Let’s talk about perceptionware. Perceptionware is technology whose main purpose is to create an impression of action. Whether it will ever work at scale is less important, in some cases entirely beside the point. If it reassures the public and persuades government not to regulate damaging industries, that’s mission accomplished.

Managing perceptions is an expensive business. Real money, especially public money, is spent on fake solutions. Take carbon capture and storage: catching and burying carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, oil and gas fields, and steel and cement plants. For 20 years, it has spectacularly failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, its only clear successes involve enhanced oil recovery: carbon dioxide is used to drive oil out of geological formations that are otherwise difficult to exploit. With astonishing chutzpah, some oil companies have claimed the small amount of carbon that remains trapped in the rocks as a climate benefit. Though it is greatly outweighed by the extra oil extracted, they have, as a result, received billions in government subsidies.

The previous UK government pledged £20bn to “develop” carbon capture and storage: a technology that has been “developing” for 50 years. Astonishingly, Labour, despite cutting everything else, promised in its manifesto to sustain this investment.

Another example is making oil from algae, whose rapid deployment fossil fuel companies trumpeted 15 years ago. Hundreds of millions was spent on advertising this “fuel of the future”. Since then, their research programmes have quietly been shelved. As one former employee of Exxon’s algae research arm, missing what I see as the entire point, complained: “I wish they had given us more research........

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