Exxon Mobil wants to run a pipeline from Fawley across part of the Waterside and New Forest or through one of two routes across the Isle of Wight to store CO2 under the sea. It is running a consultation (deadline 30 Sept) at Solent CO2 Pipeline Project. For many reasons we believe this is a very bad idea but you cannot complete the online consultation document without choosing between the routes! We have therefore submitted our response by email to info@solentco2pipeline.co.uk as below. If you agree with us you may like to send your own response and/or sign the petition against the proposal started by residents of the Isle of Wight at: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-solent-co2-pipeline
Response by Transition Southampton to Exxon Mobil’s proposal for a Solent CO2 pipeline
Summary
1. All 3 proposed routes result in significant and unacceptable environmental harms. Insufficient information is given to enable the public to have an informed opinion on which is ‘least worst.’
2. Carbon capture and storage is a false solution to the problem of decarbonisation:
- Real world capture efficiency in existing plants is only 60-70% so a third of CO2 escapes
- Emissions arising from its construction and operation will not be recouped before 2050 so making net zero less achievable
- Carbon capture uses energy which would be better used directly for services
Detailed response
All of the proposed pipeline routes result in significant environmental harms and impact the New Forest National Park and one or more Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Both of the Isle of Wight routes affect heritage coastline, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the South Wight Maritime Special Area of Conservation and the Solent and Dorset Coast Special Protection Area. All three corridors, according to the consultation document, include ‘areas of habitat which would be technically very difficult to restore, recreate or replace. These include many areas of ancient woodland, which we will avoid by routing or other engineering solutions.’ However no indication is given as to what these ‘other engineering solutions’ might be and how much impact they will have on the local environment if the area cannot be avoided by alternative routing.
All corridors require some trench-less working and in all cases although the land pipeline is underground the valves (40mx40m enclosures) and pigging stations (90mx90m) will be highly visible. The exact number, size and location of these clearly cannot yet be known, but it would have been helpful to have at least indicated a rough idea of numbers – whether tens, hundreds or more – as this will affect the visual impact on the environment.
The consultation presents insufficient information to assist the public in identifying which of these routes (if any) is the least worst option. In addition to the trade-offs between the environmental and other impact on the various heritage and scientifically important sites, and the various affected communities, there will be other trade-offs between pipeline length and the additional cost and time of trenchless works. However no indication has been given as to the relative impact of trench-less working on the cost and timescale required for each of the individual corridors. Presumably the eventual decision will be made on these grounds, perhaps also including an estimate of which of the affected communities is least likely to mount a strong resistance to the proposals.
We believe that none of the proposed corridors is acceptable, and that on a UK-wide basis if CO2 storage is required it would be better to site facilities in places where there are fewer sensitive areas impacted. We note that Exxon already has licences for sites in the North Sea and has only belatedly sought a licence for storage in the Solent.
Furthermore, we believe that the entire proposal is a false solution to the problem of decarbonisation. Whichever corridor is chosen the timescale required means the project is unlikely to play a significant role in decarbonising anything. It is likely to be very expensive and the money (especially if it is to come from taxpayers) would be better spent on finding other ways to decarbonise or reduce the use of fossil fuels in these industrial applications.The carbon emissions arising from the construction (materials, fuel and soil disturbance) will be substantial and are better avoided as CO2 captured from subsequent processing may not mitigate these in time.
The claimed environmental benefit of the project is to capture CO2 from processing at Fawley, but we have not seen any assessment of the net benefits taking into account the release of CO2 during building, the extra emissions arising from additional energy requirements for the CO2 capture process itself and the likely percentage of CO2 eventually captured.
The construction phase will lead to significant emissions, including from fuels for transport and machinery, manufacture of components (including cement – which will not be produced with carbon capture and storage!) and CO2 releases from soil disturbance during trench digging. We would like to see an analysis of how long it will be before the ‘carbon debt’ arising from construction is recouped through CO2 capture because if this is significant then the project will make things worse during the key years up to 2050.
Rather than trying to ‘green’ cement manufacture by attempting to capture the emissions, resources should be put into production techniques which reduce emissions at source (see, for example https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2024/08/23/ultra-low-carbon-cement-factory-production-to-start-this-autumn/) or alternative building techniques and materials that reduce the demand for the material. As for the production of ‘transport fuels’ at Fawley, again resources would be better spent developing alternatives to anything derived from fossil fuels. Hydrogen is not mentioned among Fawley’s activities, but it is likely that a key purpose of this pipeline is to facilitate the production of ‘blue’ hydrogen at Fawley, which requires CCS. This form of hydrogen is in reality no ‘greener’ than grey hydrogen because it requires additional energy for the carbon capture and real world efficiency in existing plants is 60- 70%, meaning at least 30% of emissions will reach the atmosphere. See our comments on hydrogen http://transitionsouthampton.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Mythbusting-hydrogen.pdf The same is true of processing transport fuel with carbon capture. It will require increased fossil fuel production for the capture process itself (with attendant increase in emissions from flaring/fugitive methane at the oil/gas extraction sites) which will offset any carbon captured at Fawley.
We believe that this whole proposal is a smokescreen for ‘business as usual’ under the guise of ‘decarbonisation’ and should be abandoned as soon as possible. Just because the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says carbon capture and storage is required doesn’t validate this environmentally damaging proposal. CCS also demands very high capture efficiency above 90% which for technical reasons is not achievable on an industrial scale. Policy-makers have been touting CCS for decades and it is still making a trivial contribution to decarbonisation. The IPCC Panel on Climate Change has said that carbon capture might be necessary to reduce the emissions of certain “hard to abate” sectors but noted that in the best-case scenario, with carbon capture technology working flawlessly and deployed at large scale, it could only account for a little over 2 percent of global carbon emissions reductions by 2030. (A report for Drilled https://drilled.media/news/ccs suggests that privately fossil fuel companies are a lot less confident in the capability of CCS than they are claiming publicly.) We note that the CCC has also recommended that aviation expansion be halted. Unlike wasting money on carbon capture and storage, this would at least genuinely reduce the UK’s future emissions
Transition Southampton
2nd September 2024
[This document will also go to the September meeting of Southampton Climate Action Network Steering Group, of which Transition Southampton is a member), following which it will be published and distributed to partners.]