Revealed: The £264 billion Price Tag of the UK’s Carbon Capture Strategy 

In October 2024, after extensive lobbying from energy companies including Equinor, BP, and ExxonMobil, the UK Government officially committed £21.7 billion of public money to new fossil fuel-based Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)  projects in Teesside and Merseyside over the next 25 years. 

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is widely expected to unveil a similar funding pledge for new CCS facilities in Humberside and northeast Scotland as part of Wednesday’s Government’s Spending Review. 

However, detailed analysis of the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) most recent Carbon Budget Report conducted by Dr Andrew Boswell, environmental researcher and campaigner, and Simon Oldridge, science adviser for the Zero Hour campaign, has revealed that the true projected cost of CCS between now and 2050 is £264 billion.

In response, a spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) dismissed the figure, stating: “We do not recognise this speculative figure”.

But far from being speculative, the calculations seen by Byline Times appear to confirm the UK Government’s projected £264 billion budget requirements including up to £136bn on building and operating new fossil gas power stations with CCS, and a further £128bn on BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) projects including continued funding for controversial sites like the Drax wood-burning power station in North Yorkshire. 

“If these figures are unknown to DESNZ, then it’s a bit like starting HS2 without adding up the full cost first,” claimed Boswell. 

Boswell condemned the Government’s CCS plans to “pump hundreds of billions into gas and biomass power stations” and branded it “a colossal waste of money that actively worsens the climate crisis even with carbon capture”.

“The Government and its advisors at the Climate Change Committee are turning a blind eye and pretending that environmental risks like methane leaks, destruction of forests, dangerous pollution to communities, don’t count,” he said.

Boswell described CCS, whether applied to fossil fuels or biomass, as a “dangerous distraction” that locks the UK into expensive, high-carbon infrastructure while renewables sit ready to replace it. “This isn’t ‘net zero’. It gives reckless subsidies to hard-nosed lobbyists, and the public pays the price,” he said.

Oldridge echoed these concerns: “The UK’s carbon capture plans aren’t about cutting emissions, they’re about locking in a new wave of fossil gas infrastructure that could end up as polluting as coal, even if the CCS works,” he told Byline Times. 

With many of the UK’s existing North Sea gas fields expected to be mostly depleted by 2030, Oldridge warns that the new power stations will depend on imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), much of it produced through fracking in the United States. This imported gas carries a significant carbon footprint that is largely overlooked in the UK’s climate accounting. 

According to research from Cornell University up to 75% of the emissions associated with burning US gas occur along the supply chain and would remain unaccounted for in the UK even if CCS were able to trap 100% of the CO2 released during combustion.

Oldridge accused Labour of “backing a fantasy cooked up by the last government” that was based on industry spin and selective accounting. “The bulk of emissions from LNG happen overseas, but our outdated climate laws let ministers pretend they don’t exist,” he said. 

Oldridge also says no-one is objecting to capturing unavoidable emissions from existing industry – though he thinks electrification is often the smarter route. 

“But that’s not what this is about,” he added. “These plans are centred on building new gas plants and dirty ‘blue’ hydrogen facilities. This is climate dishonesty on an industrial scale”.

There is also considerable debate as to whether CCS will work at the scale required to make an impact on the climate crisis or even if that is the primary aim.   

Despite decades of research and billions in public subsidies CCS, the process of trapping carbon dioxide emissions at their source and burying them underground pumping them into a storage facility, has failed to demonstrate consistent, cost-effective, and scalable success. 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), just 50 million tonnes of carbon, less than 0.1% of annual global CO2 emissions, was captured in 2024. 

Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace along with climate scientists and even the secretary-general of the United Nations António Guterres long argued that CCS is little more than greenwashing; the promise of a revolutionary technology to help tackle climate change which the fossil fuel industry knows will never materialises but is enough to persuade Governments to allow them to  continue extracting oil and gas. 

Similarly, organisations like Biofuelwatch, Dogwood Alliance, and  Stop Burning Trees Coalition have been long standing critics of Drax’s proposed BECCS project at its North Yorkshire wood-fuelled power station claiming it is environmentally harmful, unproven, and financially reckless. 

The Government points towards Sleipner and Snøhvit gas fields as evidence that the CCS technology is proven. But key findings from research conducted by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis bring those claims into question. 

The report concluded that Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS projects “demonstrate carbon capture and storage is not without material ongoing risks that may ultimately negate some or all the benefits it seeks to create” and “casts doubt on whether the world has the technical prowess, strength of regulatory oversight, and unwavering multi-decade commitment of capital and resources needed to keep carbon dioxide sequestered below the sea”.

In recognition that the risks of pumping and storing CO2 under the sea are too great for the private sector to manage, the Government has agreed to take full responsibility for undersea storage sites leaking”.

The spokesperson for DESNZ continued: “We are delivering first of a kind carbon capture projects in the UK, supporting thousands of jobs across the country, reigniting industrial heartlands and tackling the climate crisis. There is no route to securing the future of heavy industry in the UK without it.

“Our £21.7 billion investment is expected to crowd in £8 billion in private sector funding over the next 25 years and unlock a further pipeline of billions of pounds in private sector support.”

“This will see our industries remain competitive in the global economy, kickstart growth and lead the world in a ground-breaking clean energy technology.”

Seemingly at odds with DESNZ’s statement and the Government’s funding of CCS connected to new fossil gas power stations, a CCC spokesperson told Byline Times: “In our pathway, the role of CCS is limited to sectors where there are few, or no, alternatives.”

“In practice, this means  we see a role for CCS to be used in industrial subsectors with process emissions for which alternatives are unlikely to provide a comprehensive route to Net Zero; to enable long-term storable, dispatchable power in the electricity supply sector (alongside hydrogen); in manufacturing low-carbon hydrogen; and to underpin engineered removals.”

“Regarding the cost, in cases where multiple competing low-carbon technologies are credible, we consider the costs and feasibility of each and generally select the most cost-effective feasible mix – for instance choosing electrification, hydrogen, or CCS across different industrial sites.”

Boswell concluded by issuing a strong rebuke to the Government saying: “Not content to gamble staggering amounts of public money now , in the hope of private investment later, the Government is not expecting the private sector to pay back a penny.  Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are happy to sign a blank cheque for the polluter to pollute with this risky and unproven technology.  The Treasury should come clean and publish any risk assessment for private investor take up that it has.”