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International

The Dual Nature of Carbon Capture: Help and Distraction

Avatar photoEmily Roseberg26
When carbon capture helps and when it distracts

Carbon capture is not a single technology or policy; it is a family of approaches that remove carbon dioxide from flue gases or directly from the air and then either store it permanently underground, use it in products, or inject it in ways that temporarily retain CO2. Whether carbon capture helps or distracts depends on purpose, timing, scale, governance, and economics. Below is a clear assessment of the contexts where carbon capture is a constructive tool and where it creates risks of delay, waste, or greenwashing.

How carbon capture can make a difference

  • Decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries: Sectors such as cement, steel, and chemicals, along with various high-temperature industrial activities, release CO2 as an inherent process output rather than from energy consumption. For many of these industries, capturing emissions directly at the source becomes one of the most feasible strategies for achieving net-zero goals.
  • Removing residual emissions: Even after pushing energy efficiency, electrification, and fuel switching to their limits, some CO2 emissions persist. Technologies for permanent removal, including direct air capture and bioenergy with CCS, can counterbalance these remaining emissions and support net-negative outcomes when necessary to meet climate objectives.
  • Enabling low-carbon fuels and hydrogen: When CO2 is captured from natural gas reforming and securely stored, it enables the production of lower-carbon hydrogen, commonly called blue hydrogen, serving as a transitional option while renewable-based green hydrogen capacity expands. This proves particularly valuable in situations where hydrogen demand rises quickly but renewable resources or electrolyzer availability remain constrained.
  • Demonstrated successful storage cases: Active projects confirm that the technology works at scale. Norway’s Sleipner project, for example, has injected around 1 million tonnes of CO2 each year into a saline aquifer since the mid-1990s. Initiatives such as the Northern Lights facility, led by the UK and Norway, show that large-scale shared transport and storage networks can be developed successfully.
  • When backed by robust policy and finance: Measures like carbon pricing, tax incentives, grants, and regulated emission cuts make these projects commercially realistic and ensure that captured CO2 represents additional reductions rather than replacing necessary mitigation. Effective policy design channels capture efforts to the places where they deliver the greatest climate gains.

How carbon capture distracts

  • Delaying emissions reductions: Relying on capture as a promise to fix future emissions can allow continued investment in fossil infrastructure. Capture with weak safeguards can become an excuse to defer energy efficiency, electrification, or fuel switching.
  • Subsidizing counterproductive fossil activity: When capture is coupled with enhanced oil recovery (EOR), captured CO2 can boost oil production. That creates a perverse result: more oil extracted and burned may outweigh the CO2 stored, especially if accounting is weak.
  • High cost and limited near-term scale: Many capture approaches are expensive. Point-source capture costs vary widely but can be tens to low hundreds of dollars per tonne; direct air capture (DAC) costs have been hundreds of dollars per tonne at commercial demonstration scale. That makes capture a poor substitute for lower-cost emissions reductions in many sectors.
  • Energy penalty and lifecycle emissions: Capture systems require energy. If that energy comes from fossil fuels, the net climate benefit shrinks. Capture can reduce plant efficiency by a significant fraction, increasing fuel use and operating costs.
  • Questionable permanence and monitoring: Geological storage requires long-term monitoring to ensure CO2 remains sequestered. Projects with weak monitoring, unclear liability, or poor public engagement risk leakage concerns and community opposition.
  • BECCS land-use and sustainability risks: Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) can produce net-negative emissions on paper but may cause land-use change, biodiversity loss, food competition, and uncertain carbon accounting if biomass sourcing is not rigorously managed.

Illustrative cases and outcomes

  • Sleipner (Norway): A long-running example of successful offshore storage. Since 1996, Sleipner has injected roughly 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year into a saline formation, demonstrating secure storage and continuous monitoring for decades.
  • Boundary Dam (Canada): A coal power retrofit capturing around 1 million tonnes CO2 annually. It proved retrofits are technically possible but highlighted high capital costs, operational complexity, and the difficulty of competing with cheaper low-carbon alternatives like renewables.
  • Petra Nova (USA): Captured over a million tonnes per year from a coal plant but was idled amid economic pressures and low oil prices; it illustrated how project economics and policy support determine longevity.
  • Gorgon (Australia): A large industrial CCS project tied to natural gas processing that initially failed to meet storage targets and revealed the operational and measurement challenges in large subsurface projects.
  • Climeworks DAC plants (Iceland, Switzerland): Orca in Iceland and follow-on plants show that DAC works technically at small scale (thousands to tens of thousands of tonnes per year). Cost and energy supply are the major barriers to scaling to the gigatonne level quickly.

Costs, scale, and timelines

  • Cost ranges: Point-source capture at industrial sites may cost roughly tens to low hundreds of dollars per tonne, depending on concentration of CO2 and retrofit complexity. DAC today often costs several hundred dollars per tonne; many estimates expect costs to fall with scale, learning, and cheaper low-carbon energy.
  • Scale gap: Climate models that rely heavily on negative emissions assume large-scale deployment of BECCS and DAC by midcentury. Achieving gigatonne-scale removal requires rapid and sustained investment in manufacturing, pipelines, storage sites, and renewables to power capture.
  • Timing matters: Near-term emissions reductions through efficiency, electrification, and renewables deliver immediate climate benefits. Carbon capture is complementary but not a substitute for early and deep cuts.

Practical decision framework: when to use carbon capture

  • Prioritize reductions first: Exhaust low-cost options—efficiency, electrification, material substitution—before relying on capture.
  • Use capture where alternatives are limited: Favor industrial process emissions and chemical feedstocks where abatement options are scarce.
  • Prefer permanent storage with strong monitoring: Ensure projects commit to verified, long-term geological storage with independent monitoring and clear liability rules.
  • Avoid coupling with EOR unless strict accounting exists: When capture funds oil production, require transparent lifecycle accounting to ensure net climate benefit.
  • Design policy to prevent delay: Condition subsidies on demonstrated reductions, time-limited support, and a clear pathway off fossil dependence.
  • Safeguard land and supply chains for BECCS: Only deploy biomass-based capture with strict sustainability criteria to avoid negative biodiversity and food security impacts.

Key priorities for policy and governance

  • Clear accounting rules: Precise and transparent systems for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) are vital to ensure captured CO2 is neither counted twice nor used to legitimize continued emissions.
  • Long-term liability and monitoring: Governments and project sponsors must establish clear responsibility for overseeing stored CO2 across future decades and even centuries.
  • Targeted incentives: Financial backing should prioritize initiatives that deliver the greatest climate gains per dollar and avoid reinforcing fossil-based infrastructure.
  • Community engagement and social license: Local communities need to be consulted, kept informed, and fairly compensated whenever projects pose land-use impacts or potential safety concerns.

Trade-offs to accept and mitigate

  • Infrastructure needs: Pipelines, shipping, storage sites and power for capture require time and capital; planning should consider cumulative demand and shared hubs to reduce cost.
  • Energy supply: Capture systems must be powered by low-carbon energy to preserve climate benefits. Otherwise, net emissions reductions are lower or reversed.
  • Risk of capture reliance: Policymakers must balance investment between capture and faster, cheaper emissions reductions to avoid expensive lock-in.

Carbon capture is presented as a practical instrument for targeted challenges, such as managing unavoidable process emissions, ensuring permanent storage of remaining CO2, and supporting decarbonization in sectors with limited alternatives. Its advantages are genuine, yet they rely on strict accounting, reliable long-term storage, robust policy frameworks, and a clear priority on cutting emissions first. When capture is used because it is politically expedient or financially profitable for extending fossil fuel operations, it diverts attention from the transformative measures needed to reduce emissions at their origin. Responsible use involves selecting projects that deliver the greatest climate gains, applying capture only after substantial mitigation efforts, and establishing transparency and safeguards to ensure that captured carbon genuinely contributes to, rather than slows down, the shift toward a low-carbon economy.

By Emily Roseberg

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