Burying UK CO2 Needs More Cash

A much bigger financial carrot is needed to get companies to spend billions on catching carbon dioxide, a gas widely thought to cause climate change, and bury it under the seas around Britain.

The untested technology is likely to cost at least around 25 pounds (or 38 euros) per tonne of CO2 captured and stored, more than double the cost of emitting carbon, according to a new report by Poyry Energy Consulting for the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry, .
So, unless the cost of CO2 emissions on the European Union’s emissions trading scheme more than doubles, or the cost of the technology halves, the taxpayer will have to pay the difference if carbon capture and storage (CCS) is to play a role in Britain’s climate change fight.

“It’s a really expensive thing to do and unless there is some sort of incentive for them to do this then what reason have they got to install these facilities?” one of the report authors Barry Ladbrook told Reuters. “Something like a carbon price is one of the things that would make it more attractive.”

Planet Ark