LONDON • Britain will struggle to meet its goals for emission reductions after it shelved a £1 billion (S$2 billion) scheme to help commercialise carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology last year, lawmakers said yesterday.

In December, nearly 200 nations agreed in Paris to limit greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming. CCS, which captures carbon dioxide and stores it underground to stop it escaping into the atmosphere, has been seen as an important tool to achieve that.

CCS is ready to pilot at power stations on a large scale, but the transportation and storage infrastructure needed requires a large upfront investment.

The government's decision last year to abandon a scheme to commercialise CCS will delay the technology's development in Britain and could make it more difficult for the country to meet its emission-reduction commitments agreed in Paris, the Energy and Climate Change Committee said in a report.

"If we don't invest in the infrastructure needed for carbon capture and storage technology now, it could be much more expensive to meet our climate change targets in the future," Mr Angus MacNeil, chair of the committee, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister David Cameron told Members of Parliament that he believed in CCS, but the economics had not been improving.

REUTERS