By Ajmal Khan A.T, National Law University of India and Harvard University
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is emerging as one of the major global climate solutions. Currently, CCS technologies are mostly used by oil corporations to keep extracting more oil and are highly expensive despite the global push for large scale technological innovations. However, the COP28 marked a significant positive rebranding of CCS technologies as a climate solution by the fossil industry and allied parties. This essay looks at how COP 28 made a significant push for CCS where it not only made it into the official UNFCCC documents, but also into the imagination of the attendees as a much accepted climate solution.
Carbon Capture and Storage has been a central concept in the arsenal of strategies to combat anthropogenic climate change globally. CCS is defined as the possibility of capturing the atmospheric carbon that human sources have emitted for it to be stored and then kept in the ground or in the deep ocean. This might sound like a brilliant idea; however, it implies a continuation of fossil fuels’ use or the business as usual emissions. Thus, CCS can undermine coordinated efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, CCS technologies are mostly used by oil corporations to extract more oil, through a process known as enhanced oil recovery. In the US nearly all CCS projects are enhanced recovery projects that continue to put more CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Another method that is gaining popularity is direct air capture, where CO2 is directly taken from air and dissolved in water. However, this has already proven wildly expensive, though it may become affordable over the years.
The lingering concern in this context is the limited time we have to limit the Earth’s warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius according to the IPCC scenarios. This measure needs immediate actualization in the form of emissions reductions across all sectors. In this context, scientists and environmental advocates have called for phasing out of fossil fuels and more investments in renewables, instead of a continued investment in CCS. A section of scientists have suggested that CCS is a dangerous distraction from the concrete and urgent global climate goals, as well as a threat to the progress being made at some fronts in the fight against climate change. In 2023 CCS became part of the solutions pushed by certain countries by the end of the 58th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, and subsequently part of the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC, 2023.
COP28 and Dubai Push for CCS
Though the participation of the fossil fuel industry is increasing in each COP meeting, COP28 was particularly criticized for its presidency itself and the higher number of participants from the fossil fuel industry. In the COP28, out of around 85000 participants, nearly 2500 participants were connected to the fossil fuel industry, and independent analysis shows that approximately 475 were carbon capture lobbyists. Various organizations, countries, networks, groups, campaigns, and events advocated for CCS through different means during COP28. For example, ExxonMobile’s CEO Darren Woods, a prominent CCS lobbyist, attended COP 28 as a guest of the UAE and spoke against the International Energy Agency’s latest report, which stated that large-scale carbon capture as a solution is not currently a feasible solution. ExxonMobile has a well-known documented history of leading coordinated campaigns against the science of climate change.
Another example that illustrates how actors related to the fossil fuel industry advocated for CCS during COP 28 was the presence of the Clean Resource Innovation Network (CRIN). In their stall, located in the green zone of COP, CRIN promoters introduced the initiative as a network that unites Canada’s oil and gas industry, innovators, technology vendors, academia, research institutes, financiers, and government. Their pavilion ran events exclusively centered on CCS developments. The International CCS Knowledge Centre introduces itself as an organization with a passion to accelerate the global deployment of carbon capture and storage. This organization was part of several side events pushing CCS in the Blue Zone.
Other prominent organizations and networks that were advocating for CCS directly at COP were Carbon Capture and Storage Association with offices in the UK and Belgium, the Gulf Coast Carbon Center based in Texas, United States, and the Bellona Foundation based in Oslo, Norway. These networks of organizations, a collaboration of techno-optimists who believe big investments will make costs of CCS come down dramatically, ran side events across COP 28. They were supported by climate central planners –the transnational technocratic and climate policy elites evolved through UNFCCC processes who argue CCS is indispensable– and oil corporations who are waiting for big subsidies to support their ongoing CCS projects. Together, they champion ideas such as the belief that society has technologies available for atmospheric carbon capture and they will be indispensable to our fight against climate change. This stance emphasizes that while CCS offers immediate remedies, our current pace of innovation and investment falls short. Consequently, urgent acceleration towards CCS deployment is imperative, necessitating substantial and urgent mobilization of public and private funds. Thus, their argument is to fund and support the oil corporations that are already engaged in CCS. However, this strategy risks not only forfeiting immediate, large-scale emission reductions but also sends a perilous message that persisting at current emission levels is acceptable.
As the host country of COP28, UAE put unprecedented efforts to make the COP meeting historic. One of these efforts was showcasing their innovative initiatives and spirit. Dubai Future Foundation, an organization that is part of the government of Dubai, introduced itself as an organization that works on understanding possible future scenarios for Dubai, and the world. According to their website, this organization supports decision-makers in understanding emerging technologies to better anticipate and navigate possible futures. This foundation had many billboards, particularly in the green zone which was open to the public. These advertisement boards presented innovative and solution-oriented questions to visitors. For example, “What if we could absorb greenhouse gas emissions and particulate matter on demand anywhere in the world?”
The strategy of having signboards with such questions to make the audience curious about the innovative possibilities of CCS was present in both green and blue zones in Dubai. If visitors were not critically aware of the shortcomings of CCS technologies, and of different IPCC alternatives to keep the planet below 1.5 degrees, the signs could significantly induce participants to overestimate CCS techniques while undervaluing other alternatives.
One example of this was the conversation I had with one friend who was visiting me at the COP28. My friend is a highly educated professional working in Dubai. I asked him what he thought about the possibilities of CCS technologies to solve climate change. He said, “This might be a cool idea. Don’t you feel so? We have done unimaginable things with technological innovation, so why can’t we?” I explained to him the complexities of CCS and the IPCC scenarios. He suggested there should be much more innovations and investments in these kinds of technologies. How do these messages get across to an audience that might not have a deep understanding of climate change and the kind of complexities that exist within the solutions?
There were many countries directly or indirectly pushing for CCS at COP28. Among the country pavilions, one of the noticeable examples was Saudi Arabia’s pavilion, where state officials demonstrated a few models of the Co2 direct air capture machines by Aramco, the state-owned petroleum and natural gas company, and the national oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
A direct air capture machine model kept at Saudi Arabia’s country pavilion at COP28 Dubai. Photo Credit: Author.
According to Aramco’s personnel, the company has just opened its biggest CCS hub in Jubail, a city in the Eastern province of the country aimed to capture and store 9 MtCO2 emissions per year by 2027. This amount represents a key part of Saudi Arabia’s interim sequestration target of 44 MtCO2 per year by 2035. The COP28 was a venue for the Saudi government and Aramco to demonstrate their progress with CCS.
The final agreement reached at the COP28 was considered a significant step forward. For the first time, the UNFCCC process document acknowledged the need to phase-out of fossil fuels. Two major clauses that became part of the outcome document from COP28 talked about CCS. The first was “Accelerating efforts towards the phase down of unabated coal power”.In the context of coal power generation, abatement means the use of CCS and Utilizations and Storage (CCUS) technologies. So in converse, unabated coal here means coal power plant without the use of CC(U)S technology equipment. The second was “Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies including inter alia renewables, nuclear, abetment and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, particularly in hard to abate sectors, and low carbon hydrogen production”. These two clauses from COP28 provide direction for the CCS technology development and expansion with massive public and private funding in years to follow.
COP meetings are not only the UN space for global climate action but also a space where public and private funds for climate actions are mobilized. Despite multiple scientific evidence against the effectiveness of the CSS at this point of the climate crisis, primarily led by the push from the fossil fuel industry, networks set up by them, the climate innovation industry, and central climate planners, CCS has made it into the UNFCCC-led global actions against climate change. This emphasis is expected to generate more public and private funding for CCS and related technologies and innovation that will mostly be seized by oil corporations. In the year 2023 from the 58th session of the IPCC meeting in Switzerland to the COP28 meeting in Dubai, CCS has become a positive and more accepted climate solution. Despite the announcement that the COP28’s main outcome was a concrete beginning of the end of fossil fuels, it was in reality, a step toward the broad acceptance of CCS as a positive climate solution. Though most climate activists call CCS as a false climate solution, opposition against the CCS has not yet gained momentum other than isolated voices opposing it visibly on posters and placards with “No CCS” at COP28.
A month after the conclusion of COP28, the World Meteorological Organization officially confirmed that 2023 is by far the warmest year on record. The annual average global temperature was 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900) in 2023. This once again calls for the importance of proven climate solutions such as immediate emission cuts and faster transition to renewables. CCS may or may not become cheaper, but there are serious concerns about the viability of CCS as a solution at this point of the climate crisis. However, the capture of events like COP meetings by the fossil fuel and allied interests pushed CCS to the center and it became a broadly accepted climate solution endorsed by the UNFCCC. In conclusion, I suggest that what is needed is a much broader collective scientific, political, and policy conversation on whether the kind of push and investment for CCS will be effective at this point or instead focus more aggressively on much proven already available climate solutions other than CCS. These conversations should also address who benefits from the investments in CCS technologies, why CCS is being pushed, ‘who’ and ‘what’ are the kinds of interests behind this, and what could be the potential risks in shifting the focus from the emission cuts and transition to renewables.
Ajmal Khan A.T is a multidisciplinary scholar of the environment, development, and climate change. He is currently a visiting Assistant Professor at the National Law University of India, Bangalore, India and a fellow at Harvard University. His collaborative work was cited by the contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.
