Green Groups Blast 'Reckless, Unscientific' EU Carbon Capture Plans

As attendees gathered in the south of France Thursday for the start of a European Union-hosted summit on carbon capture and storage, an international coalition of green groups warned against funding "reckless, unscientific, and lobbyist-driven" false climate solutions and instead urged investment in "a just transition that prioritizes renewable energy, energy demand reduction, and energy efficiency."

"Today the Industrial Carbon Management Forum (ICMF) kicks off in Pau, France," 43 organizations wrote in a letter to the European Commission. "This forum has been revealed to be dominated by fossil fuel interests to the exclusion of civil society stakeholders and other expert voices with critical views."

The letter points to a report published Thursday by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), which concluded that "most of Europe's planned carbon capture and storage (CCS) applications are too expensive to work on a commercial basis and are nowhere near ready to be rolled out."

According to the report, Europe's planned CCS projects will cost an estimated €520 billion ($569 billion), which IEEFA energy finance analyst and report author Andrew Reid said "will force European governments to introduce eye-wateringly high subsidies to prop up a technology that has a history of failure."

The green groups' letter also notes widespread criticism of CCS, which has been panned by Food & Water Watch—whose European branch signed the letter—as a "false climate solution" and a "lifeline for the fossil fuel industry."

The signers wrote that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "has labeled CCS as one of the most costly and least effective emissions reduction methods, and an Oxford study found high-CCS pathways could cost $30 trillion more globally than renewable alternatives," the signers wrote, referring to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The letter continues:

As well as being prohibitively expensive, plans for carbon capture and storage (CCS) at scale face overwhelming technical challenges and the records show 50 years of failure. Even with $83 billion in investment since the '90s, research found that nearly 80% of large-scale projects fail. The industry itself has acknowledged that for all these efforts, only 52 metric tons of carbon dioxide have ever been stored long-term, highlighting the unlikeliness of achieving the E.U.'s stated goal of storing 280 metric tons of CO2 by 2040...

The union has already spent over €3 billion ($3.3 billion) on CCS and hydrogen projects—hydrogen is often paired with CCS to attempt to capture the carbon dioxide emissions released during hydrogen production from fossil fuels in order to label hydrogen a low-carbon fuel. However, this ignores the ineffectiveness of CCS to reduce emissions and the continued use of fossil fuels in the process.

"We cannot afford to give further investments to the fossil fuel industry to gamble with our future and our tax money," the green groups stressed. "Money allotted to CCS would be better spent on the communities and countries that need it most and on ensuring a full and fair phaseout of fossil fuels."

In stark contrast, E.U. Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said during the opening session of the CCS summit that the 27-nation bloc's climate target plan "underlines that industrial carbon management is not just an alternative, it is a vital complement to renewable energy and energy efficiency."

The letter's signers are calling on E.U. policymakers to:

• Stop wasting money on CCS projects and commit to a full phaseout of fossil fuels;
• Reject the influence of the fossil fuel industry;
• Commit to a full consideration of the scientific and real-world evidence of CCS' failures, limitations, and challenges; and
• Invest instead in real climate, health, and nature solutions that deliver a transition to a clean, healthy, and safe economy.