UK must establish feasibility of negative emissions by 2030

The UK needs to demonstrate by the end of this decade whether technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere can have a role to play in meeting the net zero target, a senior figure at the Climate Change Committee (CCC) has warned.

At a meeting of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on Wednesday (7 January), which was discussing direct air capture (DAC) technology, CCC head of carbon budgets Dr David Joffe was quizzed on the role such solutions will play in cutting emissions.

He told the committee the CCC currently sees the UK relying on this and other so-called negative emission technologies, which remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, to meet the country’s 2050 carbon reduction target.

Joffe said: “We need greenhouse gas removal and CCS. At the moment, we don’t know how to get to net zero without it.”

But Joffe warned that greenhouse gas removal technologies, which also include bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), must be rolled out at scale by 2030 in order to demonstrate they can make a sufficiently large contribution to the UK’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

He said: “We need to put in place mechanisms and start to develop it now: if we start now and it doesn’t work, we can at least change course.

“It’s better we know that it’s not going to work and change course in 2030.

“It’s not clear we can make net zero if we take those off the table, which is why it is really important to prove this is feasible.”

The legally binding nature of the UK’s carbon reduction targets offer few options if negative emissions technologies are found wanting, Joffe said, adding that reductions in demand for aviation and meat eating would be the most likely options for filling the gap.

He said while the CCC is keen to develop DAC it should not be done so in a “gung-ho” way that diverts large amounts of electricity, which would be better used to meet increased demand for power, heat and transport.

But Joffe said the CCC hopes DAC will make a significant contribution that will lessen reliance on BECCS due to concerns about the extent to which the latter can be developed in a sustainable manner.

He said negative emissions technologies will be required to counterbalance residual emissions from fields like aviation that will be hardest to decarbonise.

DAC was championed by Dominic Cummings when he was prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief advisor.

Jonny Gallagher, senior public affairs and policy manager at National Grid Electricity System Operator, said DAC doesn’t currently feature “prominently” in the organisation’s Future Energy Scenarios, which he added reflects the “nascent” nature of the technology.

He said the best locations for future DAC plants, which consume a lot of electricity, are likely to be where the amount of power generated fluctuates and they can tap surpluses produced during peak periods.

Professor Benjamin Sovacool, director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, told the committee there is much uncertainty about when it will be possible to deploy greenhouse gas removal technologies at scale, with estimates ranging from 2030 to 2090.

But he agreed with Joffe that it will play an important role in meeting net zero.

“You reach a point in 2040 or 2050 where you have to deploy negative emission technologies: almost every scenario depends on very significant deployment. It is definitely a technology we have to invest in as a safety measure and to stabilise the climate.”

Michael Grubb, professor of energy and climate change at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resource, cautioned that past projections showing a rapid expansion of CCS have “yet to be realised on anything like the scale projected”.

The Environmental Audit Committee held the session on DAC as part of a wider inquiry into negative emissions technologies.