Last week's poll: The UK's approach to carbon capture and storage

We received 348 responses to our poll last week on CCS, a technology which has fallen from the spotlight somewhat over the past year. The largest response was from people who believed the government should reinstate support for projects to demonstrate the technology; with 42 per cent of voters. However, this group was outnumbered by readers voting for the two options opposing full government support for the technology. A total of 44 per cent voted for these options, with 23 per cent saying that development of CCS should be purely commercial, and 21 per cent saying that the government should fund only fundamental research related to the technology. An unusually large proportion, 14 per cent, declined to pick an option.

These split opinions were also reflected in the comments section, where several people's remarks asked whether energy storage, rather than carbon storage, might be a better target for government support. "Let’s focus on implementing dispatchable renewables, using thermal storage. Thermal storage, using molten salt, is a technology already proven on a large scale, and is a fraction of the cost of battery storage. All it needs is funding!" said Rob Brunswick. "The issue of energy storage is interesting in its own right and for thermal based sources of