If we believe an answer to global warming is around the corner in the form of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), we may be less likely to make  lifestyle changes- ie, eating less meat- required of us to meet our climate goals. So let's take a critical look at it's viability in the fight against climate change.

CCS  refers to carbon capture and sequestration either into the ground or for processing for other uses, thus drawing down CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

There are currently 2 ways  to capture carbon:

ONE:

Directly from the air (DAC)

DAC is prohibitively expensive and inefficient as CO2 is only .04% of the gas in our atmosphere. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Never the less, in 2021, Iceland opened the world's largest DAC plant.

First recall Iceland has a near infinite supply of cheap renewable energy to run this  due to its natural resources of hydropower and geothermal from which supplies 99.9% of its energy.

At peak performance, it  captures 3 seconds worth of one year of global CO2 emissions.

Although 27 have been planned worldwide, most are not yet operational and their development is subject to “final investment decision and operations status without continued development of market mechanisms and policies to create demand for the CO2 removal service they would provide”- IEA (international energy agency)- In other words, let’s see, 3 seconds times possibly 27 equals….well, you do the math.

‍TWO:

Its been around for 40 yrs, but is now making a resurgence with research funding and political pressure from the Oil and Gas Industry.

According to the Congressional Budge Office as of 2023:

“15 CCS facilities are currently operating in the United States. Together, they have the capacity to capture 0.4 percent of the nation’s total annual CO2 emissions. An additional 121 CCS facilities are under construction or in development. If all of them were completed, they would increase the nation’s CCS capacity to 3 percent of current annual CO2 emissions.”

Al Gore's recent talk reveals all global CCS projects capture about 6 hours worth of yearly global emissions.

While a bit of the captured carbon is injected deep into the ground in abandoned wells, most is "repurposed" to extract more- you got it- fossil fuels.

"Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is the major use of captured CO₂ today".  See this MIT educational portal for a succinct discussion. The following blog highlights a presentation by MIT civil and engineering professor Charles Harvey at Cornell in 9/23 regarding its the validity of its claims.

According to Dr Harvey, carbon capture technology has been around for 40 years, but the evolution of affordable renewable energy supplanted its continued disappointing endeavors.

Now, the oil and gas industry has shifted from climate denial to a massive disinformation campaign touting  carbon capture as the answer. Why? So they may continue to do business as usual if we believe carbon capture to be a viable solution.

We are subsidizing them through the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) to do this, an unfortunate byproduct of political compromise. Although the IRA is a very, very good thing overall, this particular incentive directed to promoting CCS technology and its implementation will have the unintended consequences of  ultimately promoting fossil fuel production and delaying attaining net 0. See Professor Harvey's discussion above. Interestingly,  he states oil and gas are funding all the engineering academic work on CCS.

Here's how much of it works.

 When natural gas (composed mainly of methane) is fracked, it contains a small percent of CO2 which needs to be removed to make methane a sufficient grade to sell. This removed CO2 is the major source of CO2 for the majority of current carbon capture operations.

After CO2 is removed, it is piped to a compression station that pushes it deep into the ground to the earth. EOR only occurs in a well that has already gone through the primary and secondary stages of oil recovery. CO2 is  forcefully injected into the well in a way that both forces the oil to the surface and reduces its viscosity. The less viscous the oil, the easier it flows and the more cheaply it can be extracted.

Oil is then separated from the CO2 and sent to refineries.

So, you are using carbon dioxide captured from fracked methane to enable further and now more subsidized oil fossil fuel production. Hmmmm....

Dr. Harvey shows how the total  sequestration process produces more CO2 than is ultimately recovered. This is confirmed with satellite measurements.  Carbon capture's current technology fails not only to  draw down greenhouse gasses, but also allows oil and gas to delay realization of its ultimate reality - creating more emissions.

Please see his talk for a more detailed discussion. 

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