The world is confronting a climate emergency. Avoiding climate catastrophe requires immediate and dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are possible only with a significant investment of public resources in proven mitigation measures, beginning with eliminating fossil fuel use and halting deforestation.
Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, and carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, are processes designed to collect or “capture” carbon dioxide generated by high-emitting activities and then transport those captured emissions to sites where they are used for industrial processes or stored underground. While both are proposed as technologies to meet global energy and climate goals, CCS and CCUS will not address these core drivers of the climate crisis or meaningfully reduce greenhouse emissions, and should not distract from real climate solutions.
Confronting the Myth of Carbon-Free Fossil Fuels: Why Carbon Capture is Not a Climate Solution examines how CCS and CCUS technologies are not only unnecessary for the rapid transformation required to keep warming under 1.5°C but how they delay that transformation, providing the fossil fuel industry with a license to continue polluting.
Sections include:
- CCS Isn’t Carbon Negative, or Even Carbon Neutral
- Large-Scale CCS is Neither Viable for Necessary
- Even for the Hard-to-Decarbonize Industrial Sector, CCS is not the Answer
- CCS Perpetuates Fossil Fuel Systems and Impacts
- CCS Poses a Growing and Poorly Understood Threat to Communities and the Environment
Read the full briefing.