Recently, we published an article on the Energy from Waste landscape; the negative discourse around EfW incinerators and the carbon capture technologies available to these projects - where the UK government have publicly supported CCUS technologies for several years, in the media and through funding opportunities which, in reality, do not translate to the practical support of projects. 

The local issue with Carbon Capture

Although, in the Autumn 2024 budget, the UK government pledged support for CCUS projects, the reality is that the government is currently supporting 2 Carbon Capture projects specifically, leaving somewhat of a figurative hole in the energy and waste treatment sectors, where projects seeking this technology are unable to adopt it. 

This is because, as it stands, there is no viable market for any carbon captured, making it extremely difficult to sell or reuse, yet the cost of fitting or retrofitting CCUS technologies is significant - driving up the cost of energy projects to almost unfeasible heights. 

Indeed, we’ve seen exactly this as part of a handful of projects we are and have been working on. 

The appetite for fitting or retrofitting CCUS technologies to EfW plants is there but the current cost is simply too high, not only of the technology itself but also of storing it; carbon storage facilities being few and far between here in the UK. 

For example, a current project we’re working on, based in Cornwall, must transport any carbon captured to a facility at the other end of the country; the cost of transporting that carbon all the way from one end of the UK to the other making doing so astronomically expensive and, therefore, making CCUS practically impossible without incurring costs that will not otherwise be offset, either elsewhere in the project or by selling some of that carbon off, as the market is saturated and the market value of carbon virtually nothing. 

So, what is this project, and indeed other projects like it, to do? 

The reality is that CCUS and its technologies have been priced out of the market and are simply too expensive to adopt or transport & store, not to mention that the market just isn’t there to enable the selling of any carbon captured onto other industries, as CCUS intends. 

And, as with so many new initiatives, regulations and policies, public opinion and attitudes play a significant role within this. 

Although any carbon captured from EfW plants and anaerobic digestion plants is green and perfectly safe to sell on to, for instance, the food & beverage market, using this carbon just as fossil fuel derived carbon, the mere idea that carbon used in our food and drinks has come from waste and/or animal waste is severely off-putting to the end user - freezing out a number of opportunities and leaving expensive and hard-to-find storage solutions as the only viable option.

For CCUS to work both on a local level and nationally, the entire market needs to change, as well as attitudes towards the carbon derived from EfW plants, the cost of the technology required, the availability of storage facilities across the UK, and the cost of transporting & storing that carbon. 

For that to happen, there needs to be a truly significant injection of government and private funding into CCUS, plus initiatives to incentivise such activity; CCUS needs to be made attractive to investors and subsidised by our government

Until then, CCUS - although desperately wanted by the sector - isn’t always viable.