Why carbon capture and storage will not solve the climate crisis any time soon

Announcing new oil and gas licences along with carbon capture projects is like giving cigarettes to someone trying to quit smoking

The promises of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology date back almost 20 years. Yet today, no leading CCS facility is up and fully running in the UK.

Until Rishi Sunak’s announcement on Monday, there were two carbon capture projects in the UK, one in Merseyside and the other in Teesside and the Humber. Two further transport and storage projects, the Viking scheme in the Humber and the Acorn scheme in Aberdeenshire, have now been given government approval. The four CCS hubs are intended to collect CO2 from multiple sources and pipe it offshore to be stored in depleting North Sea gas fields.

But, according to Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, announcing more CCS schemes at the same time as approving 100-plus new oil and gas drilling licences is like ordering a truckload of cigarettes for someone giving up smoking.

Haszeldine said: “That’s what yesterday’s announcement was doing. CCS should be part of a package of things that you have to do – increasing renewables to switch our energy from burning gas and oil, doubling or even quadrupling the amount of electricity we have now, building in more efficiency in how we use our energy with insulation. It should be part of this package.”

CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities, such as chemical plants and oil refineries, then transporting and storing it.

The UK’s geology is suitable for storing carbon, and empty oilfields in the North Sea have been selected for storage. CCS is intended to be used in the transition to net zero to capture carbon from industries that will be harder to decarbonise, including cement, iron and steel, according to Haszeldine.

He said: “In these industries, CCS can help and will be essential to get to net zero.”

A second nascent industry in capturing CO2 from the atmosphere is less developed than CCS linked to industrial facilities. The process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is known as negative emissions.

Jim Watson, professor of energy policy and director of the Institute for Sustainable Resources at University College London, said he understood the scepticism of some environmentalists about CCS because it could be viewed as “get out of jail free” card for oil and gas companies to continue getting fossil fuels out of the ground.

Watson said: “But we do need it. If you look at independent assessments, including from the climate change committee, it is hard to see how to decarbonise the whole of industry without some carbon capture and storage.”

The history of CCS in the UK is chequered. One of the first CCS strategies was in 2006, and there have been many false starts over the years.

Even today, some projects already operating around the world have not been as successful as planned. In Australia, the CCS project run by Chevron has not yet made its Gorgon project meet its target of 80% carbon dioxide capture.

A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) on two Norwegian projects that store carbon dioxide under the seabed called into question the long-term viability of CCS.

Its author, Grant Hauber, IEEFA’s strategic energy finance adviser, said the Norwegian Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS fields have been cited as global success stories, but because of the unpredictability of the subsurface conditions they cannot be used as definitive models for the future of the industry.

Hauber said: “Every project site has unique geology. Subsurface conditions which exist at a given point on the Earth are specific to that place. Even then, any information obtained about that place is only a snapshot in time. The Earth moves and strata can change.”

There is also a need to make sure the CO2 is stored in the ground permanently rather than allowing fossil fuel companies to use it to drill for more oil and gas elsewhere. This requires regulation and monitoring, said Watson.

The timeframe for CCS is tight. The UK target is to raise the amount of CO2 captured from zero today to between 20m and 30m tonnes by 2030.

Watson said: “There are still big questions about whether it can deliver the kind of numbers of storage that we need by this time.”