The government has pledged nearly £22bn to fund projects that capture greenhouse gases from polluting plants and store them underground, as it races to reach strict climate targets.
The plans are designed to generate private investment and jobs in Merseyside and Teesside, two industry-heavy areas that will be home to the new “carbon capture clusters”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the move was “reigniting our industrial heartlands by investing in the industry of the future”, though there are questions about how best to use this expensive technology.
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) has been developed to combat climate change.
It captures the planet-warming carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels or from heavy industry, and puts it to use or stores it underground.
Image: How CCUS can work, by capturing the carbon dioxide emissions from something like a gas plant or cement factory, transporting them through existing gas pipes, and storing them in a depleted oil or gas field under the sea
It is expensive and difficult, but the UK’s climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), and United Nations scientists say it is essential to get the world to net zero, which the UK is targeting for 2050.
Net zero means cutting emissions as much as possible and offsetting or capturing the stubborn remaining ones.
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Today the government has committed up to £21.7bn over 25 years, to be given in subsidies to sites in the Teesside and Merseyside “clusters” – from 2028.
It will be split between three projects, which are capturing carbon dioxide released either from making hydrogen, generating gas power or burning waste to create energy from 2028.
The gas – up to 8.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions – will be locked away in empty gas fields in the Liverpool Bay and the North Sea.
The government hopes it will attract £8bn in private investment, create 4,000 direct jobs and support a further 50,000.
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1:41
Can carbon capture help fight climate change?
The cash will pay for fewer projects than hoped – the last government suggested a £20bn pot of money for similar projects – but the new administration says those plans weren’t properly costed, and the funding hadn’t been allocated.
The funding is to come from a mixture of Treasury money and energy bills, but the government has been coy about the split so far.
Questions on this might cause a headache for Labour, which has been complaining about an inherited £22bn budget black hole.
Sir Keir said the announcement will “give industry the certainty it needs” and “help deliver jobs, kickstart growth, and repair this country once and for all”.
Will it help jobs and business?
It hopes to fund the first large scale hydrogen production plant in the UK, and help the oil and gas sector and its transferable skills move over to green industries.
Does carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) work?
CCUS has made slow progress: promised for decades but barely scaled, with just 45 commercial sites globally.
However, it began to pick up in the last few years, with 700 plants now in some stage of development around the world.
The world’s first CCUS plant has stored CO2 under Norway’s waters since 1996, though elsewhere a few concerns linger about whether some projects leak gas.
James Richardson, acting chief executive of the CCC, said: “We can’t hit the country’s targets without CCUS, so this commitment to it is very reassuring”.
How should CCUS be used?
Some believe expensive CCUS should be preserved for areas like cement or lime-production, that are very hard to clean up in any other way, rather than for sectors for which there are greener alternatives.
Greenpeace UK’s Doug Parr warned of a “risk of locking ourselves into second-rate solutions”.
The government hopes this funding for the three sites that are ready to go will lay the foundations for further CCUS projects.
Reform UK has hit back at both the Archbishop of York and the government following criticism of its immigration policies.
Leader Nigel Farage announced the party’s flagship immigration plan during a flashy news conference held at an aircraft hangar in Oxford on Tuesday.
The party pledged to deport anybody who comes to the UK illegally, regardless of whether they might come to harm, and said it would pay countries with questionable human rights records – such as Afghanistan – to take people back.
It also said it would leave numerous international agreements, and revoke the Human Rights Act, in order to do this.
The policy was criticised by the Conservatives, who said Mr Farage was “copying our homework”, while parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens condemned it.
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Image: Archbishop Stephen Cottrell and Richard Tice MP. Pics: PA
But the plan came under fire from an altogether different angle on Saturday, when the Archbishop of York accused it of being an “isolationist, short-term kneejerk” approach, with no “long-term solutions”.
Stephen Cottrell, who is the acting head of the Church of England, told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips that he had “every sympathy” with those who find the issue of immigration tricky. But he said Reform UK’s plan does “nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country”, and would in fact, make “the problem worse”.
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10:50
In full: Richard Tice on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips
Speaking on the same programme, Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, responded to the archbishop’s criticisms, saying that “all of it is wrong”.
The MP for Boston and Skegness said he was a Christian who “enjoys” the church – but that the “role of the archbishop is not actually to interfere with international migration policies”.
Mr Tice then turned his fire on the government, accusing ministers of being “more interested in protecting the rights of people who’ve come here illegally… than looking after the rights of British citizens”.
He accused ministers of having “abandoned” their duty of “looking after the interests of British citizens”.
Mr Tice reaffirmed his party’s policy that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), calling it a “70-year-old, out-of-date, unfit-for-purpose agreement”.
The Reform UK deputy leader also:
• Defended plans to pay the Taliban to take migrants back, comparing it to doing business deals with “people you don’t like”
• Said the Royal Navy should be deployed in the English Channel as a “deterrent”, but added: “We’re not saying sink the boats”
• Urged the government to call an early general election
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18:09
Farage ‘wants to provoke anger’
Meanwhile, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, told Sky News that Reform “want to provoke anger, but they don’t actually want to solve the problems that we face in front of us”.
She told Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips the UK had a “proud tradition [of] supporting those facing persecution”.
But she added: “We will make sure that people who have no right to be in this country are removed from this country. That’s right. It’s what people expect. It’s what this government will deliver.”
Ms Phillipson also insisted there “needs to be reform of the ECHR” and said the home secretary is “looking at the article eight provisions”, which cover the right to a private and family life, to see “whether they need updating and reforming for the modern age”.
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However, she refused to say what the government would do if it is found that the ECHR is unreformable. Instead, she defended Labour’s position of staying in the governance of the convention, saying that honouring the “rule of law” is important.
She added: “Our standing in the world matters if we want to strike trade deals with countries. We need to be a country that’s taken seriously. We need to be a country that honours our obligations and honours the rule of law.”
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1:15:33
Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips
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1:35
Asylum seekers to remain at Bell Hotel
Ms Phillipson was also drawn on the recent court ruling in favour of the Home Office, which overturned an injunction banning The Bell Hotel in Epping from housing asylum seekers.
Challenged on whether the government is prioritising the rights of asylum seekers over British citizens, she said it “is about a balance of rights”.
The cabinet minister also repeated the government’s plans to end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by 2029.
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7:08
‘We should have overruled law’
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said the Conservatives would be willing to leave the ECHR – if this route is recommended to them.
The Tories have asked a senior judge to look into the “legal intricacies” of leaving the convention, which he said is “not straightforward”. He said when the party receives that report, it will then make a decision.
Challenged on whether the Tories will leave if that is what the report recommends, he added: “If that’s what’s necessary, we will do it.”
Mr Burghart also said he believed the previous Conservative government’s biggest mistake was that “we did not go far enough on overruling human rights legislation”, which prevented it from “taking the tough action that was absolutely necessary”.
But he added the Conservatives have now “put forward very clear legislation that would solve this problem” – though he concluded Labour “isn’t going to do it” so the problem “is going to get worse”.
The Archbishop of York has told Sky News the UK should resist Reform’s “kneejerk” plan for the mass deportation of migrants, telling Nigel Farage he is not offering any “long-term solution”.
Stephen Cottrell said in an interview with Trevor Phillips he has “every sympathy” with people who are concerned about asylum seekers coming to the country illegally.
But he criticised the plan announced by Reform on Tuesday to deport 600,000 people, which would be enabled by striking deals with the Taliban and Iran, saying it will not “solve the problem”.
Mr Cottrell is currently acting head of the Church of England while a new Archbishop of Canterbury is chosen.
Image: Pic: Jacob King/PA Wire
Image: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell in 2020.
File pic: PA
Phillips asked him: “What’s your response to the people who are saying the policy should be ‘you land here, unlawfully, you get locked up and you get deported straight away. No ifs, no buts’?”
Mr Cottrell said he would tell them “you haven’t solved the problem”, adding: “You’ve just put it somewhere else and you’ve done nothing to address the issue of what brings people to this country.
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“And so if you think that’s the answer, you will discover in due course that all you have done is made the problem worse.
“Don’t misunderstand me, I have every sympathy with those who find this difficult, every sympathy – as I do with those living in poverty.
“But… we should actively resist the kind of isolationist, short term kneejerk ‘send them home’.”
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2:04
What do public make of Reform’s plans?
Image: Nigel Farage at the launch of Reform UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers. Pic: PA
Asked if that was his message to the Reform leader, he said: “Well, it is. I mean, Mr Farage is saying the things he’s saying, but he is not offering any long-term solution to the big issues which are convulsing our world, which lead to this. And, I see no other way.”
Mr Farage, the MP for Clacton, was asked at a news conference this week what he would say if Christian leaders opposed his plan.
“Whoever the Christian leaders are at any given point in time, I think over the last decades, quite a few of them have been rather out of touch, perhaps with their own flock,” he said.
“We believe that what we’re offering is right and proper, and we believe for a political party that was founded around the slogan of family, community, country that we are doing right by all of those things, with these plans we put forward today.”
Sky News has approached Mr Farage for comment.
Farage won’t be greeting this as good news of the gospel – nor will govt ministers
When Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell told journalists that “We don’t do God”, many took it as a statement of ideology.
In fact it was the caution of a canny operator who knows that the most dangerous opponent in politics is a religious leader licensed to challenge your very morality.
Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, currently the effective head of the worldwide Anglican communion, could not have been clearer in his denunciation of what he calls the Reform party’s “isolationist, short term, kneejerk ‘send them home'” approach to asylum and immigration.
I sense that having ruled himself out of the race for next Archbishop of Canterbury, Reverend Cottrell feels free to preach a liberal doctrine.
Unusually, in our interview he pinpoints a political leader as, in effect, failing to demonstrate Christian charity.
Nigel Farage, who describes himself as a practising Christian, won’t be greeting this as the good news of the gospel.
But government ministers will also be feeling nervous.
Battered for allowing record numbers of cross- Channel migrants, and facing legal battles on asylum hotels that may go all the way to the Supreme Court, Labour has tried to head off the Reform challenge with tougher language on border control.
The last thing the prime minister needs right now is to make an enemy of the Almighty – or at least of his representatives on Earth.