 If we're to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that dissolves in our oceans, we must urgently stop burning the fossil fuels that release the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the first place. But some industries, steel for example, are very hard although not impossible to decarbonise. So when we've reduced the emissions from those industries as far as we can, there might be one more trick up our sleeve. You might have heard of it. It's called Carbon Capture. In Leeds, a company called Sea Capture has developed innovative next generation technology to capture carbon dioxide gas. In the future, the captured carbon dioxide could be sent for storage in geological reserves. Rose McCarthy is one of their senior scientists. Carbon dioxide is being emitted at around 40 billion tonnes every year and roughly half of this comes from electricity generation and industry. We need to do something to reduce the amount of CO2 that's going into the atmosphere. Sea Capture specialises in designing and implementing carbon capture processes. Our technology is based on fundamentally different chemistry to the traditional solvents that are out there. It uses less hazardous chemicals as a start but also requires a lot less energy to implement than traditional technologies. Once we've caught the CO2, it's going to be taken away and there's a lot of work going on to understand what we can do with it. The overwhelming majority is going to have to be taken to storage sites. Places like the bottom of the North Sea where we've been digging oil and gas for the last 50 or so years, we can use those old oil wells to actually store the CO2 on a long term so it doesn't end up in the atmosphere and it doesn't add to problems with ocean acidification. Carbon emissions in the form of CO2 are created in a wide range of industries. Without carbon capture even renewable industries will have a carbon footprint because it still takes cement and steel to build a wind farm for example and producing that cement and steel will require carbon capture. So we really need to get everyone on board with carbon capture. It's going to increase the cost of producing energy because it's quite novel and new. At the moment it's quite expensive but it is vital that we do it in order to carry on living the way we are. We're in the process of working towards our first commercial unit. That will be the first large scale carbon capture plant where we actually demonstrate it on a real industrial scale. So the pilot plant you can see behind us, this is what we're using to prove the technology and we will use the data that we're collecting here to design that big scale big plant over the course of the next couple of years. It's a really really complicated looking piece of machinery but it's actually very very simple. So we have the absorber and this is where we take our solvent, that's the magic liquid mixture of chemicals and we bring that into contact with the flue gas and the carbon dioxide and only the carbon dioxide is absorbed into the liquid. The rest of the flue gas that can then be released to the atmosphere. We bring the liquid round to the other side of the process and we heat it up and that reverses the chemical reaction it releases the CO2 and we can then collect that and pressurize it and take it away for storage or to use it for some other purpose. The liquid meanwhile comes back around at the beginning, starts the process again and closes the cycle. The scale of carbon capture is an enormous part of the challenge. So the pilot plant is a tiddly baby version. This will capture maybe one or two tons of CO2 every single day. If you're thinking of a factory, you could be getting into thousands of tons of CO2 emitted every day and a big power station could easily be 50, 60, 70 thousand tons of CO2 every single day which we need to capture, collect, take away for storage. What skills and qualifications do you need to get into the field of carbon capture? If you wanted to go into chemistry, chemical engineering or other engineering you'd be doing science subjects and maths and then you'd go on to university to study either engineering or a science degree. That is the typical route that people take to get into this kind of work but there are an increasing number of apprenticeships which means that you can work on a job and also get a university degree whilst you're doing that. I'd say the main skill you need is a problem solving mindset. So that's what we're doing here, we're solving a problem and so you need to be able to look at an issue and figure out how to fix it basically. I'd also say that being curious about the world around you is something that's really important because you can always ask questions and then you might come up with the solution to one of the biggest problems that the world's facing like we are. I think many people will find it difficult to believe that we can very safely store all this carbon dioxide on the floor of the ocean, below the ocean and there's no chance of it leaking out or some kind of environmental catastrophe. So how do we know that this technology is safe and effective? There's been studies going on for the past 20, 25 years down in Norway for example where they're injecting millions of tonnes of CO2 per year into storage sites and it's proven to be safe and effective and also when you inject CO2 into some storage sites it can actually react with minerals that's in the storage sites to form solid carbonates so it's effectively locked up in those storage sites. When can we expect that this technology will come online so we can really begin to start storing large volumes of CO2 beneath the ocean? It already has, so there are a couple of projects over in North America for example there's a site called Down You Dam it's a coal fire power station in Canada they've been capturing about a million tonnes of CO2 each year demonstrating testing the technology at scale here in the UK and we're putting together what we call the clusters so the government has identified a number of relatively discrete geographical areas which contribute a large amount of our industrial emissions and the idea is there will be a central pipeline connected and then you as a CO2 emitter you can do capturing whatever way is appropriate for your business as long as you meet the spec of the pipeline you can plug into that and they will take the CO2 away to a storage site and the idea is the first of those will come on stream in 2027 so we really are actually in a tight spot to see the momentum building we're building towards being deployed at the scale we need to see. Is it kind of a magic bully because it seems too good to be true almost is it the case that we can just continue with current emissions levels but then essentially capture all the CO2 and bury it? Carbon capture is not the only part of the puzzle it needs to be backed up by appropriately rigorous regulations regime that's suitably enforced but we will find as well actually that it doesn't make sense to do carbon capture in the long term so what it really is, it's a transitional technology it buys us the time and the breathing space we need to make the more fundamental profound shift and more sustainable economic footing there are new technologies, new techniques for these various processes coming through and it will just be cheaper to do the new way than the old way where carbon capture bolted on the side so I fully expect in 100 years time or so there'll be a few legacy carbon capture projects but for the most part we'll have actually shifted away from carbon based technologies to something more sustainable Well Rosendoug, thank you very much Thank you