surface were cultural warriors esp towards the tail end but they were bit bolder when it came to this right? (someone prove me right/wrong)

I am talking Zac Goldsmith, Cameron type of tories. Boris also did wonders for cycling infra in London IMO.

there was a window where it looked like the tories would make bold changes, and did when it came to personal infrastructure. but then it became woke and gay to do such things and they hard pivoted away

it's also worth it to note during this time they pressed heavy for car infra improvements, fuel tax freezes, planning restrictions and oil drilling licenses. on a macro level very little was different.

if labour keeps its north sea license freeze it will be some improvement, but still woefully inadequate infra wise to conduct change. likely what happens is we just import the oil to feed industries relient on it or home fuel prices go up as the market competes for it. my guess is they hope to get homes running on alt energy to avoid this but as they're relient on quasi private solutions the market will not allow this saving to be felt. similar to how savers never felt the interest rate increase.

Cycling is a fundamentally libertarian Tory activity. Buses are for losers.

Edit to add.. cycling as transport not lifestyle woke tofu eating virtue signalling nor as retro niche insta worthy wildstyling.

when there is “no money”, why are the government making big investments into useless greenwashing pish like this

this too

lol , didn't see starmers sun piece, could be a bojo piece

https://x.com/davidrvetter/status/1842206248676339998

fun video of the australians explaining government proposed CCS and "blue hydrogen"

https://x.com/jimbomorrison/status/1842157889323974758

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ffs

Honestly thought climate was the only thing they weren’t going to be complete shite on.

gReAt BrItIsH rAiL it is

Also Net Zero is not easy Keir, that’s why we really really have to do it.

Spaffing loads of money on a technocratic green washing vacuum cleaner is the easy option.

lol, no. Even people like Campbell said the whole second referendum and engaging the #fbpe useful idiots was done to get rid of Corbyn.

What a cluster fuck shit bomb he’s turning out to be.

Glad that I voted greens in the end, sad that more didn’t.

Keith Starmer, bent blue bastard.

It's the same as the Democrats. At least the Tories want to be in power 😬

just the 100k that the Premier League have chucked at Labour then.

All perfectly cromulent of course.

The CCS bashing feels slightly like looking for reasons to bash Starmer.
The are no credible IPCC IAM models for below 3C that don't involve vast amounts of CCS. There are very fair critisms of these models and thier reliance on CCS, the energy requirements and future societies willingness to pay for it but the UK has favourable geology and the potential to be a global leader, just as we were last month being the first G7 to go off coal.
Existing CCS is currently not great and as pointed out being used for enhanced recovery of fossil fuels which is self defeating but 22bn over decades is peanuts for potentially unlocking a new technology.
The CCC scenarios all have BECCS in them, again problematic but they haven't found a solution that gets the UK to net zero without it. If people have better solutions, I'm sure they'd welcome your evidence submission for helping them write the 7th carbon budget.

+1

It's fine to say it's not ambitious enough, but I struggle to see how investing in technology and sending up a flag saying we're open for investment is a negative.

We've went from an era of massive quazi-subsidies that brought in private money and saw amazing progress. Then the head bangers took over and we've given up some of that momentum. We need to get that back. This is one step.

talk of delaying vat on private schools
not a good look

ipcc isn't a policy forum, it does statitical modelling (very well mind you) - the difference here is in the data CCS has promising potential (in theory, no practical aplication has been effective) and would be a key attractive part of reducing climate change. the issue is in policy it's garbo

https://www.ciel.org/organizations-demand-policymakers-reject-carbon-capture-and-storage/

university of oxford released one of the widest reviews of CCS documentation over the last decades in 2023 covering its effectiveness as a policy in terms of cost in relation to other methods

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2023-12/Assessing-the-relative-costs-of-high-CCS-and-low-CCS-pathways-to-1-5-degrees.pdf

this video details it quite matter of factly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlsjvKKugKI

also a breif summary here

https://unclimatesummit.org/excessive-costs-mean-ccs-highly-economically-damaging-says-oxford-report/

reviews show that the cost of the schemes and its extra bits is massively underfactored and the effectiveness massively over quoted, by governments and the ipcc. that any use of it should be in absalutely unavoidable situations. also all examples are used to help extract further fossil fuels, something we cannot do.

the fact is 40 years this tech has been knocking about and the price has barely came down, which in a sector where renewables drop year on year is alarming. all that has happened is oil companies have access to more oil than ever before

ministers and officials expect it to play a major role in the government’s climate ambitions as a vital way to reach net zero.

this is contrary to any evidence on the use case on ccs. that it should be used in a low capacity as part of a broarder transition away from fossil fuels and destructive industries. and only in the case of reducing emissions from plants that otherwise have no fix.

the worrying part is what the government aims to do with this stored carbon, it's not bury it...

"The prime minister will say the commitment had helped to bring in an expected £8bn of private investment by some of the world’s biggest energy companies, including BP and Norwegian energy company Equinor."

"The East Coast Cluster is backed by oil companies including BP and Equinor. The HyNet North West project is being developed by the Italian oil company Eni.

https://www.hynethydrogenpipeline.co.uk/

Using CCS to produce “blue hydrogen” or to run gas power plants is controversial among green groups and some climate researchers because it requires a steady supply of fossil gas, which produces emissions that are not captured when it is extracted and transported."

again IPCC projections use data in a ideal environment, that CCS is used for capturing up to 95% of carbon from a plant and buried underground (current facilities hit a fraction of this). but from this policy implimentation the goal is to draw backing from fossil fuel giants to explictly prolong the use of gas plants. rather than transition. with the current and expected improvements to ccs and current data, all this will do is create a dependancy on fossil fuels and even if it works as intended, still be the wrong use of the technology.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/04/labour-to-commit-almost-22bn-to-fund-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects

you can read about blue hydrogen here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/07/hydrogen-clean-fuel-climate-crisis-explainer#:~:text=Notably%2C%20the%20term%20clean%20hydrogen,or%20diesel%20oil%20for%20heating.

by most recent thinking, the only way this looks rational is if labour goes on to announce 10x, 20x this level of funding for genuine green investment, rather than a mitigation approach which is the economic and environmental equivilent to lighting the money on fire currently.

there is plenty of green tech to invest in, the fact, after being so investment shy prior and post election, especially for green investment. they're suddenly energised for the one method that's got oil mc'barren slobbering at the idea of creating dependancy on fossil fuels with extra steps, it should make one sceptical, if not alarmed.

Better to do it properly next year than rush through yet another bodge job where no one understands what is being implemented and when, and neither private nor state schools are ready for the impact (particularly where the kids have special requirements and might slip through the net).

Still, I totally agree the optics just look like yet another u-turn / cock-up.

Sue Gray's gone then.

things seem to be going well.

Car crash

As above, makes sense to do it properly but, with mention of SEN (which is a red herring which I can elaborate on in more detail if anyone is interested) I think Labour should go further and nationalise INMSS (independent and non maintained special schools, increasingly owned by venture capitalists, a day place can be north of £100k/year with residential places over £200k/year not uncommon, fully state funded on an individual child basis, in general deliver poor outcomes). Or at least include it as a serious option to contribute towards addressing the dearth of special school places (a direct result of Gove’s hopeless Academies Bill which did nothing to drive up standards/outcomes for children but did remove local accountability and make some people very, very rich so maybe it did deliver as intended).

Anyway, derail over.

Labour should go further and nationalise INMSS

you must have a pass to the 2019 conference! we've changed the party!

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I don't even know what this means

I agree with that majority of the points of concern around CCS and facilitating a continuation of the status quo, happy to carry it on in the climate change thread if needed