Meeting Point

In Thursday's budget, the government committed 20 billion pounds to the development of 'carbon capture' technology. This means that, in certain circumstances, when fossil fuels are burned, a high proportion of the carbon dioxide that is created is separated from the rest of the combustion projects and piped underground. In some cases it is piped into almost empty oil wells to extract oil that would otherwise be unrecoverable. 

The technology is heavily promoted by oil companies, who see it as a way of reducing the damage done by burning fossil fuels, thus allowing them to continue their business unhindered. Given the eye-watering profits made by these companies, I don't understand why they need public money to clean up their mess

In the same budget, the government committed two billion pounds to developing 'green hydrogen' technology - using sustainably-generated electricity to electrolyse water, splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen, then capturing and compressing the hydrogen so that it can be stored, transported and used as a fuel that does not create carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is a stong candidate to replace petrochemicals in those places where batteries may not be practical: ships, aeroplanes, large lorries, buses, maybe some trains. 

The technology is young, expensive and risky, but there is every chance that countries that develop it will create jobs and economic benefits. It makes good sense for a government to develop new technology in these early stages. Despite all the mythology around entrepreneurial capitalism, it is almost always public investment that pushes through the early development of radically new tecnology, taking risks that private investors are not prepared to face

Two billion and twenty billion. Can they really have meant it to be that way round? Perhaps it was a spreadsheet error

We had a wonderful day with our two new family members - the third meeting of the cousins - one of them using buses and trains for the first time. They spent some time lying here, together and separately on the spread sheet, learning about sounds and textures and how to make things move. We did not focus so much on the numbers