Skip to Content

The Carbon Capture Conundrum

 
August 21, 2012

Many things will have to happen if we are to lower greenhouse-gas emissions enough by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. One of those things, according to a number of projections, is the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology, or CCS. In this process, carbon dioxide emissions from such sources as fossil-fuel power plants and industrial facilities are collected, compressed, transported to a storage site, and injected deep underground for permanent storage. Indeed, with demand for fossil fuels still soaring, the International Energy Agency predicts that one-fifth of the carbon dioxide reductions necessary by 2050 will have to come from CCS (shown in blue in the chart above).

The problem is that large-scale CCS is poorly understood and prohibitively expensive. As a result, there are not yet any facilities aimed at controlling power plant emissions. In the absence of government incentives, technology for injecting carbon dioxide underground is used mainly by oil companies as a way to extract hard-to-reach oil; these and other projects are injecting about 20 million metric tons of the gas annually. By the IEA’s estimate, annual carbon dioxide sequestration will need to jump by a factor of about 15 by 2020 and 120 by 2030, and at least 110 more big CCS facilities must come online in the next eight years. Although 65 are in planning or construction phases, building one can take more than a decade. This problem might not be one we can bury.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI

The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. 

The Biggest Questions: What is death?

New neuroscience is challenging our understanding of the dying process—bringing opportunities for the living.

Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist

An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work.

How to fix the internet

If we want online discourse to improve, we need to move beyond the big platforms.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.