How carbon capture and storage and nuclear are adding little to decarbonisation compared to solar and wind

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers.

David Toke, Oct 16, 2024

We’ve heard a lot in the news recently about how carbon capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major solution to decarbonisation. But the global figures suggest otherwise. The results so far are that this is having an almost insignificant effect on global decarbonisation. Rather it is looking like CCS funding from Governments is a good way of funneling money into the fossil fuel and chemicals industry with very little to show for combatting climate change. Indeed this CCS sector is eerily technologically redundant in many of the same ways as nuclear power.

You can see this in the chart below [on original]. This shows the respective global contributions to carbon dioxide abatement from three sources a) solar plus wind power, b) nuclear power and c) carbon capture and storage (CCS).

I have taken global capacity figures for CCS from the Global CCS Institute (HERE). They have data available for the period since 2010 showing how the global capacity for CO2 removal has changed. I have used data on carbon intensity of global electricity production drawn from Ember (See HERE) to determine how much CO2 is saved by each unit of nuclear, solar and wind generation. Then I combine this with data on nuclear, solar and wind electricity generation from the Energy Institute (See HERE).

The result is a calculation of the annual carbon dioxide saved by global solar plus wind generation, nuclear generation and CCS (since 2010). There is a notable caveat with regard to the CCS figures. Whilst I have confidence in the reported production figures from solar, wind and nuclear power, I have no information that the ‘capacity’ of CCS reported is actually being completely filled each year. Therefore the CCS annual capacity figures must each be regarded as a ‘maximum’.

It is apparent that whilst solar and wind are increasing rapidly, and nuclear production has stagnated, CCS contributes a very small amount to world carbon removal capacity by comparison. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Meanwhile, technologies, which do stand a chance of being optimised and do not involve fossil fuels or nuclear power are ignored. Recent UK Government announcements talk of around £20 billion being made available for CCS activities over the coming years. Yet there is no direct budget to develop deep underground or closed loop geothermal energy, new technologies, which have seen considerable technical interest in recent years (see HERE and HERE)………………………………………………This trend of low output compared to public money spent seems likely to continue for many years to come!

CCS – eerily like nuclear?

What is striking about CCS processes is that they are seriously dogged by environmental problems…………………………………….The technology starts off as an inferior commercial proposition to conventional fossil fuel commercial activities, and the pressures for improvements are going to increase costs, not reduce them. Have we heard this before? Well, yes.

This is actually much the same general problem that nuclear power has faced. Nuclear power is a mature technology relying on a low-productivity construction industry. On top of this its costs have increased since its inception because of the need to build-in safety requirements. New designs have tended to be made with safety in mind (eg ‘passive’ safety designs) rather than improvements in economic productivity. This, in general, is the same sort of problem that fossil fuel CCS faces. See my earlier blog post on nuclear’s productivity problems HERE. Like nuclear CCS is forced to pursue non-market objectives rather than improve productivity to reduce costs of production.

The contrast with solar and wind is staggering. These technologies can devote their efforts into reducing costs and improving productivity. Solar panels today are made with a small fraction of the polysilicon used in the past. The production lines are much longer and efficiently organised and the machines to make the panels are much better and cheaper etc etc. In the case of wind power the wind capture rates have been improved through computer-aided design of the turbine blades, making the machines of lighter material and also making them a great deal bigger etc etc.

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers. No commercial operation is going to contract for the CCS ‘product’. There is a very limited market for CO2 itself and no commercial market for storing carbon dioxide outside of direct Government support. For how long can this drain on our public spending resources carry on?
https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-carbon-capture-and-storage-and