Campaigners Urge Chancellor to Cut £24bn Carbon Capture Spending Ahead of Budget

Campaigners are pressing the chancellor to scale back the government's £24bn plan to support carbon capture technology, arguing the money should go to green schemes that reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills. The appeal comes just ahead of this week's budget.

The naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham is leading the call. He described the government's backing for carbon capture and storage (CCS) as "exorbitantly expensive" and said it now exceeds the planned spending of the US, the EU, Norway and Japan combined. The funding is earmarked for a series of CCS projects developed by big oil companies, including BP and the Norwegian state oil company Equinor.

"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."

The intervention follows reports that the government plans to reduce grants for households wanting to replace a gas boiler with an electric heat pump. That switch is seen as vital to cutting emissions from heating buildings, which account for around a fifth of the UK's total greenhouse gas output. Packham urged ministers to protect funding that "empower[s] households to lower bills" instead of "bankrolling exorbitantly expensive projects with ludicrously uncertain results."

Carbon capture is designed to trap emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure before they reach the atmosphere. Supporters say piping carbon dioxide into underground storage could offer a permanent climate solution for industries that cannot swap fossil fuels for cleaner options. Although the technology has worked in some cases, many costly projects have struggled to progress, and in many examples the carbon savings have fallen well short of expectations. Green groups fear fossil fuel companies are promoting it to prolong their own industry.

Aled Dilwyn Fisher, a senior researcher at Oil Change International, said it was worrying that climate spending is being cut in favour of defence. He added that cutting support for proven climate solutions while continuing to fund unreliable carbon capture projects "would add insult to injury."

Work has begun on the UK's first CCS projects at the East Coast Cluster near Teesside and Humberside, and at the HyNet Cluster near Merseyside and north Wales. The second phase of the support plan includes £200m for the Acorn project in Aberdeenshire, alongside £80m from the Scottish government. Over the summer, Rosie Hampton of Friends of the Earth Scotland criticised what she called "fantasy plans about turning the North Sea into Europe's carbon dumping ground."

Martin McCluskey, the parliamentary undersecretary at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, told an industry event this month that the government remains committed to carbon capture, but that fiscal pressures may require decisions on how fast the industry develops.

The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) said the first projects have already awarded more than £4bn in supply-chain contracts, which could support about 350 UK companies and 5,500 construction jobs. Its UK director, Mark Sommerfeld, warned that "pulling back now would undermine investor confidence, risk leaving infrastructure underused and deepen industrial decline." The government has been contacted for comment.