The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage boom | MIT Technology Review

The Nugget

The world is on the verge of a carbon storage boom, driven by growing government subsidies, climate targets, and declining revenue in traditional oil and gas activities.

Make it stick

🌍 Carbon storage projects are set to become a major business, aiming to bury more greenhouse gas than is emitted into the atmosphere.
💡 Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is crucial for rapid emission reductions, especially in heavy industries lacking scalable emission reduction solutions.
🏭 Tax credits incentivize companies to invest in carbon storage, potentially transforming the energy landscape.
🔒 Despite the potential benefits, there are concerns about the environmental impact, prolonging fossil fuel use, and the complex net climate benefits of CCS.

Carbon storage projects are gaining momentum globally, with thousands of tons of carbon dioxide set to be captured and buried annually.
The increasing focus on carbon capture and storage is driven by government incentives, climate targets, and the decline in traditional oil and gas activities.
Companies are investing in carbon capture projects as a way to comply with emission reduction goals and tap into federal tax credits.

While carbon storage may aid in reducing emissions in certain industries, there are concerns about the overall net climate benefits due to potential leaks and increased power consumption.
The push for carbon storage raises questions about its impact on marginalized communities, the extension of fossil fuel operations, and the complex trade-offs in emission reductions.

Nations like the EU, Japan, and Saudi Arabia are ramping up efforts in carbon capture to meet ambitious emission reduction goals.
The success of carbon capture projects hinges on addressing community concerns, ensuring environmental safety, and delivering on promised climate benefits.

"California is banking heavily on capturing carbon from plants or removing it from the air through various means to meet its 2045 climate neutrality goal."
"Everyone keeps coming to the same conclusion, which is that you need it." - Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct.
"There is no path to carbon neutrality without carbon removal and sequestration." - The Air Resources Board.
"It’s not about the net climate impact—it’s about the gross tons you stick underground." - Danny Cullenward, Senior Fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
"Not taking this seriously risks potentially trillions of dollars and billions of tonnes of [greenhouse-gas] emissions." - Emily Grubert, Associate Professor at Notre Dame.

This summary contains AI-generated information and may be misleading or incorrect.