Adam, a climate scientist with a PhD from Oxford, delivers a balanced but critical assessment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and its role in climate negotiations.
Key insights:
Retrofitting CCS onto existing power plants can double electricity costs, while solar and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels even without added CCS expenses.
Most captured CO2 is never permanently stored, with 80% currently injected back into oil fields to extract more fossil fuels.
An Oxford research report found that relying on CCS instead of phasing out fossil fuels would cost at least $1 trillion more per year.
CCS progress is slow because each facility requires a tailored approach, unlike solar which benefits from copy-paste scalability.
And while CCS is largely a distraction for the energy sector, the IEA identifies it as potentially critical for hard-to-decarbonize industries like cement and steel where clean alternatives remain immature.