On: Carbon capture is a fig leaf for fossil fuel expansion | Letters

July 19, 2026

The morning papers are full of the latest estimates for carbon capture - a staggering £264 billion by mid-century. It is presented as a necessary investment in our planetary solvency, a technical bridge to a cooler future. In truth, it is a classic instance of the beauty contest, where we are asked to admire not the most efficient solution, but the one that allows the current judges to remain in their seats.

The Treasury and the energy giants argue that we cannot abandon the old fires without these elaborate filters. They frame the cost as an unavoidable entry on the national ledger. But every economic necessity has a political author. By committing such vast sums to capturing what should never have been emitted, we are not buying a solution; we are purchasing a delay. We are subsidizing the status quo under the guise of innovation. The preference for carbon capture over the immediate, cheaper expansion of renewables is not an engineering requirement. It is a choice to protect existing capital from the indignity of obsolescence.

The advocates of this scheme speak of 2050 with the detached calm of men who will not be there to settle the accounts. They recommend patience and a slow transition, a perspective always most popular among those whose current dividends are secure. To suggest that we must spend hundreds of billions to keep the old engines humming is to mistake a sunk cost for a future asset. We are being asked to pay for the privilege of not changing.

When the state guarantees the viability of an inefficient industry, it dampens the very animal spirits required for a genuine revolution in power. We are managing the decline of the past rather than investing in the vitality of the future. It is a triumph of accounting over imagination. The climate does not care for our balance sheets, and the short run is getting shorter by the day.