Environmentalists have a modest proposal for the chancellor ahead of this week's budget: stop spending £24bn on what Chris Packham calls a "tech fairytale" and start funding green schemes that reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills. It's a radical notion - spending public money on things that demonstrably work - but someone had to say it.
The naturalist and broadcaster is leading an 11th-hour appeal for the Treasury to scale back the government's "exorbitantly expensive" support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), which now exceeds the planned spending of the US, the EU, Norway and Japan combined. Yes, combined. The UK, a country of 67 million people, is outspending four major economies put together on a technology that has a habit of not quite delivering.
"CCS is a tech fairytale," Packham said. "It should be a national embarrassment that the UK is pumping more taxpayer money into it than any other country in the world. This budget is a chance to put things right." He described the £24bn earmarked for CCS projects developed by big oil companies - including BP and the Norwegian state oil company Equinor - as a "national embarrassment" and urged ministers to "put things right."
The timing is less than ideal for the government's green credentials. It reportedly plans to reduce grants available to households hoping to swap their gas boiler for an electric heat pump - a shift considered crucial to cutting the carbon emitted when heating buildings, which makes up around a fifth of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. So: less money for heat pumps, more money for carbon capture. One of these things is proven to reduce emissions in homes. The other is a pipe dream, sometimes literally.
Packham called on the government to safeguard funding promises "that empower households to lower bills" rather than "bankrolling exorbitantly expensive projects with ludicrously uncertain results." A novel concept: helping people heat their homes instead of subsidising oil majors' science experiments.
To be fair, carbon capture has its genuine believers. Leaders of many economies have backed the technology, which is designed to trap emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure before they reach the atmosphere. Proponents argue that piping carbon dioxide into underground storage could provide a permanent climate solution for industries unable to replace fossil fuels with cleaner alternatives. In theory, it's a lovely idea. In practice, many high-cost projects have struggled to progress, and there are numerous examples where carbon savings proved far less than expected. Green groups fear the technology has been promoted by fossil fuel companies to prolong the use of fossil fuels - a suspicion that has, over the years, aged remarkably well.
Packham warned that failing to rein in the planned CCS spending "would be yet another strong signal that this government is putting big oil above people and the planet." It would also be a signal that the government has a very specific definition of "investment."
Aled Dilwyn Fisher, a senior researcher at Oil Change International, added: "It's 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 should be an opportunity to put public money where it can make a real difference to the climate and help cut people's energy bills, rather than continuing to gamble billions on the fossil fuel industry's latest expansion plan."
Work on the UK's first CCS projects has already 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 £200m to support the Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, alongside £80m 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." Warm homes and functional buses: less headline-grabbing than carbon capture, but considerably more useful.
Martin McCluskey, the parliamentary undersecretary 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. In other words: still on board, but perhaps not at quite this speed.
The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) naturally disagrees. It said the UK's first projects had already awarded more than £4bn in supply-chain contracts, which could support about 350 UK companies and 5,500 construction jobs. Mark Sommerfeld, the CCSA's UK director, warned: "Pulling back now would undermine investor confidence, risk leaving infrastructure underused and deepen industrial decline." He added that "this budget must honour existing commitments, turning today's progress into lasting growth, energy security and reindustrialisation."
The government has been contacted for comment. Presumably someone is drafting a response that uses the word "balanced" at least twice.