![]() ![]() The world's largest CCS plant, the Petra Nova facility in Texas, was mothballed three years after opening in 2017.īut the looming climate crisis and government subsidies have revived interest in CCS for the power sector and beyond.Īt the end of 2022, there were 35 commercial-scale facilities worldwide applying carbon capture technology to industry, fuel transformation or power generation, isolating a total of 45 million tons (Mt) of CO 2, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).Ī total of 18 DAC plants globally only captured about as much CO 2 last year (10,000 tons) as the world emits in 10 seconds.īoth CCS and DAC must be massively scaled up if they are to play a significant role in decarbonising the global economy. Historically, bolting CCS facilities onto coal- and gas-fired power plants and then storing the CO 2 to reduce emissions has proven technically feasible but uneconomical. Rather, oil and gas companies inject CO 2 into oil fields to extract more crude more quickly. The fossil fuel industry has been using CCS since the 1970s but not to prevent CO 2 from leaching into the atmosphere. "If the CO 2 is utilized, then it is not removal," said Oliver Geden, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International Security Affairs. Once isolated using either CCS or DAC, CO 2 can be used to make products such as building materials or "green" aviation fuel, though some of that CO 2 will seep back into the air. The concentration of carbon dioxide in ambient air is only 420 parts per million (about 0.04 percent), so corralling CO 2 using DAC is far more energy intensive. It can therefore generate credits for companies seeking to offset their greenhouse gas output-but only if the captured CO 2 is permanently stored underground, such as in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or in saline aquifers. Unlike CCS, which by itself only prevents additional carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, DAC extracts CO 2 molecules already there.Ĭrucially, this makes DAC a "negative emissions" technology. The exhaust from a coal-fired power plant is about 12 percent CO 2, while in steel and cement production it is typically double that. Here's a primer on what they are and how they differ.ĬCS siphons off CO 2 from the exhaust, or flue gas, of fossil fuel-fired power plants as well as heavy industry. ![]() Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and direct air capture (DAC) are both complex industrial processes that isolate CO 2 but these newly booming technologies are fundamentally different and often conflated. ![]()
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