A YEAR after the Energy Bill supposedly set the UK's energy policy for the next 50 years, the government has gone back to the drawing board.

Hardly anyone believes the existing reliance on energy efficiency, imported gas and renewable energy is enough to guarantee secure supplies of energy or meet targets for carbon cuts. The signs of preparations for a post-election nuclear revival have already caused a stir.

But another formerly unloved energy technology has gained a new lease of life: the idea of burying carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations back into oil and gas wells. The idea is to rid the world of environmentally-unfriendly gases, as well as helping pump out the last vestiges of fuel.

Carbon capture and storage, as it is known, a central plank of the much maligned US climate change strategy, has made a comeback in the UK.

Gordon Brown mentioned the technology in the Budget and officials at the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury have drawn up a carbon abatement technology strategy, which will look at what financial incentives would be needed to get oil companies on board. The strategy, set to be revealed this week may have to await the election.

On the face of it, the technique is a winner. Gas is pumped back into oil or gas wells across the globe to extract the remaining oil and gas from mature regions. Carbon injection could extend the lives of the UK's declining fields, bolstering the Treasury's revenues.

Oil companies have tended to dismiss the idea, arguing the cost of new pipeline infrastructure connecting coal-fired power stations to gas fields makes it uneconomic.

But Alastair Renney, a carbon capture expert at UK contractor Amec, argues that, initially, carbon capture would not have to work like that.

He argues that the most likely pilot projects would strip the carbon dioxide from natural gas on location at North Sea production platforms, pumping it directly back into the wells to increase oil or gas production. The old gas infrastructure would then pipe hydrogen back to shore, ideally to chemical plants that need hydrogen. Hydrogen can also be used as a fuel.

As it happens, at least two such plants, one at BP's Scottish refinery in Grangemouth, and one in Teesside, are already connected by pipe to North Sea gas fields. Teesside even has underground caverns where hydrogen can be stored.

RICHARD ORANGE

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