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Carbon sequestration and the limits of regulation: a UK perspective

Considerable political capital is invested in developed economies in the idea of carbon capture and storage (CCS), with a heavy weight of expectation upon eventual deployment.1 The UK government describes it as ‘key if the UK is to achieve our climate change targets whilst maintaining a vibrant, competitive economy’.2 The purpose behind CCS is to mitigate impacts from burning fossil fuel energy sources by diverting carbon emissions away from atmospheric release. Complex technology applies, but simply put, CCS involves capture (by chemical and other means) of carbon dioxide (CO2) from major point source installations,3 to be compressed and transported, generally via pipelines, to designated sites (principally in depleted oil and gas fields, or saline aquifers), for permanent storage by injection into deep geological formations, below ground or under the seabed.4 Thus is held out the enticing promise of at last a significant technological response to climate change; one which yet remains unproven as a composite process to a large scale. Yet if not as controversial as are certain other proposed geo-engineering solutions,5 CCS may prove a poisoned chalice, insofar as political expectations for it can slow development of alternative energy strategies. By contrast with more developed areas of climate change law, and arguably reflecting the still inchoate existence of the physical process itself, a body of