The prime minister's ambitions are reasonable, but bring with them a problem. Technology can only answer climate change if it works and is affordable. As yet, neither criterion is met. Nuclear power, if it returns to Britain on any scale, will take decades to replace carbon-based electricity, while carbon capture and storage (CCS) is still at an experimental stage. The idea of stripping pollution from fossil fuels is seductive - a quick fix to an overwhelming crisis. The danger is that policymakers have now talked so much about it, they believe it is already happening. They do not realise how much work must still be done, and how much money spent, before it will be possible. Imposing CCS on the world's power-generating system would be incredibly costly - although for countries that develop it there could also be big profits.
Full article
