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Carbon capture rollout will hit global policy gap

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Subject

Carbon capture and storage technology.

Significance

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered critical to achieving the ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. CCS technology would allow power plants and industrial facilities to continue burning fossil fuels without pumping climate change-inducing gases into the atmosphere. However, deployment of CCS has been slow and the prospect of meeting the expectations placed upon it by the Paris climate negotiators is moving further out of scope. The recent cancellation of the Kemper CCS project in the United States is a bad sign for the future of the technology.

Impacts

  • Without faster deployment of CCS, many countries will struggle to meet their Paris Agreement emissions reduction pledges.
  • If the rollout of CCS continues to falter, more wind and solar power will be needed to reduce carbon emissions.
  • Absent a viable CCS model, it will be even more difficult to replace aged coal plants in the United States and other developed economies.

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