Report: Dependence on carbon capture, storage ‘economically damaging’

A report by Oxford University says a high carbon capture and storage (CCS) pathway to net zero emissions in 2050 will cost at least $30 trillion — roughly $1 trillion per year.

Titled: ‘Assessing the relative costs of high-CCS and low-CCS pathways to 1.5 degrees’, the report provides a summary of the cost of fossil power with CCS over the last 40 years.

CCS would feature at the ongoing COP28 in Dubai, with major oil and gas producing countries expected to unveil shared carbon storage goals.

However, the report said rolling out CCS throughout the economy, rather than just in a few essential sectors, “makes little sense from a financial perspective”.

It said that heavy dependence on CCS to reach net zero targets around 2050 would be “hugely economically damaging”.

This, it said, would cost at least $30 trillion more than a route based on renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification.

According to the report, the cost of implementing CCS has not declined in forty years.

However, renewable technologies such as solar, wind, and batteries have “fallen in cost dramatically”.

The report said 70 percent of current CCS projects use captured carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery rather than storing it.

It said that governments putting CCS at the centre of their national decarbonisation plans, “risk putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage”.

Rupert Way, study author and honorary research associate at the Oxford Smith School, said some level of CCS will be necessary to achieve net zero.

Way said this should, however, be reserved for “essential use cases in hard to abate sectors”.

This, he said, is because renewables are cheaper than unabated fossil fuels and are expected to get even cheaper in future, further increasing their cost advantage.

“Relying on high levels of CCS as a blanket solution to facilitate the ongoing use of fossil fuels would cost society around a trillion dollars extra each year,” he said.

“It would be hugely economically damaging. Any hopes that the cost of CCS will decline in a similar way to renewable technologies like solar and batteries appear misplaced.

“Our findings indicate a lack of technological learning in any part of the process, from CO2 capture to burial, even though all elements of the chain have been in use for decades.”

Andrea Bacilieri, study co-author, said land use changes required by heavy reliance on biomass and CCS would threaten essential resources such as food and water.

“We found that land use requirements for energy crops are smaller in low-CCS pathways by 1.3 million square kilometres on average,” he said.

“The land use changes required by heavy reliance on biomass — often coupled with CCS — could also further pose risks to human rights, and put into jeopardy biodiversity and ecosystem services, deteriorating the resilience of our ecosystems.”