 |
Dear readers,
Carbon dioxide – the greenhouse gas at the forefront of global warming and the climate crisis – accumulates in the atmosphere for 150-200 years once emitted, and continues to warm our planet. Preventing its emission, or reducing or sequestering its concentrations that are already accumulated in the atmosphere, will have a beneficial impact on reducing global temperatures or preventing a further rise in the same.
A niche technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS), has been in operation since the mid-1900s, deployed primarily by the oil and gas industry for a process known as enhanced oil recovery – where captured CO2 is injected into rock formations to extract more oil and gas. Today CCS has seen a profile shift, at least in optics, to being known as a climate solution – capturing CO2 and injecting it into geological reservoirs for storage theoretically returns the gas to its previous state, buried permanently underground (as it originally was when it was contained in coal, oil, and gas prior to their extraction).
This potential climate benefit of CCS technology has led to widespread hype, and the building in of CCS into climate projections and plans of both countries and emissions-intensive industries. This hype is grossly misplaced. Evidence on the ground has shown that CCS is failing both technically and financially. The world’s most authoritative climate science collective, the IPCC, in its Working Group III installation of the Sixth Assessment Report states that CCS has the highest cost and lowest possible contribution to net emission reduction in both energy and industry sectors among various climate mitigation measures. Where then does the confidence in its ability to deliver real emissions reduction stem from? My colleagues Tamanna Sengupta and Trishant Dev discuss this question, gathering some of the latest evidence on the underperformance of CCS plants worldwide.
On a related note, you can register here for CSE’s training programme ‘Demystifying Environmental and Sustainability Data for Effective Communication in the 21st Century’.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
By - Avantika Goswami
Climate Change, CSE
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| EXTREME WEATHER TRACKER |
| |
The year 2023 smashed several climate records, with some being ‘chart-busting’: WMO report, 19 March 2024
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
Climate crisis everywhere, all at once: Record-breaking temperature in 10 countries across 4 continents, 19 March 2024
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
CLIMATE NEWS | SCIENCE| IMPACTS| POLITICS |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
