Bill Gates is leaving Britain behind on carbon capture – can we afford not to get involved?

At the recent Cop28 climate crisis talks in Dubai, one of the star attractions was Bill Gates. The Microsoft co-founder, now a committed philanthropist, health and green campaigner, drew crowds whenever he went. These were not celebrity-gazers but Cop28 attendees, many of them experts, impressed by the extent of Gates’s knowledge and zeal, and wanting to hear what he had to say.

Gates has exhibited the same degree of thirst for climate solutions as he did in developing commonly used software all those years ago. One packed session found Gates in conversation with Microsoft president Brad Smith and the dean of Stanford’s Sustainability School, Arun Majumdar.

The topic was the importance of carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, using technologies such as carbon capture. It’s estimated they could contribute to 10 per cent of the world’s carbon reduction targets and so are not to be sniffed at.

Within climate change circles, there are some who regard carbon capture as gimmicky and expensive. Not Gates.

He emphasised that while CDR is just one piece of the carbon reduction puzzle, it’s an essential one that can be implemented now, not two or three decades down the line. “We need to be clear that it’s CDR and carbon reductions, not or.”

Addressing concerns about cost, Smith drew a comparison to Microsoft. Thirty years ago, RAM and memory storage prices posed significant barriers but technological advancements drove down those costs significantly.

Gates is putting his money where his mouth is, investing heavily in CDR. He’s backing Graphyte in southern Arkansas, potentially the world’s largest carbon removal facility.

The plant, which started operating this week, uses carbon-rich sawdust and wood waste from nearby sawmills to create biomass ‘bricks’ that can be stored underground for centuries. By the end of this year, Graphyte intends to assemble and store enough of these shoebox-sized bio-bricks to remove 15,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In 2025, it aims to have removed a further 50,000 tonnes.

At that point, Graphyte will become the world’s biggest carbon removal company. It intends to come in at a price of under $100 a tonne.

As well as carbon capture and storage (CCS), Gates is also pumping cash into other CDR technologies. These include direct air capture (DAC); biochar, which creates a charcoal-like substance that stores carbon in the soil; and electrochemical capture, via a Gates-backed start-up called Verdox.

In all, Gates has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into carbon removal.

Also this week, the European Commission (EC) released its plan to reduce the bloc’s net emissions. Central to its objective is the capture of 450m tonnes of CO2 every year, by 2050. To hit that figure, the EC is aiming to rely upon a portfolio of CDR technologies, including CCS and DAC.

Meanwhile, the planet continues to get hotter. January 2024 was officially the warmest January on record globally. This was the eighth month in a row that was the warmest on record.

But Gates, the experts at the EC… are they all wrong? You would think so, judging from what is happening in Britain, where Labour is cutting its £28bn annual green investment pledge. Sir Keir Starmer’s party is not alone. The Tory government is also pulling back on its climate commitments, introducing new licences for North Sea fossil fuel exploration and delaying the banning of new petrol car sales.

Britain may be missing a trick in another sense. Gates, first and foremost, is an entrepreneur. He is a business genius who spots opportunities and takes risks. He’s done it brilliantly for decades.

In promoting CDR, he is undoubtedly doing so from the best of intentions. But there is also a secondary objective: there is a huge amount of money to be had.

The EU alone will need to capture up to 450m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year by 2050. The cost of removal and storage by CCS or DAC is likely to fall in the range of Graphyte’s $100 to $300 a tonne. Multiply that by 450m and you get an enormous figure. That’s not a one-off, don’t forget, but every year… and it’s not just for the EU, but the rest of the world.

Suddenly, Gates’s excitement makes even more sense. If that’s what it costs, so be it. The world is saved and he bags another fortune.

He gets it, the EC gets it, as does the IMF and others. Richard Nimmons, co-founder of Carbon Capture Scotland, a leader in pioneering UK carbon removal projects, says: “The science is clear. We will need to collectively remove hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon from the air in a very short time frame. Through carbon capture, the UK and Scotland have the opportunity to be a global leader through technologies that align with climate science and are endorsed by the European Commission, the IMF, the G20 and many other institutions.”

Here, our political leaders are too busy taking lumps out of each other and preparing for what will be an unedifying election battle to see the bigger picture.

Rather than investing in green technology and displaying vision, our politicians are mired in point-scoring and short-termism. The door is still open: Britain could get in there, back the science, stay resolved and also reap the financial benefit. If nothing else, Labour’s timing seems perverse, carrying echoes of Gordon Brown’s calamitous decision to under-sell more than half of UK gold reserves.

Instead, there is zilch. In the years ahead, the UK will be a buyer when we could have been a seller enjoying the massive rewards of having shown some foresight and courage. Our economic outlook could have been transformed. The rest of the world is powering ahead, we’re floundering. It’s an all too familiar, totally depressing pattern.