Response: Technology – capture & store CO2
CO2 pulled from the air – image: Climeworks
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Technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it…somewhere
Summary
- The world’s plan by 2050: remove 8 billion tons of CO2 every single year and put it back underground. But only about 0.1% is being removed by technologies.
In 2022, the world emitted 40.5 billion tonnes of CO2. At that rate, for every year of operation at its full potential, each CDR hub would take the atmosphere back in time by almost 13 minutes, but in the time it took to remove those 13 minutes of CO2, the world would have spewed another full year of CO2 into the atmosphere. If everyone on Earth planted a tree—8 billion trees—it would take us back in time by about 43 hours every year, once the trees had matured. Humanity has never removed an atmospheric pollutant at a global, continental or, even, regional scale—we have only ever shut down thesource and let nature do the clearing up. – Prof. David Ho, 2023
- This calculation is based only on what humans are releasing. It doesn’t include the staggering volume of greenhouse gases now being released by collapsing ecosystems.
- MIT breaks down the technical challenges in this November 2024 paper.
- The IPCC pathways assumed that CDR technology would be invented ‘spontaneously’. But some CDR tech sells CO2 as fuel, returning the CO2 back into the atmosphere: 70% of the captured CO2 is injected into depleted oil wells, to squeeze out the last few drops of oil, to keep us addicted to fossil fuels.
Don’t Fall for Big Oil’s Carbon Capture Deceptions: Carbon capture technology is a PR fig leaf designed to help Big Oil delay the phaseout of fossil fuels. – Scientific America, Dec. 2023
…it can be concluded that less than 10mtpa of CO2 was injected in 2023 – or 0.00026% of global energy-related emissions last year. The promotion of CCS (carbon capture and storage) by the fossil fuel sector aims to maintain business as usual, not to reduce production of oil and gas, meaning emissions of this scale will continue into the future.– 2024 Eefa Institute
- Carbon Brief summaries all the CO2 technologies and processes.
- CDRXIV is an online repository for preprint articles and datasets on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). It is free to submit content and free to use.
- Statista shows the capacity of operational large-scale carbon capture and storage facilities worldwide as of 2024.
- Pages on this website that explain the technology and strategies in more detail:
Other sections
Home > Climate wiki > Response >
Summary
- The world’s plan by 2050: remove 8 billion tons of CO2 every single year and put it back underground. But only about 0.1% is being removed by technologies.
In 2022, the world emitted 40.5 billion tonnes of CO2. At that rate, for every year of operation at its full potential, each CDR hub would take the atmosphere back in time by almost 13 minutes, but in the time it took to remove those 13 minutes of CO2, the world would have spewed another full year of CO2 into the atmosphere. If everyone on Earth planted a tree—8 billion trees—it would take us back in time by about 43 hours every year, once the trees had matured. Humanity has never removed an atmospheric pollutant at a global, continental or, even, regional scale—we have only ever shut down thesource and let nature do the clearing up. – Prof. David Ho, 2023
- This calculation is based only on what humans are releasing. It doesn’t include the staggering volume of greenhouse gases now being released by collapsing ecosystems.
- MIT breaks down the technical challenges in this November 2024 paper.
- The IPCC pathways assumed that CDR technology would be invented ‘spontaneously’. But some CDR tech sells CO2 as fuel, returning the CO2 back into the atmosphere: 70% of the captured CO2 is injected into depleted oil wells, to squeeze out the last few drops of oil, to keep us addicted to fossil fuels.
Don’t Fall for Big Oil’s Carbon Capture Deceptions: Carbon capture technology is a PR fig leaf designed to help Big Oil delay the phaseout of fossil fuels. – Scientific America, Dec. 2023
…it can be concluded that less than 10mtpa of CO2 was injected in 2023 – or 0.00026% of global energy-related emissions last year. The promotion of CCS (carbon capture and storage) by the fossil fuel sector aims to maintain business as usual, not to reduce production of oil and gas, meaning emissions of this scale will continue into the future.– 2024 Eefa Institute
- Carbon Brief summaries all the CO2 technologies and processes.
- Statista shows the capacity of operational large-scale carbon capture and storage facilities worldwide as of 2024.
- CDRXIV is an online repository for preprint articles and datasets on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). It is free to submit content and free to use.
- Pages on this website that explain the technology and strategies in more detail:
