From David Flint, London, UK
I am glad to have Eric Kvaalen’s support for carbon capture, but his desire to rely on biomass for this is misplaced. The main, though not the only, problem is the vast area of land that would be needed for a capture programme that would significantly reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. Research at Imperial College has shown that carbon capture from biomass can make only a limited contribution to meeting the need (Letters, 8 November).
Sooner or later we will need to use heavy chemical engineering to capture CO2 from the air. Happily we can exploit the falling cost of renewable energy but it will still be expensive.
