Stop spending public funds on carbon capture failure – researchers

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Forests, grassland and other biomass remove carbon dioxide from the air now – and, properly looked after, could do much more. Mechanical methods of removing carbon dioxide, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and direct air capture (DAC), are ineffective and may never work at scale.

So public funds poured into mechanical carbon capture projects, often operated by oil companies, should be redirected to proven biological methods, and to monitoring technologies that can check how effective they are.

These are the conclusions of a new paper by a US-based research team of scientists, economists and policy analysts, headed by June Sekera of the New School for Social Research in New York.

Forests in the Serra do Mar, on Brazil’s Atlantic coast. Photo: Deyvid Setti and Eloy Olindo Setti / creative commons

To avert dangerous global warming, the volume of CO2 and other greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuels, needs to fall to zero. CO2 removal could help compensate for emissions that are harder to stop.

The amounts of CO2 that could be removed from the atmosphere by biological methods will never come close to the amounts being poured in by fossil fuel burning. But, over time, they could help – and will definitely go farther than the mechanical carbon capture methods beloved of some politicians, journalists and other techno-optimists. (See “Quick technological catch up”, below.)

In the US, the total amount of CO2 now being removed from the air by mechanical methods is zero, Sekera and her colleagues found – while biological methods are removing about 0.9 billion tonnes per year (Gt/year).

That amount could be more than doubled by the preservation and restoration of forests, grasslands and wetlands, amplified urban tree cover and accelerated regenerative agriculture practices.

An additional 1 billion Gt/year of CO2 captured would equate to around one-fifth of current US emissions. So it is no substitute for rapid decarbonisation. But the research team’s results provide good reasons to cut off the billions of dollars of funding going to mechanical carbon capture projects – or “a taxpayer-financed sewer system for the fossil fuel industry”, as Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Centre, called it.

In the US, mechanical methods of carbon capture (CCS and DAC) received $10.7 billion in subsidies from Congress in 2010-2021; $1 billion in tax credits in 2010-2019; and $12 billion in the 2021 infrastructure spending package – 66 times more than the $180 million included for new programmes related, only indirectly, to biological sequestration.

Springtime in London

Orchids and other flowers at the botanical gardens at Kew, London

Russia: 19-year sentences for anti-war arson protest

Report by Solidarity Zone

The Central District Military Court at Yekaterinburg, in Russia, yesterday (10 April) handed down 19-year prison sentences to Roman Nasryev and Aleksei Nuriev, for firebombing an administrative office building where a military registration office is based.

Roman Nasryev (left) and Aleksei Nuriev in court. Photo from The Insider

Roman and Aleksei will have to spend the first four years in prison, and the rest in a maximum-security penal colony.

This is the most severe sentence handed down so far for anti-war arson.

Roman and Aleksei received this long term of imprisonment because their actions were defined as a “terrorist act” (Article 205.2 of the criminal code of the Russian Federation) and “undergoing training for the purpose of undertaking terrorist activity” (Article 205.3). The latter Article carries a minimum term of 15 years.

The arson attack that Roman and Aleksei carried out – in reaction to the mlitary mobilisation, and to express their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine – was no more than symbolic. A female security guard was able to put out the fire, with a blanket and a few litres of water. There was damage to a window and some linoleum.

In court Roman Nasryev said:

I decided to carry out this action, because I did not agree with the [military] mobilisation, the “Special Military Operation” and the war as a whole. I simply wanted to show, by my actions, that in our city there is opposition to mobilisation and the “Special Military Operation”. I wanted in this way to make clear my opposition; I wanted my voice to be heard.

Solidarity Zone considers that this type of anti-war arson is not terrorism. That definition is politically motivated, and directly linked to the fact that the Russian government has unleashed a war of aggression against Ukraine.

□ Translated from Solidarity Zone’s telegram feed. The original asks people to send letters and parcels to Roman and Aleksei in prison. If you are not a Russian speaker and you want to send them a message, there is no point in sending it directly. You can send messages to peoplenature@protonmail.com and I hope to be able to pass them.

More on Russian political prisoners

□ Who is Roman Nasryev? – the Russian Reader

□ “Azat means free.” – Posle Media

□ “We are few and we can’t cope with the stream of repression” – Avtonom.org

□ Solidarity Zone translations on the Russian Reader

□ Happy birthday, Kirill Butylin – People & Nature. (This includes links to more information about Solidarity Zone and Russian political prisoners in English.)

India: ‘Hydrogen Mission’ must not become expensive greenwash

By Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani

The National Green Hydrogen Mission adopted by the Indian government in January is a major policy initiative, and it is a sign of the poverty of Indian politics that it remains so election-obsessed that has not been subjected to the public debate it deserves.

The absence of any critical evaluation by India’s opposition parties of this initiative, which has major implications for India’s development path, is staggering.

Student climate protesters in Delhi, 2019. Photo by Vikas Choudhary

The Indian government is poised to offer energy companies subsidies to set up hydrogen “hubs” – but  how this fits with climate policy and social justice goals remains unexplained.

As part of the  Hydrogen Mission, companies such as Reliance and Indian Oil will be invited to bid for cash from a 20,000 crore rupee ($2.4 billion) fund.

There will also be money for manufacturing electrolysers, needed to make “green” hydrogen, and subsidies for fertiliser and steel makers to buy it.

But the Hydrogen Mission has been surrounded by hype that raises unjustified expectations.

Prabhat Kumar, an external affairs ministry official, claimed recently that hydrogen could be “our main source of energy in future”. But that will never happen.

Even if the government meets its ambitious target of producing 10 million tonnes of “green” hydrogen each year, that would still only provide about one-fifteenth of the energy that India gets from coal.

The very idea that India will become a major exporter of hydrogen, which runs through all the government’s documents, is questionable.

India may need 6 million tonnes/year of “green” hydrogen to displace the “grey” hydrogen it uses now, for fertiliser manufacture and in oil refineries.