Carbon capture & storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been promoted as a means to ‘decarbonize’ fossil fuels by removing and storing the CO₂ during the production of energy.

CCS is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants and storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Technology for large scale capture of CO₂ is already commercially available and fairly well developed. Although CO₂ has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO₂ is a relatively untried concept and as yet (2007) no large scale power plant operates with a full carbon capture and storage system.

Whilst CCS may play an important role in reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the future, there are currently too many unanswered questions for it to be considered an immediate solution. This is particularly true for marine sequestration, storage in the open ocean, open acquifiers, lakes or on the sea floor.