The necessity for action is critical. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, declared in its 2022 report that increasing temperatures had already caused permanent harm to the world and increased human death and sickness. Meanwhile, CO2 emissions continue to increase. According to the US Energy Information Administration, if present policy and economic trends continue, yearly global CO2 emissions might climb from over 34 billion metric tonnes in 2020 to nearly 43 billion by 2050.
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is a solution for mitigating climate change that the IPCC has long identified as having “substantial” potential. CCS, which has been around since the 1970s, captures CO2 via smokestacks or ambient air and transfers it underground for irreversible sequestration. According to the Global CCS Institute, there are currently 27 CCS plants operating throughout the world, with 12 in the United States, storing an estimated 36 million tonnes of carbon each year. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act contains $3.5 billion in funds for four new direct capture facilities in the United States.
Instead of simply keeping it, the collected carbon may be utilised to produce things. For the very first occasion this year, the IPCC added carbon capture and utilisation, or CCU, to its list of alternatives for reducing atmospheric carbon. CCU collects CO2 and integrates it into carbon-containing products such as cement, jet fuel, and plastic raw materials. CCU, which is still in the early phases of development and commercialization, has the potential to cut yearly greenhouse gas emissions by 20 billion tonnes by 2050 – and over half of the world’s current emissions, according to the IPCC.
According to chemist and global CCU specialist Peter Styring of the University of Sheffield in England, such recognition was a significant triumph for a movement that has battled to emerge from the shadow of its more recognised cousin, CCS. Many CCU-related businesses are sprouting up and partnering with one another and governments from all over the world, he says.
CCU’s possibilities is “enormous,” including both terms of volume and monetary value, according to mechanical engineer Volker Sick, who spoke at a CCU conference in Brussels in April. Sick runs the Global CO2 Initiative at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, which advocates CCU as a mainstream climate solution.
“We’re not talking about something that’s nice to do but doesn’t move the needle. It moves the needle in many, many aspects.”
mechanical engineer Volker Sick at a CCU
News source: Crucial news global
Image credits:IEA
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