CCUS must be on the table to address climate change: FT forum

Carbon capture and utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies must be on the table when considering ways of addressing climate change, panellists said at the FT Energy Transition Strategies Summit on October 5.

"A variety of options are needed on the table to address climate change while ensuring energy security," Richard Lum, managing partner at Victory Hill Capital Partners, said on a panel discussing CCUS. The gas supply crunch in the UK, caused in part by low wind power generation this year, demonstrates that renewables along cannot support energy security, he said.

Natural gas is needed in the power mix, and therefore CCUS development should be accelerated to make it clean, Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax Group, added. He also pointed to the potential for using bioenergy plus CCUS to generate power. The company has converted its power station in Yorkshire to run on sustainable biomass instead of coal, and is looking to use CCUS at the facility by the late 2020s. This is expected to make the plant carbon negative by the end of the decade.

Lum noted that there was also demand for captured CO₂ in UK industry, particularly in the food and beverage sector.

Responding to criticism that carbon capture is too costly, Graciela Chichilinisky, CEO of Global Thermostat, said that scale was needed to drive down costs. She pointed to how costs for solar power technology have fallen over the years as the sector has expanded, particularly thanks to the growth in manufacturing in China.

Global Thermostat is developing CO₂ direct air capture. It signed a contract with ExxonMobil in September last year to scale up its technology.