Green Economy

What is carbon capture?

CC involves capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground before it’s released into the atmosphere. It’s being suggested as a solution for reducing emissions generated as a result of oil and gas extraction and other industrial processes.

The process has three steps.

Capturing the carbon produced by an activity. CO2 is separated from other gasses generated using a process of combustion. Direct air capture is still in its infancy, with further research needed to confirm its efficacy.
Transporting the carbon to a designated storage facility. This process involves compressing the CO2 and transporting via pipelines, road transport or ships.
Storing it underground by injecting CO2 into rock formations.

For the final step, the two primary methods of storage are geological or mineral storage. Deep ocean storage of CO2 will increase ocean acidification which is a negative impact of carbon emissions. Geological formations are the most promising sites for storage at and offer a considerable amount of space. If a geological site is managed and structured effectively, CO2 could be trapped for millions of years with 99 per cent of CO2 being retained over the first 1,000 years, according to the IPCC.

Mineral storage has also shown promising results. It works by reacting captured CO2 with naturally occurring iron, magnesium and calcium for long term storage. These minerals are abundant and stable, but the carbonation process is very slow and would require energy intensive conditions to speed up the process.

The UK’s plans for CCS

In the 2023 Spring Budget, the UK government committed to investing £20bn to scale up UK CCS projects. This roadmap details up to £210m for the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, £115m in new spending for CCS technology research and development, an estimated turnover of £8bn by 2050 secured by the UK CCS market, a target to capture 20 – 30 MtCO2 per year by 2030, and the creation of 50,000 jobs in 2030.

The UK government has confirmed its plans to support the deployment of four CCS industrial clusters across the North West and East Coast. While there are currently no commercial applications of CCS in the UK, the government’s investment pledge is designed to boost the economy and make the UK an attractive site for future investment.

Costs and criticisms

Despite investment into the CCS sector, critics argue it does nothing to reduce carbon emissions at their source with environmentally damaging processes such as oil and gas extraction. There are concerns that CCS will be used as an excuse to continue with destructive fossil fuel production, with some campaign groups even calling CCS “greenwashing.”

CCS isn’t occurring at anywhere near the scale needed to balance CO2 emissions. The Energy Agency has calculated an “implausible” 32 billion tonnes of CO2 would need to be captured each year by 2050 to balance out the carbon emissions generated from oil and gas extraction. A clean energy transition away from fossil fuels in favour of renewable technologies will reduce the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere from its source and should be considered before.

CCS is also a nascent technology and more research is needed to guarantee its effectiveness. Initially, storage processes will require rigorous monitoring to ensure the right quantity of CO2 is being storage, there are no carbon leaks, and to ensure the CO2 is behaving as anticipated while in storage.

As for the costs, CCS is presently an expensive and research-intensive practice, but costs are forecasts to decline as investment increases and the processes reach their commercial maturity. The storage process is also characterised by complex design and regulatory environments, with difficult technological processes generating high risks of bottlenecks and dead ends which could be financially wasteful.