L2 Concerns Detail Editor
Concern #492 | Whole-Life Cost and Abatement Effectiveness Uncertain
Title
Whole-Life Cost and Abatement Effectiveness Uncertain
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Description
The project’s real effectiveness depends on capture rates, uptime, energy penalty, compression/transport losses, storage availability, and long-duration operating costs. If these are overstated or under-specified, the true £/tCO? abated and overall benefit may be materially worse than implied.
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Origin
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Desired Outcome
A whole-life performance and cost model that is transparent, audited, and sensitivity-tested, with clear ranges for capture performance and £/tCO? under best/expected/worst cases.
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What Could Go Wrong
Headline CO? reduction claims are achieved only on paper; actual performance falls short, costs rise, and the scheme becomes dependent on ongoing subsidy or “special pleading” to continue.
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Current Situation
Public materials often summarise benefits without fully exposing the modelling assumptions needed for independent validation (availability, degradation, energy source, boundary conditions, measurement methodology).
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Strategy Narrative (JSON)
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Proposed Strategy
1. Require publication of the whole-life abatement model and key assumptions (including measurement and verification approach). 2. Demand sensitivity analysis (capture rate, uptime, power price, maintenance, schedule delay, carbon price). 3. Define an operational performance reporting regime (KPIs, audit cadence, public reporting). 4. Compare against alternative abatement options on the same metric basis.
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Action Strategy (JSON List)
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Cause
Complex whole-life systems are being simplified for communications, while uncertainty is not presented in decision-grade form.
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Event
The project is justified on optimistic performance/cost assumptions that do not hold in delivery and operations.
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Consequence
Lower-than-expected CO? benefit at higher cost, reputational damage, and opportunity cost versus better-value decarbonisation investments.
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Notes
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