Can CO2 capture live up to the hype?

World leaders have battled for years at the United Nations’ annual climate talks over whether to “phase out” fossil fuels like coal or simply “phase out” them.

Now another phrase is at the center of this year’s summit in Dubai: should countries agree to end the use of “unabated” fossil fuels?

That peculiar choice of words could allow countries to continue burning coal, natural gas or oil, as long as they capture and bury the resulting carbon dioxide, and prevent the gas from warming the planet.

One major dispute centers on how big a role this technology, known as carbon capture and storage, should play in the fight against global warming. Some oil and gas producers say this should be central to planning for the future. Others, including many activists and world leaders, dismiss carbon capture as too unproven and too risky.

a few recent studies have found that carbon capture can be a valuable tool for reducing emissions from certain activities, such as cement production. But its use will likely be limited: It would be virtually impossible for countries to continue burning fossil fuels at the current rate and capture or offset every last bit of carbon dioxide that goes into the air. The technology is expensive and in many cases there are better alternatives.

Despite billions of dollars in investments, countries and industries have also struggled to get carbon capture projects going so far. Unless that changes quickly, experts say, the technology may play no more than a marginal role in climate efforts.

“Carbon capture and storage could certainly be a pivotal technology,” said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “But the history of carbon capture so far has been largely a disappointment.”

The (limited) role of carbon capture

In September the IEA published a detailed roadmap for what it would take to reduce the world’s energy-related emissions to near zero by mid-century, to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate disruptions.

In that roadmap, carbon capture was responsible for just 8 percent of the world’s total emissions reductions between today and 2050. In contrast, the vast majority of reductions would come from countries moving away from fossil fuels entirely: they would rely more heavily on wind and solar energy. for electricity and swapping gasoline-powered cars for electric cars.

Cost is one reason. In theory, companies could connect a carbon capture device to virtually any factory or power plant that burns fossil fuels today. But in practice it is often cheaper to close a coal-fired power plant and replace it with a combination of wind, solar and batteries, or to replace a gas boiler with an electric heat pump.

Still, there are cases where carbon capture could be the best option. One of these may be cement kilns, which release enormous amounts of carbon dioxide as they convert limestone into cement. Some steel producers conduct research into carbon capture as a way to reduce their emissions. Electric utilities could use gas-fired power plants with carbon capture to counter intermittent wind and solar power.

Many researchers differ in their estimates of how much carbon capture is likely to be needed, but they generally agree on one thing: the total use of fossil fuels will have to fall sharply anyway to keep global warming at a relatively low level.

For example, according to the IEA roadmap, oil, gas and coal would provide only 10 percent of the world’s energy in 2050, compared to around 80 percent today. About half of remaining fossil fuel emissions would be “reduced” with carbon capture technology. The other half would be largely offset by carbon removal technologies such as direct air capture, which are still less well developed.

More recently, the agency released a report fossil fuel producers warn against “excessive expectations and dependence” on carbon capture to maintain their current market share, noting that it would cost $3.5 trillion a year to capture or eliminate all emissions from current oil and gas production compensate. Carbon capture, the agency concluded, “is not a way to maintain the status quo.”

Carbon capture has grown slowly

Even if carbon capture were to play only a supporting role in the fight against climate change, the technology would still need to expand very quickly.

It’s not on track at the moment.

Globally, industrial companies capture approximately 45 million tons per year, mainly from small natural gas processing plants. In recent years, spurred by new incentives in the United States and Europe, companies have proposed an additional slate of major new projects that, if built, would increase capture capacity to more than 400 million tons per year by 2030.

But that is still well short of the 1 billion tonnes per year that countries should capture and store by the end of the decade in the IEA’s Net Zero Road Map.

And not every announced project will necessarily be built. Only a small part – accounting for 6 percent of the capacity – have made a final investment decision. Projects are complicated to plan and require coordination among several companies that capture, transport and ultimately bury the carbon dioxide.

“The operational complexity of these projects can be a major obstacle,” said Paola Perez Peña, principal research analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “Many projects have announced their intention to capture carbon dioxide, but a storage site has yet to be developed. And that can create a chicken-and-egg dynamic: who will put down the money first?”

In the United States, lawmakers recently expanded tax breaks for companies that capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks a growing number of ethanol, fertilizer and hydrogen companies want to use the technology. But in the Midwest, landowners and environmentalists have opposed new pipelines to transport carbon dioxide to landfills. Companies looking to open new underground storage pits have criticized a slow federal permitting process.

Some experts say the technology could be useful in China, which produces about half of the world’s cement and steel. But apart from that some demonstration projectsChina has still not developed a plan to deploy carbon capture on a large scale.

“China is facing a huge surplus of coal-fired power plants it has built, many of which are still new. If we do not take those power stations offline, it is significantly more attractive to use CO2 capture,” says Roman Kramarchuk, head of Future Energy Outlooks. at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “But we have not yet seen China develop a comprehensive policy.”