Missed this interesting article in Morning Consult first published on December 9 of last year. It provides a summary of the Global CCS Institute’s annual global status report on carbon capture technologies. Some highlights:
- Nineteen operating, large-scale CCS projects currently dot the globe, 10 of which are in the United States;
- More than 25 million metric tons of CO2 were stored over the year through CCS;
- The year also marked the launch of the Gorgon project off Australia’s coast which, once fully operational, is expected to store 3.4 to 4 million metric tons of carbon annually, making it the largest dedicated geological storage facility to date;
- In terms of capture and storage capacity, the pipeline for CCS projects worldwide ticked up again in 2019 by 37 percent from 2017, continuing a growth trend since that date after seven years of decline that the report attributes to the global financial crisis, which resulted in market uncertainty and reduced CCS investments;
- To date, there are at least 42 CCS facilities in the United States have been completed or are in operation, construction or advanced development, including pilots and test centers, according to the institute. Those projects span enhanced oil recovery, enhanced coal bed methane recovery, dedicated geological storage and other projects.
This is good news because fossil fuels continue to be a major provider of energy worldwide. We need these advanced technologies to allow fossil fuels to provide reliable and affordable energy into the future.