Global Warming's Main Villain Is Carbon Dioxide

Tom Heap of Sky investigates Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which includes absorbing CO2 emissions and maybe the price that governments must pay to clean up the environmental effects of fossil fuels.

It's called HyNet, which is a collection of about 40 carbon-intensive sectors brought together as a CCS cluster. 

They include glass and cement, as well as breakfast cereals, crisps, and new green hydrogen production that has been proposed.

Despite being a hub for industry, this region of the North West is also a significant source of pollutants. 

Generally speaking, the idea is to collect CO2 from the various chimneys before it is piped to empty ancient gas wells.

Around 40 carbon-intensive industries make up HyNet

Since we depend on all of these industries to go about our daily lives, this area has the highest concentration of industrial pollutants.

It will consume a lot of energy as well; the CCS plant will need around a third of the energy that was initially generated by burning the garbage. 

Effective CCS would be a large industry, on par with the oil and gas sector itself.

Although CCS has been discussed by polluting corporations for decades, it hasn't yet occurred at scale in part because of its epic size and cost.

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