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The world emits 20 gigatonnes of CO鈧� each year from burning fossil fuels in industrial processes and power plants. Carbon capture and storage or 鈥淐CS鈥� has been demonstrated at scale, including Shell鈥檚 Quest project in Alberta which has permanently stored more than one million tonnes of CO鈧� per year for in a deep saline aquifer, since launch in 2015 [1].

Beyond a few commercial demonstrations, there has been little deployment of CCS [2] beyond its use for enhanced oil recovery. It does represent an added cost for decarbonization. Many other solutions including improved energy efficiency, substitution of renewable energy for fossil fuels, and offsets offered by nature are often assessed to be lower cost (Figure ET-21), but this is not always true where 24/7 operation and permanent storage is considered.

CCS provides an opportunity to capture and permanently store emissions from existing assets used for power generation or industrial manufacturing. An optimal approach for decarbonization is to look at all options and choose the best solution to provide reliability and reduce emissions at lowest total cost. When we calculate a levelized cost of CO鈧� abatement, carbon capture and storage can be an attractive option for permanently sequestering carbon emitted from difficult to decarbonize industries which we rely upon to provide our standard of living.

References

1. Quest project, Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies @ MIT.

2. International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives 2022: Special Report on Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage CCUS in clean energy transitions.

3. F. Kesicki and P. Ekins (McKinsey), Marginal abatement cost curves: a call for caution, Climate Policy, 2012, 12, 219鈥�236.

Figure ET-21: Marginal CO鈧� abatement costs for various decarbonization options [3]. Currently, one Euro equals 1.2 US dollars (8/2025).