Is Carbon Capture Crucial to Reducing Emissions or a Distraction?
“Countries across the world are working to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary gas responsible for global warming. Key to those efforts is a global transition away from fossil fuels….”
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Is Carbon Capture Crucial to Reducing Emissions or a Distraction?
PHOTO: JASON FRANSON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Countries across the world are working to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary gas responsible for global warming. Key to those efforts is a global transition away from fossil fuels and toward alternative energy sources. Another emerging strategy is to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store them deep underground.
So-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) is at center stage at COP28, the United Nations climate conference that kicked off on Thursday in Dubai. Developed countries are pushing for a sharp “phase-out” of fossil fuels and a rapid scaling up of renewable energy sources. Big developing countries are pushing for a gradual “phase-down” of fossil-fuel use and an abatement of the remaining emissions by capturing and storing them.
This week, WSJ gathered three experts to debate whether carbon capture is a distraction from the transition to renewable energy or a crucial step toward meeting emissions-reduction goals. Below are edited excerpts from their conversation, which happened online.
Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, says CCS is a distraction, at least in the short term:
"In the future, carbon capture will likely be part of the portfolio of solutions to fix, and maybe, ideally, reverse climate change. But right now it's deflecting attention away from the urgent need to phase down, and ultimately more or less phase out, carbon-polluting fossil fuels. I think we can say with confidence that there's no such thing as a 'leakproof' place to store gas forever."
Benjamin Longstreth, global director of carbon capture for the Boston-based environmental group Clean Air Task Force, says CCS is crucial to ongoing emissions reduction efforts:
"To maximize our chances of hitting our decarbonization goals we need a broad portfolio of decarbonization tools and carbon capture is a key part. There are over 5,000 miles of existing carbon-dioxide pipelines in the U.S. that have been operating for 50 years."
Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says CCS is not a financially viable way to cut emissions in today’s market and could kneecap technologies that don’t produce carbon dioxide to begin with:
"As the costs of renewable energy and energy storage plummeted the past 15 years, billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on CCS projects that failed to inject any carbon into the ground. If we massively subsidize CCS for the steel industry, we will block promising technologies that don’t produce CO2."
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