Report - Carbon Capture Is Never, Ever Going To Work At Scale, And Has Never Been More Than Greenwashing

[hatrack]

For more than 40 years, oil companies have been funding research at prestigious universities into climate change “solutions” that would not require the public to stop using oil and gas. Among their favored fixes is carbon capture and storage. An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled has found that boosters of CCS have ignored evidence of the technology’s limitations, or overstated its potential, and convinced the world it could be effective. They’ve promoted this idea despite the fact that for CCS to work at the scale now envisioned, the world would need to devote almost unimaginable resources. Even if that were done, it might still prove impossible to trap so much carbon dioxide inside the earth. Optimism has reigned, however, because small tests have worked and because slow global response to climate change has left few other options.

Right now, globally, we’re permanently burying less CO2 than a single large power plant can emit in a year. Some experts point to the CO2 that gets pumped into the ground to help extract oil as proof CCS works. But that process, called enhanced oil recovery, isn’t designed to function the same way and isn’t monitored as stringently. Global leaders are betting on carbon capture working now more than ever. The models used in the latest United Nations assessment presume the technology succeeds. IEA representatives and U.N. modelers say their projections reflect what the world has to do to achieve its goals of averting extreme warming.

EDIT

Today, just 12 large-scale geologic reservoirs have attempted to permanently store CO2 pollution — but we would need more than 2,000 reservoirs of that size for CCS to work, each requiring years of study and engineering before it could be used. That means we would need to open a brand new geological waste site somewhere on the planet every four days for the next 25 years. Every site would need constant monitoring for decades to ensure the CO2 doesn’t leak. Right now, U.S. taxpayers are paying oil and gas companies $85 for every metric ton they put underground. At that rate, by 2050, the world could be spending half a trillion dollars — more than China’s military budget, and 10 times more than the U.N.’s humanitarian and development aid budget — each year.

EDIT

Data for the actual CCS capacity derives from the IEA’s CCUS Projects Database. We defined large-scale projects as those with the estimated capacity to store at least 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. The data comprises only projects that were completed and that permanently store CO2, rather than those that utilize CO2 for enhanced recovery of oil and gas or other uses, since those uses can create more carbon than they store or have looser requirements for monitoring. Of the 12 completed CCS injection projects, 11 remain operational and one has been decommissioned. The annual total for carbon stored assumes the projects operated at their stated capacity each year since launch, which few have done. The comparison to the volume of CO2 emitted by a single large power plant is derived from data provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

EDIT

https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/

[NNadir]

1. It has long been clear that carbon sequestration will not work, simply...

...given the required scale, not to mention its energy requirements.

Like the claim that there is really "green hydrogen" on a meaningful scale, it has always been a greenwashing exercise for fossil fuels.

However these truths notwithstanding, the research efforts into carbon capture, as opposed to its storage, is valuable for the purpose of carbon utilization, in effect sequestering it as useful products, in particular materials, the creation of a closed carbon cycle.

The creation of this closed system should not be represented glibly as cheap or easy. It will be none of thise things. The cost in energy related to the use of carbon dioxide as a raw material is prodigious. Nevertheless it remains feasible in my view, feasible being a very different word than "likely."