Breakthrough technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen cannot be relied on to help the UK meet its climate change targets, a report says.
The government had hoped that both technologies would contribute to emissions reductions required by 2050.
But the report’s authors say ministers should assume that neither carbon capture and storage (CCS) nor hydrogen will be running “at scale” by 2050.
They say the government must start a debate on other, controversial steps.
These actions, which they say would need to be implemented in the near-term, include cutting down on flying and eating red meat.
UK law dictates that, by 2050, carbon emissions will be virtually halted, and any remaining emissions will have to be compensated for by activities such as tree planting.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has regularly expressed the belief that technology would mostly solve the problem.
But the authors say that if new tech does emerge at scale by 2050, the government should treat it as a bonus, not an expectation.
Both of the new technologies in question have their supporters in politics and in industry.
Hydrogen technology entails generating hydrogen from natural gas, or from water.
CCS entails capturing CO2 emissions from power stations or industry, and burying them in rock formations or finding uses for the CO2. Both are expensive.
A few years ago, government economists predicted that gas plants equipped with CCS would be producing 30% of the UK’s clean electricity in the future. Nuclear and renewables would produce another 30% each.
Tom Burke, an expert on climate change, forecast at that time that only CCS could save the climate. When I reminded him yesterday, he admitted: “I was wrong”.
Radical change
The equation radically changed because the nuclear renaissance didn’t happen; the government pulled funding from CCS projects; and the cost of renewables plummeted.
The government has now offered new CCS funds – but for tackling carbon emissions from industrial clusters, rather than from power generation.
The new technology report comes from a government-funded consortium of academics from Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham, Bath and Imperial College London.
Source: BBC