Why Carbon Capture Can't Conceivably Solve Climate Change
7 hours ago
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- #climate-policy
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- Fossil fuel companies have funded university research on carbon capture and storage (CCS) for over 40 years to promote solutions that don't reduce oil and gas use.
- Despite optimistic projections from the IEA and UN models, global CCS deployment lags far behind targets, with current storage less than a single large power plant's annual emissions.
- Large-scale CCS would require massive infrastructure: capturing CO2 from smokestacks, air, and biomass; building thousands of miles of pipelines; and opening new geological storage sites every few days for decades.
- The estimated annual cost of CCS by 2050 could reach $500 billion, exceeding China's military budget and dwarfing UN aid spending, with significant technical and leakage risks at existing test sites.
- CCS has faced repeated setbacks and failures in practice, while solar power—often underestimated by modelers—has thrived as a more viable alternative for reducing emissions.