Carbon capture and storage gets a bad rap from its associations with ‘clean coal’. But the technology could prove vital in cutting emissions from other industries like steel, cement and chemicals.
The idea of clean coal has been around for 40 years, but remains a pipe dream.
A political sign in West Virginia reflects the claim that the Obama administration, by developing policies to reduce carbon emission, was waging a campaign against the industry.
Vicki Smith/AP Photo
Despite advances in technology, carbon capture and storage could be unsettled by renewable upstarts.
The test site in Iceland where gases from a geothermal power plant are pumped underground and converted into minerals by reacting with basalt stone.
Juerg Matter
Storing waste CO2 in rock? Results from a test site at a geothermal plant in Iceland show that CO2 mixed with water can be turned into minerals in locations with basalt volcanic rock.
Iceland’s geothermal power plants are an ideal place to test pumping carbon dioxide underground.
Dom Wolff-Boenisch
New analysis reveals carbon capture at coal power plants is significantly more expensive than thought, making renewables and natural gas power generation more attractive.
For more than a decade the coal industry’s favoured response to climate change was carbon capture and storage, or CCS. CCS is still the main defence, but the absence of functioning projects is making it ever more threadbare.
Replanting forests is one way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is a site in China.
CIFOR/Flickr
New research shows that we’ll have to remove carbon from the atmosphere for any chance of keeping warming below 2C.
Countries should make pledges to fund low-carbon research - such as developing solar technology - and development as part of global climate talks.
University of Salford Press Office/Flickr
Countries will take emissions reduction pledges to international climate talks in Paris at the end of this year. Those pledges should also include funds for low-carbon R&D.
Another way to change the carbon balance: trees.
Neil Palmer/CIAT for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).
Divestment campaigns aim to halt the use of fossil fuels, but the climate can be also stabilized through ‘recarbonization’ techniques, such as reforestation and changing agricultural practices.