The Great Debate UK

In the fight against climate change, carbon capture is crucial

- Hannah Chalmers is a postgraduate researcher at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey. All views expressed are her own -

This week the International Energy Agency launched a series of detailed technology roadmaps covering 19 technologies that are expected to be important in mitigating the risk of dangerous of climate change. One of these was for carbon capture and storage (CCS).

At the same time, energy and environment ministers were attending a meeting convened by the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum. Their final communiqué affirmed CCS as “an important element of any effective response to climate change” and described a series of industrial-scale demonstration projects as “vital”. But, what is CCS? Why does it matter? And can it deliver?

The principle is simple. To avoid dangerous climate change it is very likely that we need to avoid a significant proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions that could be produced by fossil fuels that we already know how to access at reasonable cost. It is, therefore, necessary to either (1) convince countries with fossil fuels to leave them in the ground unused, essentially forever, or (2) ensure that the vast majority of carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel use does not end up in the atmosphere.
CCS projects implement the second option. They collect carbon dioxide that is produced by fossil fuels (or biofuels which also contain carbon).