Is 2023 the year when carbon capture and storage finally takes off?

(EurActiv, 10 May 2023) The European Commission has finally acknowledged the absence of carbon capture and storage (CCS) from its emissions-reduction strategy but much remains to be done, writes Chris Davies.

Chris Davies is the director of CCS Europe. He was the European Parliament’s CCS rapporteur in 2008-2009 and 2013-2014.

It has been a long time coming but the European Commission has at last recognised that it has a gaping hole at the heart of its climate policy.

The absence of carbon capture and storage (CCS) from its emissions-reduction strategy has left it without a credible means of achieving its CO2 net-zero ambition, and this despite the authoritative voice of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) many times insisting that the technology will be needed.

But acceptance is now taking the place of reluctance, targets are being set, and the outline of a CCS deployment strategy is starting to take shape.

The Commission’s past reluctance may have grown from the sense that involvement with CCS was a career killer.

It was as long ago as January 2007 that the Commission made a promise to design a mechanism to stimulate the construction and operation by 2015 of up to 12 large-scale CCS demonstration projects. Not a single one has even been started since then, let alone completed.

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EurActiv, 10 May 2023: Is 2023 the year when carbon capture and storage finally takes off?