A LINE of trees were recently felled in Beaumont Park in Cork at the request of residents, following a motion raised by Cllr Des Cahill to Cork City Council.
I walk my dog in this park. There was a path right around three sides of it through the trees, blanketed in bluebells and wild garlic in May, wildflowers in the summer, chestnuts in the autumn. The hill up to the park has a path through it that I walk every morning, carpeted in oak leaves, acorns crunching underfoot.
For a decade, I walked through two acres of oak wood and along the tree lined-park with dogs, buggies and small children, on their way to school. The whole park is a cacophony of bird song that makes walking to and from work a special moment every day.
The trees were described as “excessive”. In a climate crisis, how can you have ‘excessive’ trees, that essential and natural tool to stop greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere?
As we desecrate our green heritage, carbon capture and storage is in the news since Taoiseach Leo Varadkar discussed it during his visit to COP28 recently. In his speech, he said there needed to be a “reduction in the use of fossil fuels”. Earlier, he said the summit needed to agree to phase out ‘unabated fossil fuels’ and hinted at broader use of mechanisms to capture or offset emissions.
Environment minister Eamon Ryan is preparing regulations for the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to reduce carbon emissions.
He cautioned that the technology was intended for use in limited circumstances such as the cement industry and incinerators, and that he would bring proposals to government in the coming weeks for regulations to ensure this. Mr Ryan warned that the technology is as yet unproven and could not be used as a ‘get out of jail card’ for the fossil fuel industry.
What is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)? It is a group of technologies that can capture carbon dioxide produced by major factories and power plants before it reaches the atmosphere, where it is transported to a site for burial or reuse.
A preliminary step often involves fitting factory chimneys with solvent filters that trap carbon dioxide before it escapes, followed by piping it to a location for use or storage. Most carbon dioxide is projected to be injected permanently deep underground. Early forerunners in the use of this technology included the U.S, Canada, Norway and China.
The UK has committed £20bn over the next two decades to developing CCS. Adnoc, the Abu Dhabi company owned by President of COP28 Sultan Al Jaber, has begun a drilling campaign that plans to turn captured carbon dioxide into rock.
Will carbon capture solve the climate crisis?
Professor of energy policy and director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London, Jim Watson said earlier this year the technology is needed but warned it could not be used as a ‘get out of jail free’ card for oil and gas companies to continue getting fossil fuels out of the ground.
“We do need it. If you look at independent assessments, including from climate change committees, it is hard to see how to decarbonise the whole of industry without some carbon capture and storage,” he said.
But the evidence of effectiveness of the technology is not yet there. A report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis on two Norwegian CCS projects questioned the long-term viability of the technology.
There is also the risk fossil fuel companies will use the technology to drill for more oil and gas elsewhere. This can be part of a process called ‘enhanced oil recovery’ where carbon dioxide is pumped into an oilfield to force out the remaining pockets of oil that would otherwise prove difficult to extract.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced in August that two CCS hubs, the Viking scheme in the Humber and the Acorn scheme in Aberdeenshire have been given government approval. This brings to four the CCS facilities in the UK. The schemes are intended to collect carbon dioxide from multiple sources and pipe it offshore to be stored in depleting North Sea gas fields.
Professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, Stuart Haszeldene commented at the time that announcing more CCS schemes at the same time as approving 100-plus new oil and gas drilling licences is like ordering a truckload of cigarettes for someone giving up smoking.
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Hoesung Lee was clear in June when he stated over-reliance on CCS could lead the world to surpass climate tipping points. The IPCC warned in its most recent climate science report in March that it was ‘now or never’ to take action on emissions if the world was to have a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.
Professor of earth science at University College London, Mark Maslin is very clear.
“When we are aiming for a global net zero emission world by 2050 - this means no new fossil production now, halving production over the next ten years and reducing it to as close to zero as possible by 2050.
“None of this in any way justifies countries expanding their fossil fuel production and to use the IPCC as an excuse is dishonest and a misuse of the science.”
Carbon capture and storage technology has the potential to play a limited rule in heavy industry but cannot be used as an excuse for continued unabated extraction and expansion of fossil fuels. Nor can it be used as a tempering of the need to halve fossil fuel production in less than a decade and net zero fossil fuel production by 2050.
Beaumont Park is a welcome idyll in a world gone mad. Carbon capture technology will not save us from a climate and biodiversity emergency that has arrived on our shores.
Trees are part of our precious heritage and need to be valued and maintained as a critical tool in the climate crisis and the restoration of ecosystems. They are essential to our connection with the natural world that we humans are just one small part of as well as overall wellbeing.
Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor in Cork, and former director of human health and nutrition, safefood
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