Carbon Capture Seen Competitive with Offshore Wind in U.K.

The U.K. could build facilities to capture and bury carbon pollution under the sea at a similar price to offshore wind farms and nuclear plants, a government adviser will say Monday, setting out options for tackling climate change.

Carbon capture and storage could be deployed at a cost of 85 pounds ($113) a megawatt-hour in the early 2020s if ministers introduce policies to back the nascent technology, according to a report by Lord Ernest Ronald Oxburgh, former Chairman of Shell Transport & Trading Co.

Those policies would include setting up a delivery authority similar to that which organized the 2012 Olympic Games.  Also needed is a payment program to encourage emitters to collect carbon and pay a transmission and storage company to receive it.  The report doesn’t suggest how much money is needed or where it could come from.

The report adds to the debate about how to revive CCS, one of the key technologies identified by the International Energy Agency as necessary to fight global warming.  While oil and coal producers see CCS as a way to extend the life of fossil fuel reserves amid tightening environmental rules, the technology isn’t a commercial reality because of concerns about its cost and the business model needed to stimulate it.

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