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Europe’s net-zero goals will almost certainly not be achieved without significant deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, writes Chris Davies. Suggesting that use of CCS should be limited even before it has begun is hardly the best way to solve the climate crisis, he argues.
Chris Davies is the Director of CCS Europe, an advocacy and communications body.
What’s the purpose of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology? Why should we spend billions of euros building plants that can capture CO2 emitted from industrial installations, only to have it transported and then injected into rock deep underground where it will stay forever?
Where is the economic logic in doing such a thing? How can it make business sense?
The only reason is to help curb climate change. We now regard CO2 as an industrial pollutant causing harm. We need CCS to prevent CO2 emissions entering the atmosphere, and we need it to reduce concentrations already in the atmosphere by capturing CO2 from biogenic sources.
So it is strange to read that CCS “might be used for too many purposes”, and that it should be reserved only for truly “unavoidable emissions”, as an opinion piece recently published in EURACTIV claimed.
The suggestion is that CCS is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, whose use will perpetuate bad practice. It is not, and there is no need to impose self-defeating restraints on its deployment.
CCS costs will vary with the source of emissions, the location of storage sites and the development of the technology. Even so, every CCS operation will require capital investment of many hundreds of billions of euros.
Such investment would be a major business decision for any company, and if there are any alternative means of achieving the emissions-reduction goals, it must make sense for these to be pursued.
Where does the assumption come from that business leaders might turn to CCS instead of supporting the development of other technologies, as a recent vote by the European Parliament’s Environment Committee appears to suggest?
Why would they do this? Anyone charged with making an investment decision is surely going to opt for whatever technology can do the job at the lowest possible cost.
We might all wish that every promising research finding will develop into an innovation capable of eliminating emissions from industry. But we must make use of what we have now rather than delay in the hope that a magic unicorn will soon appear. Time is not on our side.
Some environmentalists claim CCS is being promoted by fossil fuel suppliers to perpetuate their business. If so, there is little to show for it.
The oil and gas majors talk the talk but their record of actual investment in CCS does not begin to compare with the amounts they have spent identifying new sources of their product.
Now the European Commission, through the Net Zero Industry Act, is having to force the oil and gas companies to create CO2 storage sites.
The truth is that, far from perpetuating the use of fossil fuels in power production, the application of CCS adds a significant expense to production.
Fossil fuel electricity may well be needed as a back up in national energy systems but the cost of CO2 abatement must make investment in alternative energy sources look even more attractive. CCS and renewables are on the same side.
Carbon Capture and Storage Europe is an advocacy body that exists to argue the case for the technology’s deployment, but our members are not narrow-minded enthusiasts. They accept that CCS will be used when it has to be used, not because they think it somehow superior to alternative means of curbing emissions.
With current technology, net-zero goals will almost certainly not be achieved without significant CCS deployment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made this point repeatedly. Suggesting that use of CCS should be limited even before it has begun is hardly the best way to solve the climate crisis.
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