Top 5 Reasons Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS) Is Bogus:

The idea of using technology to take carbon out of the air may at first blush sound like an attractive solution to our escalating climate crisis. But if you examine the details, the carbon capture “solution” is a mirage.

Betting on carbon capture as a primary solution to the climate crisis is essentially the same as giving up. The only solution is to rapidly transition to 100% renewable energy in combination with energy efficiency and a less energy-intensive food system. Recently, carbon capture has been getting a lot of attention. It is a centerpiece of the oil and gas industry’s greenwashing efforts, the White House includes it as part of its climate agenda, and even some progressive media figures have promoted carbon capture and encouraged the left to embrace it as a so-called solution. But as attractive as it may sound in theory, there are many good reasons to reject this failed energy-intensive so-called solution. Carbon capture will lock us into decades more of fossil fuels, is not feasible at scale, and diverts money and political attention from the real, bold solutions we need. Here are five reasons embracing carbon capture is a fool’s errand. 1. Carbon Capture is an Expensive Failure After billions of dollars in public and private investments over decades, there are no carbon capture success stories — only colossal failures. One of the largest was the Petra Nova coal plant in Texas, once the poster child for CO2 removal. But the plant consistently underperformed, before it finally closed for good last year. Another high-profile example — the San Juan Generating Station in New Mexico, touted as the largest capture project in the world — may already be headed to a similar fate. Between 2005 and 2012, the DOE spent $6.9 billion attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of CCS for coal, but little came of this investment, and between 2014 and 2016, less than 4 percent of the planned CCS capacity was deployed. The Biden administration wants to shift its focus to carbon capture for gas-fired power plants, but there’s no reason to think the outcome will be any different. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Carbon Capture is Energy Intensive Running a carbon capture system is incredibly energy-intensive — it essentially requires building a new power plant to run the system, which would create another new source of air and carbon pollution. That undermines the whole goal of capturing carbon in the first place. While our country emits roughly 5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, removing 1 billion tons of that through direct air capture would require nearly the entire electricity output of the United States. It’s also important to consider the scale of what would be needed. The Energy Department recently announced $12 million to fund ‘direct air capture’ projects and touted the possible removal of 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. To put this in perspective, the largest corporate polluter in 2018 was responsible for releasing 119 million tons of CO2 equivalent — and that’s only one of them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Carbon Capture Actually Increases Emissions A recent review of relevant research shows that due to the large amount of energy required to power carbon capture and the life cycle of fossil fuels, carbon capture in this country has actud.ally put more CO2 into the atmosphere than it has removed. That’s not an accident. To the extent that there are successful capture projects, they exist at facilities where the carbon is injected into existing wells in order to extract more oil — a practice known as ‘enhanced oil recovery.’ While an oil company CEO might argue that doubling down on fossil fuels is an effective climate solution, the planet begs to differ. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Storage Presents Significant Risks There are also other significant risks related to the disposal and storage of carbon. Well failure during injection or a blowout could result in a release of large amounts of CO2; storage locations can leak CO2, as they are located close to fossil fuel reservoirs, where oil and gas wellbores provide a pathway for CO2 to escape to the surface. Those storage leaks could contaminate groundwater and soil; and injection of CO2 could cause earthquakes, which have already been measured at injection sites. As Friends of the Earth noted recently, when a CO2 pipeline in a majority Black community in Mississippi ruptured last year, residents had to seek medical treatment, and the incident killed local plants and wildlife. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Carbon Capture Trades Off with Other Critical Solutions Wishful thinking about carbon capture isn’t just an ineffective response to the climate crisis — it’s dangerous. We have a small window where we can take the bold action needed to avert runaway climate chaos; counting on carbon capture’s effectiveness squanders the opportunity to enact actual emissions reductions (a phenomenon known as “mitigation deterrence”). The reason that the oil and gas industry loves carbon capture is simple: It extends the fossil fuel era instead of ending it. Already, dirty energy companies are pitching the construction of new pipelines and fracked gas power plants and making totally empty promises about their ability to install capture technology to make them ‘clean.’ If carbon capture continues to fail to work, it doesn’t matter much to the company running the dirty power plant; they will just continue on with business as usual. So long as fossil fuel companies, government officials, and even some progressive advocates are being fooled by carbon capture, there will be less pressure to actually stop climate pollution by putting an end to drilling and fracking and creating the political will need. https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2021/07/20/top-5-reasons-carbon-capture-and-storage-ccs-is-bogus/

Carbon capture 'simply won't work' to meet net-zero targets, report says An Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report concluded that the majority of carbon capture projects have failed or underperformed, while the few successful projects have mostly contributed to the procurement of fossil fuels. The findings, published Sept. 1, cast doubt on a widely cited United Nations climate change report that said carbon capture will be necessary for net-zero emissions by 2050. "Many international bodies and national governments are relying on carbon capture in the fossil fuel sector to get to net-zero, and it simply won't work," study author Bruce Robertson said in a statement. But carbon capture advocates said the report is based on an outdated view of the technology. And carbon capture's outlook has changed dramatically since the Biden administration's bipartisan infrastructure law and the more recent Inflation Reduction Act. Carbon capture is a nascent technology that intercepts CO2 from emissions streams, such as gas processing facilities or power plants. Once captured, the CO2 byproduct is piped away and either permanently stored underground or used for other industrial purposes. The study authors analyzed 13 carbon capture projects in various applications, accounting for about half of worldwide carbon capture capacity. Of the projects analyzed, seven performed below their stated capacities, two failed due to technical issues and one was suspended, the study said. But even some of the projects that have been technological successes are not net-zero, according to the report, citing Shell PLC's Quest carbon capture project in Alberta. Despite a high nominal CO2 capture rate, that rate does not account for the CO2 emitted to power the carbon capture technology, which offsets 21% of emissions "saved," the institute said. Shell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The successful projects tend to contribute to producing more fossil fuels, leading to further emissions, the study said. An example is natural gas processing, which requires separating CO2 from raw gas to produce a marketable product. The CO2 byproduct may be sold for enhanced oil recovery, in which CO2 is injected into oil fields to extract more crude. "This explains why the sector has been using carbon capture technology for decades, not necessarily as a climate-friendly solution but as an inevitability to produce the fossil-fuel natural gas," the authors wrote. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/carbon-capture-simply-won-t-work-to-meet-net-zero-targets-report-says- Confronting the Myth of Carbon-Free Fossil Fuels: Why Carbon Capture Is Not a Climate Solution (Jul 2021) The world is confronting a climate emergency. Avoiding climate catastrophe requires immediate and dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are possible only with a significant investment of public resources in proven mitigation measures, beginning with eliminating fossil fuel use and halting deforestation. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, and carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, are processes designed to collect or “capture” carbon dioxide generated by high-emitting activities and then transport those captured emissions to sites where they are used for industrial processes or stored underground. While both are proposed as technologies to meet global energy and climate goals, CCS and CCUS will not address these core drivers of the climate crisis or meaningfully reduce greenhouse emissions, and should not distract from real climate solutions. Confronting the Myth of Carbon-Free Fossil Fuels: Why Carbon Capture is Not a Climate Solution examines how CCS and CCUS technologies are not only unnecessary for the rapid transformation required to keep warming under 1.5°C but how they delay that transformation, providing the fossil fuel industry with a license to continue polluting. Sections include: CCS Isn’t Carbon Negative, or Even Carbon Neutral Large-Scale CCS is Neither Viable for Necessary Even for the Hard-to-Decarbonize Industrial Sector, CCS is not the Answer CCS Perpetuates Fossil Fuel Systems and Impacts CCS Poses a Growing and Poorly Understood Threat to Communities and the Environment https://www.ciel.org/reports/carbon-capture-is-not-a-climate-solution/