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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
Why CCUS must accelerate to meet global climate goals
30/10/2024
10 min read
Feature
Carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) has been lauded as an important climate change solution for decades. As fossil fuels continue to dominate global electricity and power generation, as well as key industrial processes, reducing emissions through capture and storage is considered vital for achieving climate goals. Charlie Bush asks why the potential of CCUS remains nascent, and what has to happen to reach its 2050 targets.
In its Net Zero Emissions by 2050 (NZE) Scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) anticipates that around 1 Gt CO2/y will have to be captured and stored. More ambitiously, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Emission Scenarios projects that up to 10 Gt CO2/y could be captured (see also a recent IEA report on CCUS).
In Europe, funding for underground storage of carbon began in 1990. The world’s first commercial CCS project began operating in 1996, capturing CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the Sleipner field in the Norwegian North Sea, operated by Equinor. Meanwhile, the US began funding CCS research in 1997, with more than $5bn invested since 2010, according to the Geoengineering Monitor.
However, the amount of CO2 being captured and stored by large-scale CCUS facilities today falls well short of the targets needed to keep the world within the 1.5°C limit. There are just 51 large-scale CCUS projects in operation worldwide, according to the IEA, collectively capturing 69.65mn tCO2/y. This is far behind the IEA’s 2009 target to capture 300mn t/y by 2020.