IEA Says Carbon Capture and Storage Plans Have Lost Momentum Worldwide

Projects to capture CO2 emissions and bury them are finding it hard to secure funds due to a weak global economy and the lack of carbon pricing.

Vattenfall Carbon capture and storage facility in Scwarze pumpe, Germany/Credit: Vattenfall

The financial crisis and fading government support for climate action have seriously eroded global plans to capture and store carbon, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned last week. Sequestration—the depositing of greenhouse gases underground rather than into the atmosphere—was supposed to account for a fifth of the world's emissions reductions under the agency's roadmap for keeping global temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. But delegates including the U.S. energy secretary, Steven Chu, heard at a meeting, held in Beijing, that the global temperature is on course to rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius, due to poor progress both on carbon capture and storage, and on acceptance of a carbon price and other carbon-cutting efforts.