Feasible deployment trajectories of carbon capture and storage compared to the requirements of climate targets

Abstract

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) including its negative emission applications play a key role in climate change mitigation. Recent industry plans indicate an eight-fold increase in capacity by 2030, yet the feasibility of rapidly upscaling CCS is debated due to past failures and long-term storage constraints. Here we re-focus this debate on the feasibility of CCS growth in the near-term by constructing plausible ranges of its deployment based on empirical evidence from CCS and other policy-driven technologies. We show that under the most optimistic assumptions of near-term industry plans and their failure rates, CCS can reach 0.37 Gt/year by 2030. While this growth would fall short of three-quarters of 1.5°C scenarios, it would keep CCS on-track for over half of 2°C scenarios. Beyond 2030, staying on-track for 2°C requires that CCS accelerates as fast as wind power did historically and expands despite the shrinking carbon market in a climate-constrained world.