£22billion carbon capture handout could push energy bills higher

Ahead of the expected energy price cap rise, fuel poverty campaigners are highlighting how Labour’s £22billion handout to controversial carbon capture technology is likely to push bills even higher in the coming years.

A recent investigation into carbon capture by MPs describes the handout as a ‘high risk gamble’ with three-quarters of £22 billion coming from “levies on consumers who are already facing some of the highest energy bills in the world.” This equates to approximately £590 per household.

These costs would be in addition to the already extremely high energy bills that people are facing as a result of being trapped in a system that is reliant on international fossil fuel markets. Current energy bills are 43% higher than in winter 2021/22, largely due to volatility in the wholesale price of fossil gas.

The technology attempts to capture harmful carbon emissions produced by the burning of fossil fuels in places such as power stations. It has been dogged by repeated technical failures and cost overruns in the nearly 50 years since it was first proposed. There are no working carbon capture and storage projects in the UK.

The report from the Westminster Public Accounts Committee called for an assessment of ”whether the full Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage programme will be affordable for taxpayers and consumers, given wider pressures on energy bills and costs of living.”

Climate campaigners support public investment in the energy transition but have long been concerned that carbon capture technology was little more than greenwash that allows continuin fossil fuel extraction and burning. Fossil fuel companies have lobbied for the technology despite overwhelming evidence of its failures. These firms, despite their obscene profits, have been unwilling to pay for this greenwashing from their own pockets.

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Calculation of carbon capture costs to the public.
75% of £22 billion = £16.5 billion

28 million households in UK

£16.5 billion divided by 28 million = £589.29 per household in total.

Spread over 25 years that would be £23.57 every household each year.

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Fuel Poverty Action campaign lead Stu Bretherton said,

“To stick further costs onto our energy bills to pay for unproven and false climate tech like carbon capture is a betrayal to voters who elected this government on the promise of a real green transition that delivers energy bill reductions.

“It’s not hard to find the solutions that could do both, it just means challenging the supposed god-given right of these firms to profit from destroying our planet while also failing to meet our basic needs like heating, lighting and cooking.

“This government should be looking at why the unit price of electricity is still tied to that of gas, forcing us to pay far more to heat our homes this way even though renewable electricity is much cheaper to produce.

“And why are we paying out huge sums of public money to get wind farms to switch off during the highest periods of production, when this clean energy could go to households at a very low price, even free.”

Friends of the Earth Scotland climate campaigner Alex Lee said,

“Carbon capture is a greenwashing con by the oil industry and the UK Government are not only falling for it but expect households to stump up the cost of it.

“Greedy oil firms have already gotten so rich from exploiting our needs and now we’re all expected to pay to keep their climate-wrecking business going.

“This industry has already swallowed billions in public money around the world while delivering a desperate legacy of failure and pollution.

“The sure-fire way to bring down bills as well as tackle climate change is by investing in solutions we know work for people and the planet such as mass programmes of home insulation and publicly owned renewable energy. “

ENDS