Tuesday 11 December 2012

EU's carbon capture projects have fallen through

While the EU Crème de la Crème have been busy congratulating themselves in Oslo, sources in Brussels report that all European projects this year for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, have fallen through:

The aim was for energy and other industrial facilities producing large amounts of CO2 to capture and then store the gas underground as part of efforts to limit climate change. European Parliament member Chris Davis, of Britain's Liberal Democrat Party, had championed the CO2 capture/storage scheme and expressed deep disappointment at the latest development. "Hopes of Europe becoming a world leader in the development of a key technology to combat global warming have been dashed," Davies said. "More than 1.5 billion euros of EU funding available to support carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects will now be diverted to new renewable energy schemes," he said. Earlier Thursday, the world's biggest steelmaker ArcelorMittal said it was withdrawing from the EU's Uclos project to install a CO2 capture/storage facility at its plant in Florange, France. That move could prove highly controversial given the dispute between the French government and the company over the future of Florange where ArcelorMittal has closed capacity in the face of a global steel glut. The ArcelorMittal announcement "means that not one single new CCS scheme is set to proceed," Davis said, adding it "marks a major failure by Europe to step up to the mark. 

Read the entire article here

In 2007 EU leaders agreed to have 12 CCS projects in operation by 2015. Now it appears clear that the entire project has fallen through, leaving EU taxpayers to pay the bill. And if the funding still unused, 1,5 billion euros, "will be diverted new renewable energy schemes", as the warmist MEP Chris Davis suggests, even that money will be wasted.

But for this is of course small potatoes for Nobel laureates ... 

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