Campaigners Urge Cuts to the UK's £24bn Carbon Capture Plans Ahead of the Budget, Packham Calls the Technology a 'Fairytale'

Environmental campaigners are calling on the UK Chancellor to cut the government's £24 billion spending plans for carbon capture technology in favour of funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower households' energy bills.

Environmentalist Chris Packham is leading the appeal to the Treasury ahead of this week's budget, describing the government's support for carbon capture as exorbitantly expensive. He says that support is now more than the planned spending of the United States, the European Union, Norway and Japan combined.

Packham said it was a national embarrassment that the government had earmarked £24 billion to support carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects developed by big oil companies, including BP and the Norwegian state oil company Equinor, and urged ministers to put things right.

'CCS is a tech fairytale,' the naturalist and broadcaster said. He said it should be a national embarrassment that the UK is putting more taxpayer money into it than any other country in the world, and that this budget is a chance to put things right.

The intervention comes as the government reportedly plans to reduce grants for households hoping to swap a gas boiler for an electric heat pump. That shift is considered crucial to cutting carbon emitted when heating buildings, which accounts for around a fifth of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions.

Packham called on the government to safeguard funding promises that empower households to lower bills, rather than bankrolling exorbitantly expensive projects with uncertain results. A failure to rein in the planned CCS spending, he said, would be another strong signal that the government is putting big oil above people and the planet.

Carbon capture technology is designed to trap emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure before they are released into the atmosphere. Its proponents believe piping carbon dioxide into underground storage could provide a permanent climate solution for industries unable to replace fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives, and leaders of many economies have backed the technology.

However, campaigners note that although there are instances where the technology has worked, many high-cost projects have struggled to progress and in many examples the carbon savings have proved far less than expected. Green groups fear the technology has been promoted by fossil fuel companies to prolong the use of fossil fuels.

Aled Dilwyn Fisher, a senior researcher at Oil Change International, said it is worrying that spending on climate is being cut in favour of defence, but cutting support for proven climate solutions while continuing to bankroll unreliable carbon capture projects would add insult to injury. This budget, he said, should put public money where it can make a real difference to the climate and help cut people's energy bills.

Work on the UK's first CCS projects has begun at the East Coast Cluster near Teesside and Humberside in north-east England, and at the HyNet Cluster near Merseyside and north Wales in north-west England. The second phase of the government's CCS support plan includes £200 million for the Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, alongside £80 million from the Scottish government.

Rosie Hampton, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said over the summer that the government's climate response was being built on fantasy plans about turning the North Sea into Europe's carbon dumping ground, while politicians should focus on climate solutions that will improve people's lives, such as warm homes, better public transport and decent green jobs.

Martin McCluskey, the parliamentary under-secretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, told an industry event this month that the government remained committed to carbon capture but fiscal pressures may require decisions on the pace of the industry's development.

The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) said the UK's first projects had already awarded more than £4 billion in supply-chain contracts, which could support about 350 UK companies and 5,500 construction jobs. Its UK director, Mark Sommerfeld, said pulling back now would undermine investor confidence, risk leaving infrastructure underused and deepen industrial decline, and that this budget must honour existing commitments.

The government has been contacted for comment.