But, he added: “It does increase the cost of producing fossil fuels, so it’s not an incentive to continue production anyway.”
Asked how this obligation could be facilitated at a time of high energy prices — which would erode profits from fossil fuels or be passed on to consumers — the authors said costs would start low because only a small fraction of emissions would need to be captured initially, and will be distributed among all users.
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“It makes sense that producers and consumers should pay rather than taxpayers, and that puts the drive to reduce costs in the right place,” said Dr Hugh Helferty, who previously worked for ExxonMobil in North America.
He also said the industry had the capacity to provide carbon storage but needed regulation to do so.
Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University said ending fossil fuel use would be difficult, warning that “many responses to current very high fossil fuel prices have been to increase supply rather than reduce demand.
“So we must stop fossil fuels from causing global warming before the world stops using them.”
Gas prices have soared from less than 3p per kilowatt-hour (kWh) three years ago to more than 10p now, while the cost of extracting and delivering gas has not changed, he said.
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Capturing carbon dioxide from the gas with today’s technology and storing it under the North Sea costs about 4p per kilowatt-hour, he said.
“We need to start a conversation about how we can spend the huge sums of money that are currently just pouring into what we call fossil fuel rents to address the climate problem,” he said.
Fulfilling this obligation could reduce and ultimately prevent further global warming from fossil fuels at an affordable cost relative to conventional solutions, the document said.
The study estimates that the cost of reducing emissions to net zero by 2050, including the use of carbon recovery obligations and clean energy spending, could be around $10tn (£8.2tn) a year – similar to or Fewer policies to set a global price on carbon pollution.
But the world spent $13tn (£10.7tn) on energy last year, most of it on fossil fuels and a lot of it on “rents” or profits, taxes and royalties.
With the global economy expected to double by 2050, net-zero costs would account for less than half of the global GDP that cost energy last year, the study authors said.
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Emily Beament is PA Environmental Correspondent.
