Carbon Capture Goes Down the Tubes

One of the much-heralded solutions to climate change which its supporters believe could enable the world to continue to burn fossil fuels looks likely to be a failure.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is backed by governments and the International Energy Agency (IEA) as one of the best methods of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and saving the planet from overheating.

The problem is that despite this enthusiasm and the fact that CCS (also called carbon sequestration) is technically possible, it is not happening.  It is cheaper and easier to build wind and solar farms to produce electricity than it is to collect and store the carbon from coal-powered plants’ emissions.

For years CO2 has been used by injecting it into old oil wells to extract more fuel, but the cost of building new plants just to store the gas is proving prohibitive.

Hundreds of plants were expected to be up and running by 2030, but so far none has been built.  Despite this, the IEA and governments across the world are relying on CCS to save the planet from climate change.

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