A rush of net-zero commitments by governments and companies, alongside plans to slash industrial emissions and obtain new power from hydrogen, mean efforts to lock away more climate-changing emissions underground need to ramp up fast, energy analysts say.
However, an accelerating push to build enough carbon capture and storage (CCS) capacity to meet expected demand — and hold on to global climate goals — faces huge obstacles, not least that most climate polluters still are not charged for the damage they do.
In a few places, from Norway to Canada’s province of Alberta, companies that emit planet-heating gases are taxed, making paying to pump them into long-term storage underground more appealing and feasible, even if prices for the service are still high.
Yet for a broader system to take hold, “you need a market [for CCS] and governments have failed to develop that anywhere in the world,” said Stuart Haszeldine, a carbon capture and storage professor at the University of Edinburgh.
So far, only about 20 commercial CCS projects are operating globally, with plans for another 30, a commentary published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in February says.
Those first 20 plants — many built to curb emissions from fossil fuel production — jointly capture about 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, CCS experts say.
However, to hold planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial times — the more ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement — 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide need to be stored each year using CCS by 2030 and 2.8 billion tonnes annually by 2050, a report last year from the Global CCS Institute said.
Last week, a report from the Coalition for Negative Emissions ratcheted up that estimate, noting that a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere would need to be sucked back out by 2025 to meet the 1.5°C goal and another billion tonnes every year after that.
Yet the CCS projects in development would only be able to remove only about 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2025, it said.
“Worldwide, we’re facing a very deep problem,” Haszeldine said.
EMISSIONS STILL RISING
The need to lock carbon dioxide underground arises from a central problem: Five years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, emissions continue to rise, apart from a brief dip related to COVID-19 last year.
That is happening even as scientists say emissions must drop by 45 percent by 2030 from 2010 levels to hold global warming to 1.5°C.
To slash emissions — and the growing threats they bring, such as more extreme and costly heatwaves, storms and fires — people need to rapidly stop using fossil fuels, scientists say.
However, breaking global reliance on those fuels is proving hugely difficult, even as prices for renewable alternatives from solar to wind plunge, and as countries and companies representing two-thirds of global economic output make net-zero pledges.
The too-slow transition to clean energy means that capturing some carbon emissions and locking them away in old oil and gas wells, salty underground aquifers or porous rock is now unavoidable to help bridge the gap, scientists say.
Storage technology will also be vital for fledgling “negative emissions” efforts to suck out some of the carbon dioxide already in the air, particularly if climate goals are missed, as seems increasingly likely.
The IEA says CCS will be used for capturing emissions from three main sources: fossil fuel power plants as they are phased out; carbon-heavy industries such as steel and cement; and production of an emerging energy source — hydrogen.
Hydrogen could replace transport fuels such as oil, power industrial plants, and heat homes as natural gas boilers are retired under net-zero pledges in countries such as Britain.
However, making “green” hydrogen consumes large amounts of energy. It could eventually come from large-scale solar and wind power, but there will probably not be enough clean electricity for the next 20 years even if capacity is added rapidly, Haszeldine said.
Until then, a big share of hydrogen is likely to be made using fossil fuels, with the resulting emissions captured and stored underground to lower its carbon footprint, he said.
Already, expected demand for CCS from fossil fuel power plants is falling as new deployment of ever-cheaper solar, wind and other renewable energy surges worldwide, analysts say.
“The story has shifted and is less about CCS for power now,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative.
‘TAKE BACK’ PLAN
As governments and companies recognise the vast gap between their plans to use CCS and the storage available — and what that means for achieving their net-zero goals — some are stepping up efforts to expand capacity.
The UK, for instance, as part of its Green Industrial Revolution plan, has allocated ￡1 billion (US$1.4 billion) to a new CCS infrastructure fund and aims to drive creation of new industrial hubs with CCS attached.
The US in turn has agreed to provide key tax credits for CCS technology to attract more investment.
However, financial backing for CCS is still too low, said Richard Black, a net-zero expert at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute, at a London Climate Action Week event.
Despite featuring prominently in many national and corporate net-zero plans, CCS does not yet exist at significant scale, he said.
“It will only become a real thing when governments put a serious amount of money into making it happen,” he said.
Haszeldine thinks one smart way to drive money into CCS would be to require fossil fuel firms to pay to “take back” the emissions that their products create.
They are already experts at pumping carbon dioxide underground, having done it for more than a half century at small scale to extract the last remaining oil and gas from drying wells.
Under a “take back” proposal backed by Haszeldine and colleagues, the companies would be required to neutralize, with underground storage, a growing percentage of their emissions starting from 2025 and rising to 100 percent by 2040 or 2050.
Such a plan would drive investment in renewables as they grow comparatively cheaper — and could even help fossil fuel firms transition to a new business model as carbon sequestration companies, he added.
Christian Mumenthaler, CEO of insurance firm Swiss Re Group, said “massive investments” are needed in CCS, with the nascent industry required to expand almost to the size of the oil and gas industry today.
“This is a huge challenge,” he said during an online event. “It’s like saying we need to go to Mars in 10 years.”
While it will not be cheap, failing to make CCS work would become far costlier, Haszeldine pointed out, as risks from wildfires, heatwaves and other climate threats ramp up.
“We’ll end up spending more and more of our time repairing after giant storms and flooding from sea level rise. We’re going to see increasing crop failures and migration — things impossible for us to manage,” he said.
The price tag for swiftly scaling up CCS “is tiny compared to the alternative,” he added.
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