Reality check: carbon capture and storage

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

This week the UK government announced that around 100 new oil and gas licences for the North Sea will be issued. At the same time the Prime Minister said the government would back two new carbon capture and storage plants, one in Aberdeenshire and one in the Humber. Victoria Gill speaks to Angela Knight, former chief executive of Energy UK, about what this decision means for the UK’s aim of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. She then discovers more about the capabilities of carbon capture and storage from Paul Fennell, a professor of clean energy at Imperial College London. Next Victoria travels to the sunnier shores of Spain where orcas have been ramming fishing boats. She speaks to one of the sailors who witnessed an attack. To find out more about the orcas’ behaviour, she interviews Dr Luke Rendell, a whale and dolphin expert from the University of St Andrews. We then move to Skomer, off the coast of West Wales. This important seabird colony has recently recorded an avian flu outbreak. Reporter Roland Pease speaks to Lisa Morgan from the Wildlife Trust for South and West Wales. To finish the show Dr Stuart Farrimond is back with the final instalment of his science of gardening series. Presenter: Victoria Gill Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Hannah Robins Research: Patrick Hughes Editor: Richard Collings

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hair low, you lovely curious minded people. This is the podcast edition of BBC Inside Science
0:04.9	first broadcast on the 3rd of August 2023. I'm Victoria Gill and in the next half hour
0:10.0	we're asking if carbon capture and storage can live up to this week's hype.
0:14.1	It's great to be in Scotland to strengthen our energy security with more licenses for the North Sea
0:19.5	but also speed us on our way to net zero with carbon capture and storage.
0:24.6	And we're trying to get inside the mind of a killer whale to find out why a small
0:28.8	population of orcas are deliberately ramming into sailing boats in the Atlantic.
0:33.6	They were banging on the boats and pushing the boat they were training each other to do it.
0:39.7	We have more coastal exploration this week as we visit the tiny island of Scoma where
0:44.6	avian flu has hit the seabird population hard. A week after they'd all fledged from here and gone
0:49.7	they all started washing in dead on our main lambiches. And Dr Stuart Faramond is back with his
0:55.6	last instalment of the science of gardening. There's a bench here and I've got all my apparatus
1:00.7	laid out so I'm just going to have a sit down I'm going to tell you all about the powers of regeneration
1:04.7	in plants. But first this week the government announced that it was approving at least 100
1:11.8	licenses to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea. The reasoning to make Britain more energy
1:16.9	independent with local supplies of gas and oil. The government also claimed that extracting more
1:22.0	fossil fuels here would reduce carbon emissions. I asked Angela Knight the former chief executive
1:27.5	of Energy UK how exactly that would work and what this controversial decision meant for the UK's
1:32.8	aim of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We and the world needs to reduce its carbon
1:39.6	emissions but the reality is that what is required is a proper well known and well-costored strategic
1:49.0	plan. People pick up bits and pieces of the argument and then they focus on that without looking
1:55.9	at the picture. The picture includes, apart from better insulating our own homes, working out
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