Gases in the news

September 2021 has brought two crises to the UK. The price of natural gas has rocketed and, as a knock-on effect, the country's main supplier of carbon dioxide has stopped production. Both are the cause of anguish in parliament, in the papers and on TV: energy companies are going bankrupt, the government will eventually have to raise energy price caps, and the taxpayer is bailing out an American fertilizer company so we don't find ourselves short of fizzy drinks. Me? I have a different take on it all.

In all the discussion over the last week or two I have heard no-one ask why, faced with increasing natural gas prices, CF Industries decided to stop producing CO2 rather than just charging more for it. And have they stopped producing fertilizers (CO2 being a profitable by-product)? One or two voices have suggested that it might be good if we were less reliant on gas - mostly imported  - while mostly it's 'Our heating bils are going to go up' or 'Two more energy companies have collapsed'. And I have heard no-one ask why companies are manufacturing CO2 when the world is supposed to be trying to reduce CO2 emissions. Rarely have I felt so out-of-kilter with what seems to be the general line of thought.

For many years I have believed that our dependence on fossil fuels will be cured not by persuasion, not because of protests, not by legislation, but by shortages and rising costs. Sustainable energy - wind and solar power - having been kick-started by subsidies and grants are becoming cheaper every year while gas and oil prices' like most things, get more expensive. This price factor, as much as legislation or right-thinking, has seen sustainables supply more and more of our electricity. But the government is still giving people grants for new gas boilers and the clean-energy subsidies come from electricity rather than gas tariffs. There is little incentive for home owners to switch away from gas (or oil in many rural areas). I see this rise in the gas price as a GOOD THING. Instead of forcing energy companies to the wall by price caps, rising prices should be passed on to end users. Use the benefits system to protect the poorest avoid having to choose between heating and eating. Balance the tariffs and subsidy structures to penalise fossil fuels and benefit sustainables. Rising gas prices and cheaper green electricity will give ever-increasing incentives to insulate and switch to heat pumps.

When the government said petrol cars would be banned from 2040 there was widespread disbelief. How could this be done so soon? Then a few people started buying electric cars. Increasing production meant the price started to fall. When they brought the end-date for petrol cars to 2030 - just nine years away - we didn't shout 'What?' we said 'Fair enough'. The same thing could happen with home heating. A few people install heat pumps today but the general feeling is that they're unaffordable. The sale of gas boilers is set to end in 2035, but long before then, as more heat pumps are installed the prices will fall while gas prices will not, and heat pumps could follow electric cars to accelerating rates of adoption.

The CO2 shortage has highlighted what seems to me to be a totally crazy topsy-turvy situation where we are pleading with industry to reduce CO2 emissions while at the same time subsidising industry to produce CO2. Who knew the gas was so widely used in the food industry? Accelerating growth in greenhouses, slaughtering animals, preserving packaged food, carbonating drinks. The next tomato I eat will be that little bit less appetising knowing CO2 was released in the atmosphere from the greenhouse it grew in, the dry-ice it was transported in, and the pack it was wrapped in at the supermarket.

Engineers are trying to suck CO2 out of power station exhausts, even out of the air, to sequester it for ever in exhausted oil wells under the sea. We breath the stuff out 24/7. We're trying to get rid of it and yet companies are making and selling it. And if they stop, it's a crisis! We found alternatives to CFCs for refrigeration. Surely we can kill chickens and grow and package food (and manufacture fertilizer) without releasing untold quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Where it is essential, use the stuff we scrub out of exhausts. To do my bit to save the planet? Well, I'm not giving up tomatoes but I will never buy another bottle of sparkling water.