From People and Nature
The misnamed Net Zero Teesside (NZT) – a proposed gas-fired power station with carbon capture, that will never be net zero – faced a legal challenge at the Royal Courts of Justice yesterday.
Environmental scientist Andrew Boswell applied for a judicial review of the project, which is jointly owned by the oil companies BP and Equinor.
NZT’s own Environmental Impact Assessment admits it would pour 16 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere during its years of operation. (Reminder: 16 million is not “zero”!)
Boswell submitted analysis to the court showing that NZT’s lifetime emissions would be at least 20 million tonnes. A report published last month by Carbon Tracker said that the project’s lifetime emissions could easily be 32 million tonnes or even 41 million tonnes.
Rowan Smith, solicitor at Leigh Day, who represented Boswell in court, said that the plant’s emissions would “hinder rather than help the delivery of the government’s net zero commitment and decarbonisation of the power sector” – but Claire Coutinho, in her brief time as Rishi Sunak’s energy secretary, had granted a Development Consent Order anyway.
Outside the court at lunchtime yesterday, Boswell told supporters that a “much wider issue” was at stake: government support for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that is a false solution to the climate crisis.
Rosie from Friends of the Earth Scotland, who are campaigning against a proposed power station with CCS at Peterhead, said it was completely false to claim that such projects would save workers’ jobs.
Catherine Green brought a message of support for Boswell from the HyNot group, which has campaigned on Merseyside against hydrogen being used for home heating, and other fossil-fuel projects dressed up as “green”.
The court’s decision on the judicial review application has not yet been made, and the hearing continues today.
CCS plays a key role in the oil and gas industry’s survival strategy in the face of climate change.
It is supposed to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by coal- and gas-fired power stations, and sequester it underground – in NZT’s case, in now-empty oil reservoirs under the North Sea.
Only a handful of CCS plants work anywhere in the world – and most of these pump the carbon dioxide into still-producing oil fields, to increase production.
CCS results in emissions, firstly because it is at best 90% efficient, and so 10% or so of the carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere – but also because the process of producing and transporting gas or coal, even before they are burned in power stations, also causes emissions.
In the case of NZT, Boswell and Carbon Tracker argue that, because the North Sea fields are in decline and the UK will rely increasingly on imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), these upstream emissions will be far higher than NZT admits.
Gas produced in the US that is liquefied for export is especially emissions-intensive – and some of those emissions are methane leaks.
The NZT developers have used a method of calculating the effect of those leaks that basically says that methane packs a greenhouse gas punch only about 30 times greater than carbon dioxide – whereas most climate scientists say we should really count it as more than 80 times greater.
In other words, the climate impact of NZT could well be not just 25% greater than the developers claim (as Boswell stated in court), and not even just twice as much as they claim (as Carbon Tracker showed), but even more than that.
BP and Equinor are being extremely economical with the truth – and are getting away with it because of the cosy relationship between oil companies and the state, which exacerbates the climate emergency.
If someone claiming benefits, or a self-employed person filling out their tax return, played as fast and loose with the facts as NZT has, they would no doubt face the full force of the law.
Thanks to that cosy relationship between companies and the state, false technofixes are being paraded as the answer to climate change, while the measures most urgently needed are constantly postponed and delayed.
This is a result of political decisions, by the last government and this government. Such decisions constitute the greatest danger to all of us.
So £20 billion has been committed for carbon capture and storage and related projects.
But nothing like that is available for rapid decarbonisation policies that work with existing technology: electrification and heat pumps for homes; public transport investment, to cut the volume of motor traffic; or municipal solar panels projects that can help reduce the amount of gas needed for the electricity grid.
Let’s heighten awareness all round that technofixes such as CCS are not part of the solution, but very much part of the problem. SP, 24 July 2024.
□ Andrew Boswell is running a fundraiser to pay for his legal challenge to NZT. Please donate if you can, and follow him on twitter.
□ More about Andrew Boswell’s NZT case in the Guardian and the New Civil Engineer.
