March 21, 2007

scientists and engineers react to carbon capture announcement in the 2007 Budget

Philip Greenish, CEO of The Royal Academy of Engineering, said:

“Tackling climate change is one of the critical issues of the day. The Chancellor’s decision to exempt all new zero carbon homes up to £500,000 from stamp duty until 2012, along with the plan to hold a competition to build Britain’s first full scale carbon capture and storage facility, are steps in the right direction. Engineering carbon capture and storage facilities could play an important role in mitigating the effects of climate change.”

Hannah Chalmers, Researcher, Energy Technology for Sustainable Development Group, Imperial College London, said:

“The announcement of a competition to build Britain’s first full scale carbon capture and storage facility could be an important step to ensure that we start to learn more about these technologies as soon as possible. The UK is well positioned to develop carbon capture and storage. We need to replace many of our power plants in the next few years and have good potential for safe, geological storage under the North Sea. It is crucial that we start building real plants now. We need to understand how the technology works in large, integrated projects so that we can develop it for deployment worldwide to tackle CO2 emissions from fossil-fired power plants and other large sources of carbon dioxide.”

Professor Peter Styring, EPSRC Senior Media Fellow, Professor of Chemical Engineering & Chemistry, University of Sheffield, said:

“The landfill tax will, rise by £8 each year from April 2008.This puts further burden on the drive to incinerate municipal waste which will necessarily create further CO2 emissions at a time when the government is trying to cut emissions by 60%.

“The Chancellor has also announced a competition to build Britain’s first full scale carbon capture and storage facility This is a short term and short sighted approach. What is needed is not storage but utilisation of CO2 as a feed stock for chemicals. We will obviously compete for funding should the call for bids materialise!

“Public investment in science will rise from £5bn this year to £6.3bn by 2010-11. This is good in the long term; however, the main problem is more immediate. Due to the DTI shortfall, Science and Engineeering in the UK is suffering through cuts to RCUK. The EPSRC has a £29M cut as a consequence of this.”