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Carbon capture and storage development has stalled worldwide and needs urgent policy action to get back on track, according to a review by the Global CCS Institute.
The number of projects in the planning stages has fallen by nearly a third since 2010 to just 45. Over the same period, the total under construction or running increased from 12 to 20 schemes.
The Institute said existing CCS plant were preventing the release of 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, equivalent to taking about 12 million cars off European roads.
However, CEO Brad Page said momentum was too slow for CCS to “play its full part in tackling climate change at lowest cost”.
He added: “Of concern is that no new projects were identified in Europe, nor are any under construction. Accordingly, what we need globally are technology neutral policies that provide sufficient incentives for projects to develop robust long-term business cases and attract the private funding needed.”
The report also revealed limitations in the types of project securing investment, with the majority so far relying on income from using the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery. All operational projects capture emissions from natural gas processing or industry, with the first two full-scale power generation demonstrations expected to open in North America next year.
The UK’s White Rose and Peterhead power CCS projects are among five that could reach an investment decision in the next 12 months.
Myles Allen, a professor at Oxford University, said: “Fossil fuels are useful, plentiful and affordable, so of course we will continue to use them. To exploit this resource to the full, without further damaging the planet, we need CCS.
“The latest IPCC report confirms that, to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, we need to limit the total amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere to less than one trillion tonnes, more than half of which has been released already. Existing reserves would take us over this limit – and we keep finding more.
“We will eventually need large-scale CCS – no two ways about it. And it would be far safer, and cheaper, to deploy this technology steadily as we approach the limit than to deploy it in a panic in 30 years’ time.”
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