'Pipe will cross the River Dee and twenty-six watercourses'

MS for North Wales

Readers may have heard of the ambiguously named HyNet project and their plans to capture carbon dioxide from industry in the North West of England and to store it in depleted gas reservoirs off the North Wales coast.

On paper, capturing carbon dioxide and storing it before it can pollute the planet’s atmosphere might sound like an appealing idea. But there are a whole host of issues with it in practice.

First and foremost, fossil fuel companies have been trying to make carbon capture and storage work for years, with very little success. To date, almost every scheme worldwide has failed to capture the amount of carbon promised. Scientists and geologists have raised concerns about leakage and acidification of the sea.

In Satartia, Mississippi, a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured and leaked, leading to 45 hospitalisation and the immobilisation of emergency vehicles.

Researchers for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis have stated that stored carbon dioxide will need to be monitored for centuries to ensure it does not leak into the atmosphere.

Despite this, ENI, who run the depleted gas fields off the North Wales coast to be used to store the carbon dioxide, have said that they will only monitor their carbon dioxide reservoirs for 20 years. Just last year, ENI themselves were responsible for an 80,000 litre oil spill of the North Wales coast.

HyNet’s plans will see approximately 31km of underground pipe being laid across Flintshire to transport the gas under our communities.

The pipe will cross the River Dee and twenty-six watercourses.

The installation of the pipe will cause significant disruption to highways, businesses, farmers, residents, and council resources. Wales has no National Underground Asset Register, which brings into question the ability of such large-scale pipeline installation succeeding without impacting significantly on existing infrastructure, biodiversity, and vital local ecosystems.

The previous UK Government set aside £20bn of public money to be spent on carbon capture and storage schemes, tens of millions of which is due to subsidise HyNet.

This is a staggering amount of public money to spend on an industry with a track record of abject failure.

Wales is uniquely positioned to benefit from the transition to greener, renewable energy. Instead of spending billions of pounds on failed carbon capture and storage technology, that money could be invested in true renewables such as wind, solar, and tidal; into upgrading the National Grid; or into a mass home insulation programme. All of these choices would help to lower energy bills, bring about a green energy transition, and tackle the climate crisis.