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The main tool to halt climate change is costly and has not worked for decades as fossil fuel companies said it would.
Experts say carbon capture and storage — a way of capturing the planet’s heating gas and trapping it underground — is badly needed to cut pollution in sectors where other clean technologies lag behind.
There are cases where carbon capture makes a lot of sense — but we also need to push through all options for avoiding carbon dioxide in the first place, said Georg Kubela, an expert on cleaning up the industry at the environmental nonprofit Germanwatch. “Some applications could be just a fig leaf to keep fossil fuel business models alive.”
What is carbon capture and storage?
Carbon capture and storage is a method of capturing carbon and sequestering it underground. It differs from carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – where carbon is sucked out of the atmosphere – although some of the techniques overlap. The main difference is that CDR lowers the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, cooling the planet, while carbon capture and storage at fossil fuel plants and plants prevents the gas from getting out in the first place.
In the latest review of the scientific research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that both options would be necessary for emissions that are difficult to eliminate. For chemical processes that release carbon dioxide, there are a few alternatives to capturing the carbon dioxide immediately or absorbing it from the air later. Scientists see a big role for CCS in factories that make cement and fertilizer, as well as in plants that burn trash. They’re divided on whether it makes sense to use it to make steel and hydrogen, which contain some greener alternatives.
Most of their skepticism goes to capturing carbon when making electricity, because there are already cheaper alternatives that work better, like wind turbines and solar panels. Theoretically, it could play a role in gas stations as a backup for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing—especially in countries that are still building fossil fuel stations today—but it should grow faster and cheaper. and more effective.
Climate models show the role of some oil and gas outside the rich world, explains Margrethe Kuijper, a former engineer with oil giant Shell who works as an advisor to environmental groups. However, she said, “I agree with people who say we’re likely to get away with renewables in the first place.”
How well does CCS work?
For decades, engineers have been able to capture carbon from concentrated gas streams – by driving it into reservoirs, cleaning it up and using it in industry or storing it underground. Some bioethanol plants, where the gas stream is pure, have reported capturing more than 95% of their carbon emissions.
But when it comes to capturing carbon from the most polluting gas streams, such as those from factories and power plants, time and again CCS projects are over-promised and under-delivered.
“You need to use some kind of chemical to take the carbon dioxide out of everything else,” said Julia Atwood, head of sustainable materials at clean energy research firm BloombergNEF. “I would say this technology has been demonstrated successfully – but it has not yet been fully commercialized on a large scale.”
While a few test facilities have been able to capture more than 90% of the emissions from some dirty gas flows, commercial projects have been plagued with problems. Some of them crash or don’t run all the time. Others are designed to capture only a fraction of the total emissions.
However, experts see carbon capture and storage failures as more of an economic problem than a technical one. They say companies have little incentive to capture the pollution they cause. “This is engineering in place – but we have to start spending money and building things and breaking them down for it to work,” said Chris Patai, lead author of the IPCC’s latest report. “It can be done but it’s not cheap.”
Why is carbon dioxide capture and storage controversial?
Activists have called out energy companies for failing to capture much carbon while simultaneously drilling for oil and lobbying against laws to cut fossil fuel production. They have pushed policymakers to heavier societal shifts — such as lowering energy demand — rather than placing their faith in shaky technologies.
The danger isn’t just that the technology doesn’t work as advertised, said Genevieve Gunter, founder of End Climate Silence, a campaign group that presses journalists to cover climate change more urgently. CCS also gives companies struggling to burn fossil fuels access to policymakers and a “social license to operate,” it said, referring to public acceptance of its business model. They are not using carbon capture as a climate solution. They’re using it to improve the extraction process.”
A big part of this is what fossil fuel companies call enhanced oil recovery — pumping carbon dioxide underground to get more oil out of wells draining. Historically, most captured carbon has been used for this purpose.
Scientists also questioned how serious the industry is about its commitments. After decades of advancing the technology, there are only 30 operating CCS facilities, according to industry data from last year, with 11 under construction and 150 under planning. A study conducted in 2020 found that more than 100 of the 149 projects scheduled to be operational by 2020 have been canceled or indefinitely suspended.
“There was a lot of bad faith,” said Bataille. “A very honest effort, and the lack of funding, came with a lot of greenwashing at the top.”
How could a CCS system work better?
Experts say the momentum for carbon capture is starting to pick up.
In Norway, German giant Heidelberg Materials is building the first underground carbon capture and storage facility. The company claims that an acquisition rate of nearly 100% is possible. However, it only plans to capture half of the emissions from the site.
This was done to build the facility as quickly as possible and to showcase the technology, says Karin Kumstedt-Webb, Head of ESG at Heidelberg Materials. “We designed the project on the basis of the waste heat we have on site, so we wouldn’t get the added dimension of having to add extra power from the power grid.”
“We are planning about a dozen more new projects around the world and there we have even higher acquisition rate ambitions,” she added.
Oil and gas companies have also begun to loosen their grip on the carbon dioxide capture and storage industry. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based organization led by the energy ministers of most rich countries, the new firms focus on specific parts of the problem such as transportation and storage.
Carl Greenfield, a carbon capture expert at the International Energy Agency, said there is now a greater focus on storing carbon dioxide than using it to extract more oil. “The majority of the projects we see now are looking at custom storage.”
To make the technology grow cheaper and work better, analysts say governments need to introduce carbon taxes, make it easier to approve carbon capture and storage projects and help create the infrastructure around them. They are less confident about supporting the technology itself.
“What we need now is an incentive for people who use it,” said Atwood, of BloombergNEF. “There has to be support for green steel and green cement, because that’s really what’s going to drive people who can accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage.”
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