Campaigners are calling on the chancellor to cut the government’s £24bn spending plans for “fairytale” carbon capture technologies in favour of funding green schemes that can reliably cut emissions and lower energy bills.

The environmentalist Chris Packham is leading an 11th-hour appeal for the Treasury to use this week’s budget to scale back the government’s “exorbitantly expensive” support for carbon capture, which is now more than the planned spending for the US, the EU, Norway and Japan combined.

He said it was a “national embarrassment” that the government had earmarked £24bn to support a series of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects developed by big oil companies, including BP and the Norwegian state oil company Equinor, and urged ministers to “put things right”.

Environmentalist Chris Packham said the technology provided ‘ludicrously uncertain results’. Photograph: Jordan Pettitt/PA

“CCS is a tech fairytale,” the naturalist and broadcaster said.…