The UK government’s move to award £22bn in subsidies to carbon capture projects followed a sharp increase in lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, it can be revealed.
Oil and gas giants such as Equinor, BP, and ExxonMobil attended 24 of 44 external ministerial meetings to discuss carbon capture and storage (CCS) in 2023, according to official transparency records.
That represented a surge in activity relative to 2020-22, when ministers held about half as many meetings to discuss the technology, and oil and gas companies would attend seven to 10 of these discussions each year.
During a call in December with three Equinor executives, one of the company’s team told Jeremy Allen, then director of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), that Equinor “appreciate[d] the … collaborative approach to policy development”.
In a meeting in March last year, an ExxonMobil executive from the company’s “low carbon solutions” division “spoke of the outstanding need for oil and gas, at the same time as needing to lower emissions”, according to meeting notes obtained by environmental journalism site DeSmog through freedom of information requests.
The growing engagement by oil and gas companies has sharpened concerns among climate advocates that industry is skewing the UK’s carbon capture strategy to preserve demand for fossil gas – a significant source of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions.
“Fossil fuel companies often have the engineering knowhow to build these projects, so the government naturally has to meet with them,” said Laurie Laybourn, an environmental policy researcher and associate fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank. “But that might create a risk whereby these companies unduly influence policy and rollout in a way that benefits them.”
Other sectors engaging frequently with ministers on CCS policy include heavy manufacturing companies, CCS technology firms, lobby groups and investment funds.
Researchers, climate advocacy groups and local councils were less well represented, the transparency records showed. No individual organisation from these sectors has attended more than three meetings with ministers on carbon capture since the start of 2020.
Meanwhile, lobby group the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) – which represents dozens of fossil fuel companies – attended 20 meetings, and Equinor 16. BP, ExxonMobil, Scottish power company SSE, and Drax, a biomass power plant that is one of the UK’s biggest emitters, also attended nine meetings each during the same period.
The new Labour government announced plans last week to extend £22bn in subsidies for carbon capture over 25 years, saying the strategy can help meet the country’s climate targets and support broader revitalisation of British industry.
The policy builds on the previous Conservative government’s plans to establish four CCS “clusters”, where carbon capture would be used to trap…
Read More: UK’s £22bn carbon capture pledge follows surge in lobbying by fossil fuel
