Carbon capture and storage is having a moment — a big one.
Fossil-fuel lobbyists have swarmed COP27 in an effort to ensure coal, gas and oil are protected and, in the case of gas, built into “decarbonisation”, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) is their top strategy.
That’s bolstered by a big increase in investment in CCS around the world. The Biden administration in the US is spending billions on it (and not merely in the US, but in Indonesia). So is the Trudeau government in Canada, which is a major fossil-fuel economy. The European Commission recently announced a “strategic vision” for CCS, along with billions of funding.
CCS projects have increased 44% in the past year — and spruikers say it must increase much more rapidly.
The world’s biggest carbon polluter, Saudi regime-controlled Saudi Aramco, has just announced investment in a CCS hub (with carbon to be stored in the severed heads of Saudi critics, presumably). And in a major sign of how much money is expected to pour into CCS, the consulting industry is licking its lips.
Note that all of that investment is coming from governments or government-controlled companies — it is taxpayers who are the source for this lucrative flow of money. The only government that isn’t joining in the CCS spendathon is, to its credit, the Albanese government. Despite previously stated support for CCS, the recent budget cut tens of millions of dollars from Morrison-era handouts to fossil-fuel companies for CCS projects.
What is unsaid amid this frenzy is that it’s a failed technology, the main purpose of which is greenwashing.
The latest data from Chevron’s discredited Gorgon CCS project this week confirmed that it continues to store well under half its promised carbon storage. It cannot be stressed enough that Gorgon is the easiest, most business-as-usual CCS method, in which CO2 that has already been extracted as a part of its standard gas production system is stored underground. And it continues to fail after years of operation.
More complex technologies such as filtering CO2 while burning fossil fuels, or direct air extraction of CO2, are massively more expensive and unproved technically at scale, let alone commercially.
Gorgon is far from being the only discredited CCS project. If you’re looking for demonstrations of whether CCS works or not, the answer is clear.
A September report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis examined 13 major CCS projects and found that Gorgon was typical in underperforming forecast storage levels by about 50%. That doesn’t include two major CCS projects that were abandoned after years of investment, and one that is suspended.
The only CCS projects that have worked to plan over an extended period are the Sleipner CO2 Storage Project in the North Sea (the result of Norway’s carbon tax) and the Snøhvit LNG plant in the Barents Sea, the result of Norway mandating effective CCS as a condition of the field’s development.
In both cases, what’s being stored is only the CO2 directly produced in the gas production process — the level of CO2 in gas must be reduced to below 2.5% so it can be exported. The actual emissions from that exported gas when it is burnt in destination countries are not accounted for. What’s being stored is only a small fraction of the emissions generated from extracting and burning fossil fuels.
Remember also that CCS is not, as spruikers maintain, an emerging technology — it has been around since the 1970s. The Sleipner project was commissioned in 1996.
The reason fossil-fuel companies eagerly support CCS — and why governments are happy to back it — is that it creates the impression of climate action when at best CCS performs far below expectations, and at worst — in the case of Sleipner, Snøhvit or Gorgon — is used to enable fossil-fuel extraction that leads to far bigger global emissions.
That is, CCS is another in the list of techniques used by the fossil-fuel industry to stymie climate action. Denying global warming; denying human-made global warming; changing the name to “climate change”; claiming climate action would cost large numbers of jobs and impair economic growth; talking about individuals’ “carbon footprint” to shift blame away from corporations; supporting climate action “in principle” but opposing actual policies; arguing that individual sectors had strategic reasons to be omitted from climate policies — all have been used systematically by fossil-fuel companies, denialist outlets like News Corp and politicians in the pay of fossil-fuel companies to justify climate inaction.
CCS is just another form of denialism. Those advocating for it — and the journalists who fail to report their real agenda — need to be subject to the same scrutiny and accountability as any other climate denialist.
Is there any chance carbon capture and storage could ever be a goer? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
