In Charts: Are oil producers derailing COP28 discussions with talk of carbon capture?

The extent to which carbon capture can or should be relied on to reduce emissions is central to COP28 negotiations

Major oil producers, including COP28 host nation the United Arab Emirates, say carbon capture and storage will reduce the environmental effects of continued fossil fuel use, while opponents insist that despite years of promises, the technology remains largely unproven and extremely costly. Further, an emphasis on its potential role as a climate solution could delay a rapid reduction in fossil fuels, which science shows is necessary if global warming is to be held to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. 

The 2023 status report from the Global CCS Institute, a pro-CCS think-tank, shows the number of CCS projects and their capacity has seen year-on-year growth since 2017. In 2023, projects in development and construction brought total global capture capacity to 361mn tonnes a year, an increase of 50 per cent compared with 2022.

However, even with this growth, the carbon dioxide captured is a tiny amount compared with growing global emissions. Data from the Global Carbon Project predicts global CO₂ emissions will reach an annual total of 36.8bn tonnes by the end of 2023.

The Global CCS Institute says recent policy developments, notably the US Inflation Reduction Act, have “enabled the potential of CCS project investment to accelerate”. The group estimates that the IRA could increase CCS deployment in the US by 200 million tonnes per annum to 250 mtpa of CO₂ by 2030.

Indeed, promises to grow CCS abound worldwide. The EU’s Net Zero Industry Act aims to have 50 mtpa of CO₂ storage developed by 2030, and there is CCS movement afoot in Asia.

In June 2023, the state-owned Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security announced financial support for seven CCS facilities. Japan’s CCS Long-Term Roadmap, announced in January 2023, also sets a target for the first commercial CCS facilities to commence operation by 2030 on a trajectory towards 240 mtpa of CO₂ stored by 2050. 

The People’s Bank of China offers financial support for CCS development through the carbon emission reduction facility, which is uncapped and has a Rmb300bn ($42bn) targeted relending quota for the “clean and efficient” use of coal. Three CCS projects became operational in 2023 in China.

Slower than expected

The International Energy Agency says CCS should play a role in emissions reduction, but a relatively limited one. In its 2021 “Net zero by 2050” report, the IEA says CCS should capture 1.5bn tonnes of CO₂ in 2030, and 6bn tonnes by 2050.

The report specifies that the technology should be mostly used for high-emission industries, such as cement making, which are facing challenges in transitioning to cleaner processes that do not use fossil fuels, though progress is happening.

In 2020, the IEA predicted the power sector would account for around 40 per cent of all captured CO₂ by 2070, while 25 per cent of captured emissions would come from heavy industry, 30 per cent from the production of hydrogen, ammonia and biofuels, and 7 per cent from direct air capture.

Yet, in an update of its “Net zero roadmap”, published in September, the IEA says CCS will play a smaller role “in reducing emissions from fossil fuel power plants” than previously predicted because of “slower technological and market development progress than envisaged”. The updated scenario says that currently announced carbon capture, usage and storage projects to be built ahead of 2030 would only provide around 40 per cent of global capture capacity needed by 2030 to keep in line with net zero by 2050.

There is currently only one coal-fired power plant using CCS worldwide. The Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada, began using CCS in 2014. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a non-profit, says the project has constantly underperformed. Since opening it has “barely achieved [50 per cent capture] on any single day and has never done so over any extended period”, a report by the IEEFA says. SaskPower, which operates the Boundary Dam Power Station, has not disclosed why the plant has underperformed and has not replied to Sustainable Views’ request for comment.

In August, Canadian oil company Whitecap Resources announced a purchase agreement with SaskPower to buy captured CO₂ from the Boundary Dam CCS project until December 2034. The CO₂ will be used for oil recovery at Whitecap’s Weyburn project, one of Saskatchewan’s oldest oilfields.

“In addition to being wildly unrealistic as a climate solution, based on historical trajectories much of this captured carbon [from Boundary Dam] will be used for enhanced oil recovery,” says IEEFA investment analyst Bruce Robertson in a statement.

Carbon capture lobby

Research from think-tank InfluenceMap, published in December, shows that more than 80 per cent of corporate advocacy in favour of CCS is not aligned with science-based net zero targets, such as those outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Oil and gas companies continue to dominate advocacy for the use of CCS, with trade associations including the Australian Energy Producers, the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the American Petroleum Institute having been particularly active lobbyers, InfluenceMap says. 

“Oil and gas companies have been doing everything they can to avoid concrete action to phase out fossil fuels — including by pushing for carbon capture and storage,” says InfluenceMap senior analyst Sofia Basheer in a statement. “If governments can’t agree on a science-based plan to get to net zero, and fossil fuels remain a significant part of the equation, the oil and gas industries will have won a major victory.” 

Sultan al-Jaber, COP28 president and chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, has also been a vocal advocate of CCS ahead of the conference. Jaber has promoted CCS as a means of facilitating a phase-down instead of a phase-out of fossil fuels.

During an online event on November 21, he told former UN climate envoy Mary Robinson that there is “no science” showing a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to limit global warming to 1.5C. “Show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he added.

During a press conference at COP28 this week, Jaber insisted: “I respect the science in everything I do.” 

Environmental campaigners are also concerned about the record number of fossil fuel lobbyists that were admitted to this year’s COP and the influence they may be having on how negotiators decide to treat CCS in the final text.

Jamal Srouji, an associate in the World Resources Institute’s Global Climate Program, said at a press conference on Tuesday that “language about a limited role for CCS” is not in this week’s draft “global stocktake” text, which will form the basis for the final COP28 agreement.

Analysis from think-tank Global Witness, published on December 4, shows 2,456 fossil fuel representatives are present at COP28, a delegation larger than that sent by all countries except the 3,081 people brought by Brazil, and host UAE, which has 4,409 people in attendance.

“Big polluters’ poisonous presence has bogged us down for years, keeping us from advancing the pathways needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They are the reason COP28 is clouded in a fog of climate denial, not climate reality,” said Alexia Leclercq, co-founder of non-profit Start:Empowerment, responding to the findings.

‘No room for greenwashing’

Environmentalists are not the only ones insisting that a fossil fuel phase-out should mean exactly that. Ahead of the UN climate conference, former US vice-president Al Gore told The Guardian a commitment to the phase-out of fossil fuels would be the “one measure of success for COP28”.

Meanwhile, UN secretary-general António Guterres said in a statement this week: “Science is clear: we need to phase out fossil fuels within a timeframe compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C. There must be no room for greenwashing.”

The High Ambition Alliance of 15 countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, has also cautioned against over-reliance on CCS. “We cannot use [abatement technologies] to green-light fossil fuel expansion,” the group said in a December statement calling for the phase-out of fossil fuels.

Critics have also raised concerns about the costs associated with reliance on CCS.

A study published this week by Oxford University found that adopting CCS across many polluting sectors would cost $30tn more than a low-CCS scenario. High-CCS pathways used in the study mitigate about half of today’s emissions in 2050 with CCS, and low-CCS pathways about one-tenth.

Meanwhile, the IEA’s “stated policies scenario”, based on the prevailing direction of the energy transition and updated in August 2023, found that reaching net zero emissions through the use of CCS and direct air capture while polluting as usual would require the capture of 32bn tonnes of CO₂ emissions by 2050, including 23bn tonnes through DAC.

DAC captures emissions directly from the air, rather than from a power or industrial plant, and is phenomenally expensive. The technology costs between $125 and $335 a tonne of CO₂ for a large-scale plant built today, according to IEA predictions. The World Resources Institute puts this figure as high as $600 a tonne. Conventional carbon capture for industrial processes costs around $15 to $25 a tonne of CO₂ to produce highly concentrated CO₂ streams, or $40 to $120 a tonne for dilute gas streams, the IEA says.

Analysis of the IEA data by non-profit the European Climate Foundation found that reaching 23bn tonnes of DAC would require 26,000 terawatt hours of electricity, more than the current total global electricity demand. It calculated that reaching net zero emissions in this way would be 50 per cent more expensive than in the IEA’s net zero scenario, which prioritises an increase in renewable capacity and a phase-out of fossil fuels.

“While it can be helpful at the margins, CCS cannot possibly deliver reductions in greenhouse gas emissions on the scale needed to avert climate disaster,” ECF chief executive Laurence Tubiana commented on the platform X.

This article was amended after publication to include research by Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.