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Yesterday, the Queen addressed the country with a message of self-discipline and resolve. Despite its merits, her speech strikes me as a missed opportunity to encourage us to learn to adapt, and not just hunker down in the face of adversity.

As of April 5th, some 65,000 people have died from Covid-19 globally – or, to be more accurate, have died with Covid-19. By the end of 2020, perhaps we will look back, adjust for the number who might have been expected to die anyway during the year, and compare the adjusted number with the death toll from other killers. Perhaps the total will be a 10-fold increase on where we are now, i.e. 650,000, the typical number that die each year from (or with?) seasonal flu according to the World Health Organisation. Perhaps it will be much lower, and the inquest will begin as to whether there was a global over-reaction to Covid-19. Or perhaps, in the worst case, it will be much higher and with an expectation of annual recurrence. As of now, all possibilities appear to be open.

What seems unlikely, though, is that the inquest would address this question: isn’t a bigger issue facing humanity that of climate breakdown, of which some new viruses, if not Covid-19, might be a symptom? Or this one: can we learn from this experience how to live in different ways, which are not only more sustainable but in some ways more enriching?

Because we can certainly adapt if we have to. With an abruptness that only fear of death can trigger, we are discovering that many jobs can indeed be done from home; that video conferencing often is an adequate substitute for face-to-face business meetings; that many of those meetings can be dispensed with altogether; and that homes and gardens have a certain appeal, as well as cinemas and shops – at least for those lucky enough to have them.

If only we could invest climate breakdown with an equally pressing fear of mortality – assuming more noble sentiments like caring for plants, animals, and the residents of low-lying coastal cities or hot plains, are insufficiently potent – we could really put the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions.

Because there is nothing stopping us. We do not need to use up our own body weight each day in material stuff – the British consume 1.2 billion tonnes of material per annum, according to Professor John Barrett from the University of Leeds – nor be wedded to our travel obsession or diet.

National lockdown provides the perfect opportunity to re-examine myths about economic growth. A current story provides a good example: the Professional Footballers Association claims that a 30% wage cut for footballers will damage the NHS. The same ‘logic’ has been used for centuries to get us to buy things that we don’t need in order to raise tax for things that we do. It is, and always has been, complete nonsense. Let’s invest directly in vital infrastructure and support services; and then consider the additional economic activity that is sustainable as well as life-enriching.

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s victory in the Labour leadership contest has been a sideshow to pandemic concerns. His policies include a commitment to re-nationalise the energy industry. For those of us who have worked our lives in the industry and can remember the CEGB, this is a pity. Were he to succeed in bucking the European trend of recent decades, it would be at vast expense and is very unlikely to be good news for either the climate or for consumers.

It is a shame that well-intentioned politicians on the left of the political spectrum have a knee-jerk reaction to profit and private companies, as those on the right have to the holy grail of GDP.

On 18th February, Professor Myles Allen, the “physicist behind net zero”, spoke to Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC radio’s The Life Scientific. Professor Allen has a simple solution to climate breakdown. We just need to get the large oil companies to clean up their mess.

It works like this. For each 1 tonne of carbon sold in the form of liquid oil or natural gas, an oil company should be required to capture and store 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This amount of CO2 contains 1 tonne of C. On the basis that the end use of the oil or gas will almost certainly lead to a release of CO2, this rule would ensure that net emissions fall to zero. Simple. Additionally, we should get the oil companies to hoover up at least some of the excess CO2 that has accumulated since the Industrial Revolution.

Myles Allen comments that he recently raised the idea in front of a group of young recruits at a large oil company, amongst whom the sentiment was, apparently, that this vacuum cleaning exercise is possible on a global scale. The technology exists, and it would be so much simpler and more effective than relying on eight billion people’s individual life decisions.

Practical issues

There is, however, a however. Three howevers in fact: scale, cost, and timing.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new idea. In 2007, the Labour government of Tony Blair launched a competition, with a subsequent budget of £1 billion, to support a number of CCS demonstration projects in the UK. The aim was to work with private companies in the power sector to get CCS up and running. The eight projects were whittled down to four, then two, then one … and in 2011 the competition was finally cancelled without any projects to show for it.

The current Conservative government has promised in its election manifesto to spend £800m on CCS. Just a few days ago (4th March), Nicholas Stern urged the government to use this money to encourage private sector investment. Is history repeating itself 13 years later (albeit with a smaller budget than previously)? Why would a CCS public/private partnership work now when it didn’t before?

There are currently no CCS projects in operation in the UK power sector. Most people in the industry expect little action before 2030. In their technical report from May 2019, the UK Committee on Climate Change developed an ambitious pathway for achieving ‘net zero’ by 2050. As part of this pathway, the CCC envisages 176 MtCO2 captured by CCS in 2050 (almost all of the progress being after 2030). That’s about one-third of our current annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to the CCC, to be captured in 2050, i.e. thirty years from now.

Scaling up the CCC’s target by the UK’s share of global primary energy consumption in 2019 (1.4% according to the BP Statistical Review) implies the world would capture 12.6 billion tCO2 in 2050.  That might be around one fifth of the total emissions in 2050 (say 10 billion people emitting 6 tCO2 per annum on average) – if we decide that ‘business as usual’ for the world’s citizens is fine because CCS is coming to the rescue.  There are a few simplifications here, but it’s fair to say the CCC ambition for CCS falls a long way short of curbing emissions to the atmosphere.  It would appear that the CCC’s net zero trajectory is far too slow for CCS to be a comprehensive solution in time, which is ironic given that it appears vastly ambitious in light of government inaction.

The CCC estimates the cost of CCS to be circa 100 £/tCO2 (they give a range of 50-160 £/tCO2).  So that would imply a cost of around £6 trillion in 2050, or £600 per annum per person on the planet.  Presumably we would want to remove another 1000 billion tCO2 or so to get back to pre-Industrial levels, at a CCC-implied further cost of £100 trillion, or around £10,000 one-off payment per person. Those of us living in rich countries might have to pay a few times the global average, for both the one-off payment and on-going annual expense. Think thousands of pounds per person, each year, in today’s money values.

Other physicists, including David Mackay in Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air, have estimated the energy requirement for CCS to work. From first principles, it appears that the global vacuum cleaner would add around 20% to global primary energy consumption. 

I am concerned that the viability of CCS at scale has not been proven, that it is expensive, and that it may be too late to the party. I am concerned that people are quick to think ‘nothing to do with me’ if someone proposes a technological miracle.  And even if it transpires that CCS is the best option we’ve got, everyone will end up paying for it.  I foresee tabloid headlines along the lines of Fat Cat Oil Execs Cause Pensioners To Die In Their Homes.

There is, of course, a clear appeal in forcing a relatively small number of large companies to take action, instead of trying to persuade a significant chunk of the world’s population to change its behaviour. But we need to be honest about the scale, timing and cost of CCS. Meanwhile, reducing consumption and travel, and changing diet, are either free or cost-saving, do not rely on unproven technology, can be implemented immediately, and can be reversed when our Technological Saviour finally shows up.