Government risks missing carbon removal goal, MPs warn

The chair of Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has expressed a lack of confidence that the government will meet its target for the roll out greenhouse gas removal technologies.

In its net zero strategy, published last October, the government set a target to deploy sufficient negative emission technologies (NETs) to suck five megatonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) from the atmosphere per year by 2030.

NETs, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), are expected to be needed to offset residual emissions from hard to decarbonise sectors like aviation and heavy industry.

However, following a reply by energy minister Greg Hands to correspondence from his committee in March, EAC chair Philip Dunne MP has raised concerns that the slow pace of policy decisions means the government’s target may be missed.

In his letter, Hands wrote that a consultation is pending this year on business models for engineered greenhouse gas removals, as well as on the core monitoring, reporting and verification principles for NETs.

The government’s response also contained a commitment that BECCS technologies approved for use in the UK would use only sustainable biomass and therefore result in genuine net-negative emissions. A biomass strategy, outlining further details, is due for publication later in 2022.

But the committee said it is not “currently reassured” that nature and the environment will be fully protected from adverse effects of BECCS technologies.

Against a backdrop of concerns that extra demand for biomass created by BECCS could swallow up habitats and imperil biodiversity, the committee’s letter called on the government to ensure the development of combined BECCS plants is “robustly” monitored.

Dunne said: “The government’s modest response has done little to fill our committee with confidence that negative emissions technologies can play the important and decisive role in net zero Britain that the government anticipates. At the current rate of progress, it requires a leap of faith to see how NETs will be deployed to take a mere 5MtCO2/yr out of the atmosphere by 2030, let alone to see the ambitious scale-up plan envisaged for the following decade.

“For an effective roll-out, we need to see adequate environmental protections, frameworks for business models which can drive investment, as well as meaningful deterrents to high emitting companies tempted to rely on negative emissions technologies rather than cutting their own emissions.

“The government’s current position has not reassured us in all these areas. I trust that the government’s actions in response to its consultations will demonstrate that the pace of work in this area will soon accelerate.”