UK to pledge £22bn funding for carbon capture and storage projects – Friends of the Earth reaction

Responding to reports that the government will announce plans to invest £22bn over 25 years in carbon capture and storage projects on Friday, Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, said:

“Whilst millions of people are facing a winter of freezing in their heat-leaking homes, oil and gas executives will be celebrating. Rather than properly fund a home insulation scheme for those unable to afford it, this announcement essentially uses taxpayer money to subsidise the continued lifespan of the fossil fuel industry.

“Blue hydrogen, championed by the fossil fuel industry and produced from gas with carbon capture and storage, is not clean; there are fugitive emissions from extracting the gas and not all of the carbon emissions from manufacturing it can be captured.

“The government needs a coherent industrial strategy to secure genuine green jobs and switch to clean energy. It must reject the false solutions peddled by the fossil fuel industry and use the forthcoming budget and spending review to spell out how it will address the UK’s under-investment in making homes affordably warm and energy efficient.”