Carbon capture and storage continues to fail for the climate but keeps fossil fuels and profits flowing. Renewables are taking over the US power system despite Trump.

Chevron’s Gorgon CCS project fails to deliver

There’s a widely held view among many highly respected climate scientists and energy experts that modelling consistently shows that even if global greenhouse gas emissions were to be reduced dramatically and rapidly, we’ll still be unable to keep global warming below 1.5oC and even 2oC without reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing the amount that is captured from the air and then permanently stored away somewhere.

There are several ways of achieving carbon removal but I’m going to crudely boil it down to three:

Helping the plant world to increase the amount of CO2 that it naturally absorbs from the atmosphere to fuel photosynthesis – often referred to as a nature-based solution. This can be achieved by halting the destruction of forests, grasslands, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, etc., and restoring many of those that have been destroyed or degraded.

Using modern technologies to suck CO2 from the atmosphere and then permanently sequester it somewhere, for instance deep underground or in surface rocks or the oceans. This is referred to as Direct Air Capture (DAC).

Capturing the CO2 that is produced at various industrial sites (e.g., coal-fired power stations – generating the myth of “clean coal”, natural gas processing facilities and cement works) before it actually enters the atmosphere. Although the term carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be used generically to refer to all three of these processes, it seems that it is most commonly used with specific reference to this third approach, which I focus on below.

(Just to be clear, I’m ignoring the use of CO2 that is captured from extracted oil and gas and injected back into the ground to increase the delivery of oil from underground. Globally, over 80 per cent of the CO2 captured and buried underground has been used for enhanced oil recovery – i.e., to increase oil extraction and the production of greenhouse gases. Somewhat unlikely to restrict global warming, I’d say.)

CCS has been discussed since the 1970s and has long been a favourite of the fossil fuel industry who keep telling everyone that once........

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