The United Kingdom must act quickly to develop a new plan for deployment of carbon capture and storage technology following cancellation of its £1 billion CCS Commercialization Competition, John Gummer, chairman of the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee, told Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd Wednesday in a letter. “A strategy should be developed immediately, beginning with a clear signal of renewed commitment to a CCS industry in the UK,” Gummer wrote.
The U.K. announced on Nov. 25, 2015, the official cancellation of the competition, in which two projects remained in the running for funding. Both projects were subsequently put on hold.
Waiting for CCS to be deployed elsewhere and gaining knowledge from other nations’ pursuits will not provide the cost savings that biting the bullet and deploying the tech in the U.K. will, according to Gummer. “A ‘wait and see’ approach drawing on international learning and early-stage R&D will not be sufficient because the majority of the potential routes to reducing costs arise from UK deployment,” he wrote.
