#propublica

Ever heard of Carbon Capture? It's the idea that you can capture carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel based power plants and store it instead of creating atmospheric emissions. Seems like a easy, investible, win that can retrofit to existing technologies right?

One paper written 22 years ago seemed to think so. But there's a catch:

“Chaps, I have had a go at rewriting the paper.”  - Chris Mottershead, BP climate adviser

What better way to launder your reputation than by sponsoring scientific research, as the UK based BP oil company did across the late 1990s to early 2000s.

The result?

"... “Wedges” (The paper) oversold the readiness of carbon capture and storage, describing it as “already deployed” industrially. Reporting by ProPublica and Drilled has found that even today, the technology faces financial and technical hurdles and is unlikely to ever work at the scale needed to avert extreme warming. 

And the broader solution set that “Wedges” promoted, including expanding the use of natural gas, has meanwhile helped perpetuate a system in which fossil fuels remain the predominant source of energy and the emissions they cause have continued. 

“An unfortunate consequence” of the “Wedges” paper, wrote climate scientist Ken Caldeira, New York University physics professor Marty Hoffert and others in a 2013 critique, “was to make the solution seem easy.”

Moreover, for the past quarter century, as research into carbon capture and storage and other industry-friendly solutions have enjoyed robust funding and attention, other ideas that might have replaced carbon-heavy energy entirely — reducing warming and potentially saving lives — were drowned out, several researchers told ProPublica and Drilled."

 - Maddie Stone, Drilled; additional reporting by Amy Westervelt, Drilled, and Katie Worth, ProPublica

Even today's governments seem enamoured by carbon capture and divert crucial funding into these kinds of systems, despite plenty of evidence to suggest these systems are currently non-viable.

Prime example is the the launch of the UK government's energy funding mechanism Great British Energy, working together the UK's recently established National Wealth Fund:

"The National Wealth Fund will focus at least £5.8 billion of its capital on green hydrogen, carbon capture, ports, gigafactories, and green steel"- Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A new era of clean electricity – main report - GOV.UK

“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” McAfee acknowledged before my visit. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer. And I’m going against the grain here. I’m climbing a mountain they say you can’t climb.”