Why some are worried about his role

LONDON – Carbon capture technology is often seen as a source of hope in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, and features prominently in countries’ climate plans as well as in some net zero strategies. of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

The subject is divisive, however, with climate researchers, activists and environmental groups arguing that carbon capture technology is not a solution.

The world is facing a climate emergency, and policymakers and business leaders are under increasing pressure to deliver on promises made under the historic Paris Agreement. The agreement, ratified by nearly 200 countries in 2015, is considered essential to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Carbon capture, use and storage – often abbreviated as carbon capture technology or CCUS – refers to a suite of technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide from high-emitting activities such as the production of carbon dioxide. electricity or industrial plants, which use fossil fuels or biomass as fuel.

The captured carbon dioxide, which can also be captured directly from the atmosphere, is then compressed and transported by pipeline, ship, rail or truck for use in a range of applications or permanently stored underground.

Proponents of these technologies believe they can play an important and diverse role in achieving global energy and climate goals.

Carroll Muffett, executive director of the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), is not one of them. “There are a number of reasons why carbon capture is a bogus climate solution. The first and most fundamental of those reasons is that it is not necessary,” he told CNBC by phone.

“If you look at the history of carbon capture and storage, what you see is almost two decades of a solution in search of a cure.”

Some CCS and CCUS facilities have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s, when natural gas processing plants in South Texas began capturing carbon dioxide and supplying emissions to local oil producers for enhanced gas recovery operations. oil. The first was created in 1972.

It was not until several years later that carbon capture technology would be explored for climate change mitigation. Today, 21 large-scale CCUS commercial projects are underway around the world and plans for at least 40 new commercial facilities have been announced in recent years.

A report released by CIEL earlier this month concluded that these technologies are not only “inefficient, uneconomical and dangerous”, but also prolong dependence on the fossil fuel industry and hijack fuel. attention of an essential pivot towards renewable alternatives.

“The unproven scalability of CCS technologies and their prohibitive costs mean that they cannot play any significant role in rapidly reducing the global emissions needed to limit warming to 1.5 ° C,” said CIEL, said. referring to a key objective of the Paris Agreement to limit a rise in the earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“Despite the technology’s existence for decades and billions of dollars in government grants to date, large-scale CCS deployment still faces insurmountable challenges of feasibility, efficiency and expense,” added the sky.

Earlier this year, activists from Global Witness and Friends of the Earth Scotland commissioned climatologists at the Tyndall Center in Manchester, UK, to assess the role fossil fuel CCS plays in the energy system.

The peer-reviewed study found that carbon capture and storage technologies still face many obstacles to short-term deployment and, even if these could be overcome, the technology “would only begin to deliver. too late”. The researchers also found that it was unable to operate with zero emissions, was a distraction from the rapid growth of renewables “and has a history of over-promise and under-delivery.”

In short, the study said that reliance on CCS is “not a solution” to tackling the global climate challenge.

However, not everyone is convinced by these arguments. The International Energy Agency, an influential intergovernmental group, says that even though carbon capture technology has yet to deliver on its promises, it can still offer “significant strategic value” in the transition to net zero .

“CCUS is a really important part of this technology portfolio that we are considering,” Samantha McCulloch, CCUS technology manager at the IEA, told CNBC via a video call.

The IEA has identified four key strategic roles for technologies: tackling emissions from energy infrastructure, tackling hard-to-reduce emissions from heavy industry (cement, steel and chemicals, among others), hydrogen-based natural gas and carbon removal.

For these four reasons, McCulloch said it would be fair to describe CCUS as a climate solution.

Currently, CCUS facilities around the world have the capacity to capture over 40 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. The IEA believes that plans to build many more facilities could double the level of CO2 captured globally.

“It helps, but not on a scale that we think will be necessary in terms of a net zero track,” McCulloch said. “The encouraging news, I think, is that there has been a very significant momentum behind the technology in recent years and this really reflects that without CCUS it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to achieve net zero goals.”

Meanwhile, the American Petroleum Institute, America’s largest oil and gas trade lobby group, believes the future looks bright for carbon capture and use.

The group noted in a blog post on July 2 that the CCUS was a rare example of something that is enjoyed by “just about everyone” in Washington – Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

“Frankly, tackling climate change is not the same as trying to bring the fossil fuel industry to its knees,” Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute, told CNBC by phone. on Climate Change from the London School of Economics.

“If the fossil fuel companies can help us achieve net zero, why wouldn’t we want them to? I think too many environmental groups have confused their aversion to oil and gas companies with the challenge of tackling climate change.

When asked why carbon capture and storage programs should be included in countries’ climate plans given the criticism they receive, Ward replied, “Because if we are to achieve net zero by here 2050, we have to throw all tech at this problem… The people who argue that you can start excluding tech because you don’t like it, these are the ones I think didn’t understand the magnitude of the challenge that we are facing. “

SKY’s Muffett dismissed this suggestion, saying proponents of carbon capture technologies increasingly rely on this kind of “all of the above” argument. “The answer is surprisingly simple: we have a decade to halve global emissions and we only have a few decades to eliminate them completely,” Muffett said.

“If, on a reasonable review of CCS, it costs huge sums of money but does not actually significantly reduce emissions, and further strengthens the fossil fuel infrastructure, the question is: how does it help? it to the solution as opposed to diverting time, energy and resources from solutions that will work? “