World leaders are relying heavily on technological advances to address the global climate crisis. One of the main ideas they are pinning their hopes on is capturing carbon pollution directly from the air and then permanently storing it. deep underground storage. While this concept may sound very practical and appealing at first glance, a closer analysis shows that there is no realistic and conceivable way this solution could work on a sufficient scale.<\/p>\n
The impact of the fossil fuel industry and unrealistic expectations<\/strong><\/p>\n The fundamental problem is the very origin of the massive support for this technology. For over 40 years, oil companies have been funding research at prestigious universities into climate \u201esolutions\u201c that wouldn\u2019t require the public to stop using oil and gas.<\/strong>. One of their most popular solutions is carbon capture and storage (CCS). The investigation showed that proponents of this technology have long ignored evidence of its limitations, exaggerated its potential and convinced the world of its alleged effectiveness.<\/p>\n Optimism prevailed largely because the technology had worked in small test conditions and the slow global response to climate change left the world with few other options. The problem is that to make CCS work on the scale currently planned, the world would have to spend almost unimaginable resources.<\/p>\n Expectations versus harsh reality<\/strong><\/p>\n As early as 2008, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that to avert dangerous levels of global warming, we would need to bury around 1.6 billion tonnes (1,600 megatons) of CO2 per year by 2025. These optimistic forecasts continued, but actual deployment of the technology never came close to meeting these ambitions. Currently, less CO2 is permanently stored globally than a single large power plant produces in a year.<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Some experts argue that the technology works, pointing to CO2 being injected into the ground to facilitate oil extraction. However, the process, called enhanced oil recovery, is not designed to work as a permanent climate solution, nor is it closely monitored.<\/p>\n Unimaginable demands on space and infrastructure<\/strong><\/p>\n Current UN models, on which climate goals depend, assume that this technology will be massively successful. The latest UN analysis suggests that countries should inject up to 6 billion tons of CO2 per year<\/strong>. However, getting such huge amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere is a huge and apparently impossible task.<\/p>\n To do this at all, we would have to capture CO2 in four different ways: capture it from smokestacks, absorb it from the air using fast-growing grasses or trees (and then capture it when they are burned for fuel), and filter it directly from the air using giant fans. We would have to add capture devices to industrial plants and power plants, in some cases doubling their size.<\/p>\n In addition, we would have to allocate approximately 768,000 square miles of land to grow carbon-absorbing plants<\/strong>. This area, roughly the size of all of Mexico, would directly compete with valuable land needed to grow food or maintain natural forests.<\/p>\n Even if carbon were captured, there is the problem of transporting it. In the US alone, this would require the construction of more than 68,000 miles of new oil and gas pipelines<\/strong>. That\u2019s more than twice the distance of a flight around the Earth, and the total length would exceed the length of the entire U.S. highway system. On a global scale, that would be hundreds of thousands of miles of pipeline. To transport the high-pressure gas across the oceans, we would need at least 85 specially built tankers, and as of April, there were only three such ships in the world.<\/p>\n Storage, technical failures and astronomical costs<\/strong><\/p>\n Today, there are only 12 large-capacity geological reservoirs in the world that have attempted to permanently store CO2 pollution. However, to reach the 6 billion ton target, we would need more than 2,000 such reservoirs. In practice, this would mean that we would have to open a new geological repository on the planet every four days for the next 25 years.<\/strong>. In addition, continuous monitoring for decades would have to be carried out from each site to prevent leaks.<\/p>\n Existing test projects do not suggest that underground carbon storage could work on a large scale. Since 1996, when 12 large projects were launched, plans for another 12 have been canceled. Many of the operating facilities in Norway, Algeria, Australia, and the United States face huge technical problems. For example, it has been found that some rock layers can hold much less CO2 than estimated. Pipelines and injection systems are becoming clogged or failing. The rock that is supposed to contain the CO2 can crack and cause leaks. In one case, the injected CO2 even caused the surface of the earth to bulge, and in another, CO2 leaked from an old oil well nearby.<\/p>\n Such a solution would cost tens of trillions of dollars to implement. Currently, U.S. taxpayers pay oil and gas companies $85 for every metric ton they put underground. At this rate, the world could spend $100 billion by 2050. half a trillion dollars a year<\/strong>. For comparison, this amount significantly exceeds China's 2025 military budget ($340 billion) and is ten times higher than the entire UN budget for humanitarian and development assistance for 2024 ($50 billion).<\/p>\n Ignoring real solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n Many climate experts know about these costs, technical problems, and failures. Yet they continue to promote CCS while downplaying solutions that are more likely to succeed. The same modelers who have consistently overestimated the potential of geological carbon storage have, for example, repeatedly underestimated solar power\u2014the technology that could realistically keep more oil in the ground. But the facts are clear: over the past few decades, solar power has been the technology that has actually succeeded and thrived in practice, while large-scale carbon capture and storage remains an elusive and extremely expensive illusion. 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