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As human activity and climate change increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean, harming coral reefs and marine life, researchers have designed a new technology using aqueous sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate to remove carbon dioxide from ocean water, helping reverse acidification and reduce global warming. “It took years to pull this off experimentally,” said Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering. “So it was super rewarding to see when the experimental results finally matched our model[s].” Hornbostel pursued developing the technology five years ago, when there was minimal research or funding for capturing carbon dioxide from the ocean, she said. There are two models, one using microencapsulated solvents made of sodium carbonate and another using hollow fiber membrane contactors containing sodium hydroxide. The two models are different from one another in geometry but function the same way, Hornbostel said. For the first model Hornbostel, along with Assistant Professor Tagbo Niepa from Swanson’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, developed capsules carrying a solvent made of the sodium solution. Niepa said he initially designed the capsules as an assessment tool for scanning the human body but was able to rework them as vehicles to decarbonize the ocean. Hornbostel said the capsules are like extremely tiny caviar beads, containing the sodium carbonate liquid for the carbon dioxide to react with. “So you want to pack a lot of these little beads” into the capillary tubes for the seawater to flow over so that there’s “a ton of points of contact,” Horbonstel said. “More CO2” will pass through and diffuse “from one to the other capsule because basically it wants to react with the liquid inside of the capsules.” The sodium capsules can be regenerated by steaming it to 100 to 120 degrees Celsius which would allow the captured carbon dioxide to be removed and placed in storage, the paper says. Regeneration also allows for the capsules to be reused again to capture more carbon dioxide in future cycles. The “hollow fiber membrane” allows seawater to enter and react with the sodium hydroxide solvents in the cylindrical capsules. The membrane allows a mass transfer of seawater to react with the solvent, Hornbostel said. The hollow fiber membrane is made of a flexible polymer similar to polypropylene that allows gas to pass through it, but not liquids or ions. “We are the first team to our knowledge to demonstrate CO2 removal from seawater using a membrane contactor with a CO2 solvent,” the research team’s paper says. Horbostel said having a high surface area for the seawater is significant, because it allows for diluted carbon dioxide to be removed from the water faster. “Mass transfer scales directly with surface area, so if you double the surface area of a membrane, it will double the rate that carbon dioxide crosses it,” she said. Seawater “has high concentrations of bound CO2 … that can potentially be accessed” through direct ocean capture technology, the paper says. “Additionally, seawater is 1,000 times denser than air, which could result in a smaller system size.” Direct ocean capture, the paper says, “could also potentially be performed offshore” on an abandoned oil platform, for example, to avoid using land space, and be co-located with offshore wind and/or offshore storage” of captured CO2 gas. Ensuring the technology works at a larger scale in the ocean at an affordable cost is challenging but not impossible, Hornbostel said. She and the team will examine ways to increase the pH of ocean water, which enables the release of more carbon dioxide. Although still in the planning stages, the model can be placed offshore in a region recognized to have a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the ocean, Hornbostel said. “As the largest part of Earth’s natural carbon cycle, the ocean has an enormous potential to contribute to carbon dioxide removal at the gigaton-scale required,” David Koweek, chief scientist at nonprofit OceanVisions and expert on Hornbostel’s work, said. “Yet much of this potential remains unrealized because of low levels of research and development into ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technologies.” Hornbostel’s paper says that 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide must be removed from the environment each year by 2050 to ensure the global temperature does not rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the most ambitious goal of the 2050 Paris climate agreement. Studies show the ocean covers over 70 percent of Earth’s surface and has absorbed approximately 25 percent of carbon dioxide due to human activity. The ocean and atmosphere seek equilibrium by constantly exchanging carbon dioxide and various other gasses. Because carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere and ocean are linked, Hornbostel said carbon capture technology works in both the oceans and the atmosphere. “Our technology can be thought of as ‘indirect air capture’ because the ocean will take more carbon dioxide out of the air above it to replace the carbon dioxide that we’re removing.” Hornbostel said. Once carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches the ocean, it dissolves into a carbonic acid, lowering the pH level of the ocean to make it more acidic and therefore less habitable for marine life, according to the U.S Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Administration. Peter Petraitis, professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania, has seen a correlation between increased dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean and a decline in mussels and gastropods in the Gulf of Maine over the last two decades. Petraitis and his team have continued to collect data since their study was published in 2020 and noticed gastropodes are declining at a far greater rate than hypothesized. “Water temperatures are going up and [gastropods] are declining so the correlation is pretty strong,” Petraitis said. Petraitis’s research found that the Gulf of Maine suffers from low pH and faster warming than 99.9 percent of all global oceans, and as time progresses, it will become less capable of mitigating the effects of ocean acidification. The current pH level of the global ocean is at approximately 8.1, a drop of 0.1 since the start of the Industrial Revolution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The subtle change in pH level is alarming, Hornbostel said, as one pH unit decrease equates to ten times increase in acidity. The mild acid formed when carbon dioxide dissolves in water neutralizes calcium carbonate and bicarbonate, which corals and other invertebrates use to build their hard shells and skeletons. Hornbostel’s team’s research found that its technology is promising but will require building capsules in large batches and investigating how the technology can be combined to work with existing infrastructure, like desalination facilities. Their paper calls for more research into seawater carbon dioxide capture technology, which is imperative given the rapid warming and acidification of the oceans.

*CDR = Carbon Dioxide Removal, DAC = Direct Air Capture, IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN = United Nations, COP28 = Conference of the Parties 28

Carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere reached an all-time high last year—424 parts per million. That is likely the highest level since three million years ago, when trees grew in the polar regions and sea levels were up to twenty meters higher. Meanwhile, scientists warn that unless heating caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is contained, the planet is hurtling toward a catastrophic increase in global average temperatures. That could affect ocean circulation, unleash sustained sea level rise, and kill coral reefs. Weighing the Pros and Cons of Global Trade Leadership One climate solution gaining governmental and private sector attention is carbon dioxide removal, or CDR. The question remains whether it will work at the scale and in the time necessary to avert climate calamity. What is CDR? CDR includes technologies and processes that pull carbon from the atmosphere and then durably store it in the ground, vegetation, oceans, or aquifers. CDR only refers to intentional human activity, including nature-based solutions such as planting trees where none exist, restoring wetlands, and improving soil practices to absorb and store carbon. It also includes biomass and marine carbon removal, as well as mineralization-based processes that, for example, use crushed rocks to absorb carbon. Other CDR practices rely on emerging technologies. They include techniques that draw carbon out of the air with chemicals and giant fans to store it for thousands of years in deep underground geological formations, such as rocks with porous areas filled with salty water or depleted oil and gas reservoirs. These technologies are called Direct Air Capture (DAC). CDR can also involve storing carbon in commercial products such as wood paneling and cement. CDR approaches present trade-offs in terms of cost, efficacy, risks, and timelines. DAC technologies have attracted increasing attention from investors, but they are the most expensive carbon removal technique and remain unproven at scale. Methods that rely on storage in geological formations last far longer than other forms of CDR, meaning that the carbon can stay locked away for thousands of years, while methods that rely on soils and vegetation are less expensive, although they can prove less durable. For example, when wildfire incinerates a forest, the forest no longer stores carbon. Storage in commercial products like structural wood used in construction [PDF] can also be comparatively short-lived: when the building gets destroyed, the carbon risks release. CDR is sometimes grouped with a related technology known as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS). CCUS is typically used to capture carbon emissions directly from sources of pollution such as manufacturing plants or fossil fuel operations. Although CCUS can reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that reach the atmosphere, it does not reduce the gases that are already in the atmosphere. CCUS therefore does not act to drive down temperatures; in contrast, CDR does. Why is CDR necessary? Through the UN climate negotiation process, nations have set a goal of limiting global average surface temperatures to preferably no more than 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial times. Achieving the 1.5° goal requires that nations reach net-zero emissions by 2050, which is only possible through large amounts of CDR in addition to aggressive efforts to cut the amount of carbon that reaches the atmosphere, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scientists estimate that by 2050, the world could need to rely on CDR to remove up to ten billion tons of carbon—double the United States’ annual emissions—every year. The IPCC envisions that through 2050, CDR can lower the accumulation of emissions in the atmosphere, thereby slowing heating; CDR would also have to draw down more carbon out of the atmosphere than is added to it to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions. Beyond 2050, CDR can further counterbalance emissions from “hard-to-abate” sectors such as steel manufacturing, aviation, shipping, and agriculture, and create net-negative emissions, pulling carbon that has already accumulated out of the atmosphere. Who is funding it? The need for CDR has spurred interest within both the private sector and governments. Last fall, at the UN Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai—the latest UN climate convening—more than seventy sessions focused on carbon removal, an exponential increase over prior years. Monies have begun to flow to CDR initiatives, and Washington is one government placing a big bet on carbon dioxide removal. The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021 provides $3.5 billion to create four regional DAC hubs, while the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 creates tax benefits amounting up to a $180 per ton credit for CDR and carbon storage. That could also lead to a nationwide employment boost: a new study by the Rhodium Group finds that almost all states have the potential to house at least one DAC facility by 2035. By 2050, economic benefits could flow to all states, with Texas as the biggest winner. Other governments are investing in CDR as well. Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom have also provided research and development funding for CDR, and the European Commission has proposed a strategy for the European Union (EU) to capture, trade, and durably store carbon to meet EU climate goals. In February, the EU moved closer to adopting a framework for certifying the quality of carbon dioxide removal projects. The effort could increase trust in the quality of carbon credits traded in carbon markets. In addition to government support, the private sector has recently been clamoring for carbon credits from CDR projects to meet corporate net-zero commitments. Demand for carbon credits has driven investment in DAC by companies including Microsoft, Shopify, and Airbus; Swiss Air and Lufthansa have also partnered with a DAC start-up. The consulting firm McKinsey predicts that by 2050, the CDR industry could be worth up to $1.2 trillion. Why are there reservations about CDR? Advocates for rapid reduction of fossil fuels have expressed concern that CDR efforts could create a moral hazard by lowering ambition to cut oil and gas consumption. The head of Occidental Petroleum, Vicki Hollub, lent credence to this argument when she suggested that implementing DAC would preserve the oil industry and give oil producers a license to continue to operate. Occidental plans to build around 100 DAC plants to help its oil production reach net-zero. Concern has also arisen that companies and governments could expand CDR’s applications beyond addressing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors. The IPCC has cautioned that CDR should not substitute [PDF] for steep reductions in carbon emissions, emphasizing that reducing the amount of carbon produced and emitted is the main way to hold warming to 1.5°C. It envisioned a lesser role for large-scale CDR technology such as DAC, given that the technology’s success at scale remains to be seen, making reliance on it a “major risk.” The International Energy Agency has also recognized the need for CDR, but it has warned against too heavy a dependence on technologies that are “expensive and unproven.” Critics argue that CDR is too expensive and energy-intensive to serve as a viable alternative to rapidly reduce fossil fuels. The world’s first large-scale DAC facility, located in Iceland, can capture only about four thousand tons of carbon annually, a minute share of global emissions. Questions also abound as to whether CDR technology can scale quickly enough at a cheap enough price to avert significant heating. Some argue that money going to CDR would be better spent on keeping more emissions out of the atmosphere in the first place by, for example, increasing investment in renewable energies such as solar and wind power. Finally, the focus on carbon removal fails to address other greenhouse gas emissions such as methane that cause more warming in the immediate future. A molecule of methane could last just twelve years in the atmosphere, while a carbon molecule could last hundreds of years. But during its short life span, the methane molecule could trap eighty times the heat compared to the carbon molecule. Atmospheric methane levels are already over two and a half times what they were in preindustrial times, and in the past few years methane emissions have accelerated. Is CDR on the right track? A series of steps known as measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) are essential to ensure that CDR is responsibly used. The European Union has taken the lead in creating standards by seeking to bring clarity to the quality of CDR initiatives. In contrast, the United States has yet to adopt a national regulatory framework, although it leads the world in legislation to support CDR. Without greater clarity as to the effectiveness of CDR projects, “greenwashing” could occur. Elections around the world could play an outsized role in future CDR investments. Former President and 2024 candidate Donald Trump has pledged to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act, which gave an unprecedented boost to CDR investments. Similarly in Europe, the growing influence of right-wing politicians may threaten government support for CDR. Given the expense involved and the uncertainty of success, some CDR efforts, including engineered DAC solutions, could fall by the wayside without government support.

*CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, GHG = Greenhouse Gas, IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Faced with the immediate and serious challenge of climate change, carbon-capture and storage (CCS) technology has emerged as a robust and innovative tool to reduce carbon emissions and make progress towards net zero goals. Moving forward, the global energy community must work together to maximize the use and efficiency of CCS and ensure that its climate potential is not squandered. In simple terms, CCS involves capturing carbon from industrial and exploration and production processes, transporting it and injecting it in underground geological formations to lock it away from polluting the atmosphere and contributing to the greenhouse effect. Similarly, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) follow the same first two steps as CCS, but instead of sequestering the carbon underground, the carbon is transformed into industrial goods that can be used in other industrial processes or converted into biofuel and reusable plastics. Valued at $3.28 billion in 2022, the CCS market is experiencing rapid growth, evidenced by an expected compound annual growth rate of 6.2% from 2023 to 2030. The rise of CCS is also made clear by the rapid proliferation of carbon capture and sequestration efforts across the globe. The number of CCS projects being proposed or underdevelopment is expected to reach over 300 million tonnes per annum by 2030 (Btpa) (IEA, 2023). As the global community seeks to reduce the impact of the hard-to-abate industries and meet rising demand for decarbonization projects, the carbon-capture and storage industry shows no sign of slowing down. Most energy experts view the technology as an integral part of future energy systems. Recent BloombergNEF research suggests that an additional 1.5-15.5 gigatonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) removal capacity could be deployed from 2030-2050 to avoid global warming above 1.5°C. While, globally, scientists predict that up to 10 GtCO2 will need to be removed annually from the atmosphere by 2050, with an increased removal capacity up to 20 GtCO2 per year by 2100 to meet the required goals. Much of the optimism surrounding the CCS industry is derived from the success of existing projects, with energy companies and governments around the world hoping to reproduce the decarbonization results achieved elsewhere. The US Petra Nova project offers a prime example. It has effectively captured more than 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 annually from a 240-megawatt power plant in Texas. Meanwhile, in Canada, the Boundary Dam CCS project in Saskatchewan has offered a new standard as one of the world's first large-scale coal-fired power plants with integrated CCS capabilities. In Norway, the Northern Lights Project, a tripartite alliance between Equinor, Shell and Total, is showcasing Norway's expertise in transporting and storing CO2 from diverse industrial sources across Europe. Continued innovation represents a key dimension of the CCS industry, as new solutions and modern methods can vastly improve the capacity and flexibility of CCS projects. This is seen all over the globe, such as in the UK, where the H21 North of England venture has laid the foundation for transitioning the gas grid to hydrogen and linking it with CCS to achieve significant emissions reductions. The Middle East is a key player in carbon capture A fair share of the innovation and progress surrounding CCS is now emerging from the Gulf. The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) accounts for more than a tenth of the world’s gas production and almost a quarter of the world’s oil. While the region is not a large emitter in absolute terms, per capita carbon dioxide is still at a significantly high level. Targeting a responsible transition, the region is pivoting towards becoming a climate leader and making CCS a key part of its strategy. For example, earlier in 2023, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) launched the world’s first carbon-capture and storage project in an underground saline reservoir. Leveraging the Earthshot prize-winning carbon-capture and mineralisation (CCM) technology from 44.01, the venture will see carbon transformed into rock formations in Fujairah, thus guaranteeing permanent and more sustainable storage. CCUS initiatives in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE contribute approximately 10% of the worldwide carbon dioxide capture, amounting to 40 million tonnes. Looking ahead, such a position of leadership is unlikely to change, especially as ADNOC alone aims to sequester five million tonnes by 2030 and by 2035, Qatar is aiming to store more than 11 million tonnes of CO2 per annum, while Saudi Arabia strives to achieve an ambitious 44 million tonnes. Carbon capture is proven to make a difference Enabling the widespread use of carbon capture will certainly help combat climate change. A recent study by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions found that carbon capture, if executed effectively, could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 14 per cent by 2050. When combined with other carbon reduction measures, carbon capture is one of the most crucial pieces in the puzzle of mitigating climate change. Indeed, a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report stated that carbon capture technologies are ‘unavoidable’ in global emissions reduction plans. Although promising, CCUS still needs to make huge progress. Worldwide, only 0.1% of carbon dioxide was captured in 2022. Moreover, the carbon-capture market has a long way to go. A report by McKinsey found that global uptake of carbon-capture technologies must expand 120 times from current levels by 2050 to meet net-zero targets. This raises the vital question of what is needed to unleash the full power of carbon capture. Part of the answer to this question lies in the practical realities of carbon capture; emerging technologies are delivering positive results, but their widespread implementation faces barriers to mainstream use. Another McKinsey report cites several reasons for why this might be the case: a lack of established revenue streams, making business cases challenging; projects are large and unproven; fear of a public perception of ‘greenwashing; and an uneven and uncertain policy landscape. Carbon capture requires public and private collaboration Candid and productive dialogue is required between the public and private sectors to tackle climate and carbon management issues to chart an effective and practical pathway forward. Hard-to-abate industries have a huge role to play. Major industry events, such as the international energy platform ADIPEC, which recently took place in Abu Dhabi, can play a pivotal role in this, bringing together stakeholders from across the energy industry and key players linked to hard-to-abate industries. If we want to create a better dialogue around critical technologies, such as carbon capture, we must ensure a diversity of voices around the table, including the energy industry, technology enablers, climate finance and government players. Likewise, CCUS must be a key discussion for COP28 where public and private sector players will join hands to address the deep climate challenges. This is a clear opportunity for energy leaders like those in the Gulf to add another feather in their climate leadership cap by creating a holistic ecosystem for carbon management. The opportunity presented by carbon capture is huge, with Exxon estimating that the market will be valued at $4 trillion by 2050. Public-private partnerships are going to be the key to unlocking carbon capture. It’s the responsibility of the public and private sectors to find more opportunities to have open and action-oriented dialogues. In doing so, we can truly unleash the power of carbon capture and engender a new era in global emissions reduction.

Wind energy production is growing rapidly worldwide in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, wind energy production is not environmentally neutral. Negative impacts on volant animals, such as bats, include fatalities at turbines and habitat loss due to land-use change and displacement. Siting turbines away from ecologically sensitive areas and implementing measures to reduce fatalities are critical to protecting bat populations. Restricting turbine operations during periods of high bat activity is the most effective form of mitigation currently available to reduce fatalities. Compensating for habitat loss and offsetting mortality are not often practiced, because meaningful offsets are lacking. Legal frameworks to prevent or mitigate the negative impacts of wind energy on bats are absent in most countries, especially in emerging markets. Therefore, governments and lending institutions are key in reconciling wind energy production with biodiversity goals by requiring sufficient environmental standards for wind energy projects. Wind power generation has become a pillar of renewable energy generation worldwide in the fight against global warming (GWEC 2023). However, wind energy generation is not environmentally neutral; that is, wind turbines can have negative impacts on local habitats and the organisms that live in them (Saidur et al. 2011, Gibson et al. 2017). For example, the construction of wind turbine facilities may fragment and degrade habitats, making them unsuitable for breeding, foraging, commuting, and migration (Shaffer and Buhl 2016, Reusch et al. 2022). Furthermore, large numbers of volant vertebrates, such as raptors and bats (Thaxter et al. 2017), are killed by wind turbines. With bats accounting for the majority of vertebrate fatalities at wind turbines, global wind energy production is the leading cause of multiple mortality events in bats (O'Shea et al. 2016). Bats are an essential component of mammalian diversity (Simmons and Cirranello 2024). They are key parts of ecological communities and are important bioindicators in almost all ecosystems (Jones et al. 2009). They also provide ecosystem services to agriculture and forestry (Kunz et al. 2011). However, more than one-third of bat species are threatened or data deficient, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) standards, and about half show negative population trends (Frick et al. 2020). Reducing the negative impacts of wind energy on bats is an important conservation objective. Over the past two decades, the body of literature on the impacts of wind energy on bats and effective mitigation measures has grown considerably, although we still lack data for many regions of the world, particularly for countries with emerging markets (figure 1). In the present article, we review the interactions of bats with wind turbines, discuss the limitations of our understanding on a global scale, and highlight effective measures to mitigate this green–green dilemma.

*CSP = Concentrated Solar Power, IAS = Invasive Alien Species, RoW = Right of Way

Table 3.1. Summary of potential biodiversity impacts of solar power, wind power and power lines

Most people view technology as the future, a force of good that will generally improve quality of life around the world. In the business sector, Silicon Valley and tech startups exhibit massive growth potential; in manufacturing, new machinery and automation are boosting efficiency; and in the environmental realm, green technology presents the best prospects for decarbonization.

But as much as technology is hailed as the panacea of the future, most of these innovations have a dirty underside: production of these new technologies requires companies to dig up what are referred to as rare earth elements (REEs).

Say what you will about Russian President Vladimir Putin, but his war on Ukraine did open European eyes to some long-underrated truths. One is that even after more than 70 years of relative peace on the continent, neglecting military security poses grave dangers. Another is that the “green dream” of modern economies powered exclusively by renewable energies remains out of reach – and reliable access to cheap energy supplies remains essential. While the first truth became starkly apparent as soon as Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24, the second has only gradually penetrated public awareness. In fact, many have called for an embargo on European imports of Russian gas, arguing that this would not only undermine Russia’s ability to wage its war, but also accelerate progress toward green Nirvana – all at minimal cost to Europe in terms of lost GDP. A new study exposes this argument for the fantasy that it is. If gas supplies from Russia are cut off, Germany will quite simply no longer be able to produce its 300 most gas-intensive products. To be sure, the study notes that these products can be substituted by imports. But this assessment fails to account for the welfare losses that would result from Germany having to pay much higher prices for these products – losses that would reverberate across the economy. Due to the terms-of-trade effect, the welfare of consumers of gas and gas-intensive goods would decline as the price of these now-imported items increases. It is only because this price increase is not included in the definition of real GDP that the effects of a gas embargo on European GDP appear small. Moreover, it is not only direct consumers of the 300 products that would be affected. If, for example, the methanol and ammonia that form the basis of fertilizer production and many other chemical products must be imported from the United States, rather than produced locally, downstream and complementary value-added industries in Germany may lose competitiveness. A great many jobs could be affected until a new balance is found. No wonder that BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, has decided to invest up to €10 billion ($10.4 billion) in a new plant in China. Substituting renewables for fossil fuels is not the solution many believe it is. Weather-dependent fuels like wind and solar are simply too unpredictable to power modern economies reliably, meaning that “adjustable” energy sources – coal, gas, and nuclear – remain essential to buffer the volatility by fluctuating inversely to wind and solar power. In a case of prolonged “dark doldrums,” when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, these sources will even have to meet all energy demand on their own. The embrace of electric (rather than gas-powered) transport, heating, and home appliances will exacerbate this problem by generating even greater electricity demand, which requires the stock of adjustable energy plants to grow in proportion. For Germany, which is eschewing coal and nuclear, this means gas power plants. But gas is already in short supply, so another solution must be found. One might argue that this is what batteries are for: collecting energy when it is available, and storing it until it is needed. But while batteries in, say, electric cars will one day be able to smooth out short-term fluctuations in energy access, we are not there yet – not even close. Even with more advanced battery technologies, a day or two without wind or sunshine would bring electric transport to a standstill. Electric cars exacerbate the seasonal buffering problem. How long, then, before we have batteries that can make up for seasonal fluctuations in renewable supplies, storing enough electricity – generated from summer sun and autumn storms – to get not only our vehicles, but our entire economies through the winter? A more realistic – though still distant – future would depend on hydrogen-fueled power plants to bridge the gaps left by wind and solar. But if hydrogen is to be produced economically, electrolyzers need a smooth and stable supply of electricity, something they are supposed to deliver themselves. How this dilemma can be solved is still up in the air. The Ukraine war has ruthlessly exposed the shortcomings of the green-energy transition, forcing countries like Germany into a real-time energy experiment. For now, they have little choice but to purchase extremely expensive supplies of liquefied natural gas, import and extract more local natural gas, and rely on nuclear energy, produced locally or imported. Twenty years ago, Germany was called the sick man of Europe, owing to its high unemployment, weak domestic demand, and slow GDP growth. Today, the country seems to have caught another disease – this time, because of its unrealistically ambitious energy policy. Recovery will be painful.

Climate legislation often establishes goals for the future to give companies and consumers time to adapt and plan for a transition away from fossil fuels. For example, the European Union enacted the goal to be climate neutral (net zero emissions) by 2050, and China established the same goal for 2060. Fossil fuels are exhaustible resources, and their finite availability dictates their use and price path (Hotelling 1931). This scarcity leads to a price that exceeds the marginal extraction cost, resulting in resource rents that ensure less is consumed today and fossil fuels are saved for the future. The literature on the “Green Paradox” highlights that climate legislation, which limit future fossil fuel use, give resource owners an incentive to extract more in the present and medium term before the regulation binds, leading to lower prices and accelerated resource depletion today. This theoretical literature is based on Hotelling’s seminal model (Hoel 2010a, Sinn 2008a, Sinn 2008b, Van der Ploeg and Withagen 2012, Van der Ploeg and Withagen 2015). By the same logic, a global carbon tax on fossil fuels with scarcity rents will not be passed on to consumers. If producers did so, then demand for fossil fuels would fall, cumulative consumption would decrease and not all fossil fuels would be used, incentivizing resource owners to lower fossil fuel prices to sell all units. In the end, much of a carbon tax would be absorbed by producer rents with limited effect on fossil fuel use (Dasgupta, Heal and Stiglitz 1980, Heal and Schlenker 2019). What is common to this literature is the concern that climate legislation might not lead to the desired reductions in cumulative fossil fuel use and may even accelerate consumption today. Our paper adds to the emerging empirical literature on the “Green Paradox” (Lemoine 2017, Di Maria, Lange and van der Werf 2014, Merrill 2018, Grafton, Kompas, Long and To 2014). Specifically, we test the predictions of the “Green Paradox” using a news based index of climate policy salience, a prediction market with contracts contingent on climate policy passing, as well as an event study of an unexpected court ruling mandating reductions in future fossil fuel emissions. We consistently find evidence of the mechanism behind the “Green Paradox:” additional restrictions, or an increased likelihood of future restrictions on oil use, reduce both the oil spot price and oil futures prices in the years for which futures data are traded, i.e., the following two years. This occurs as supply is reallocated from the future to the present. This pattern holds true when analyzing monthly returns in conjunction with decades-long data on policy stringency, when using high-frequency daily data on oil prices coupled with daily changes in prediction market prices, as well as when estimating the oil price return after a surprising verdict.

The climate problem is one of mankind’s biggest challenges. Averting disaster requires nothing less than worldwide collective policy action. However, policies that ignore the laws of economics may prove futile, if not downright counterproductive. In particular, policies aimed at reducing future demand for fossil fuels could backfire by inducing resource owners to bring forward their extraction plans, thus accelerating global warming. I have called this behaviour the Green Paradox. Economists and policy makers alike long overlooked the possibility of a Green Paradox because the behaviour of resource owners played no specific role in the economics of climate change. Although it has long been recognized that the anthropogenic carbon accumulating in the atmosphere is basically the same as the carbon taken from the ground and that, except for sequestration, no technical devices exist that could change the proportions accumulating in the sea, biomass, and atmosphere, this has rarely been incorporated into climate models or addressed by policy makers in the past. Instead the focus was on the demand side of the market. It was thought that to mitigate the climate problem, it would be effective and sufficient to require better insulation of homes, to extract higher mileage from car engines, to subsidize green energy through tariffs, to morally discredit fossil fuel consumption, to tax the use of fossil fuels, or to subsidize the development of green technologies, because it was taken for granted that supply would follow demand. Resource suppliers were perceived to be like car producers, facing flat marginal cost curves and producing what is demanded at given prices. However, unlike cars, fossil resources sold in the market are already there (i.e., in the earth’s crust) and thus cannot be “produced” in the normal sense of the word. Extraction and exploration costs are typically small relative to user costs. This means that we cannot assume that the supply reactions of resource owners will be elastic. Fortunately, the period of ignoring the obvious appears to be coming to an end. Although the supply-side view of the climate problem is not yet widely recognized by the public, both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the literature on the economics of climate change are now giving at least as much weight to the supply side as to the demand side. The focus is on the intertemporal dimension of supply decisions, merging the traditional theory of exhaustible resources with the theory of climate change. Exhausting the stock of carbon resources in the ground and accumulating waste carbon in the atmosphere are now viewed and modelled as a single decision.

Every few weeks, the environmental zealots of the organization “Just Stop Oil” make headlines for trying to destroy something important to bring attention to their goal of stopping oil. It turns out, though, like many shortsighted policy prescriptions, the means are not conducive to the ends. In other words, legislative efforts to stop oil might cause more oil to be used rather than less. A recent working paper by Maya A. Norman and Wolfram Schlenker out of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds evidence that the “Green Paradox” is real. But what is the Green Paradox? Well, the idea of the Green Paradox was put forward by economist Hans-Werner Sinn in what Wikipedia calls a “controversial” book. The 2012 book is titled The Green Paradox after the theory. The idea is relatively straightforward. Those who own oil and oil reserves are rational economic agents. That means that they will extract and sell their oil at a particular rate that maximizes long-term profits. Owners don’t want to pull every drop of oil out of the ground because it would be costly to do so quickly, but they also want to sell the resource at a quick enough pace to meet demand. However, so-called “green policies” change this calculus. If oil owners believe that sometime in the future a policy will be passed that makes it illegal or even more expensive to sell their oil, they will begin to try to extract and offload the oil before the policy passes. The result is counterintuitive to shallow thinking—green policies aimed at regulating oil may actually increase the speed at which oil is produced and consumed. This is the Green Paradox. As I mentioned before, Wikipedia calls this book “controversial,” though it doesn’t cite any source for that particular editorialization. However, even if the book were controversial, this new paper should make it less so. The authors examine the Green Paradox with a few tests, but one result sticks out. They examine a 2009–10 Waxman-Markey Bill, a cap-and-trade law which would have been burdensome for the oil industry. The authors consider prices of oil futures compared to market expectations about the Waxman-Markey Bill’s likelihood of passing. If the argument of the Green Paradox is correct, the price of oil futures should fall as the likelihood of the bill passing increases. Documenting results, they say: Consistent with this prediction, we find a significant negative coefficient; prices of oil futures decline whenever the expected likelihood that the bill will pass increases. This effect is persistent across all futures contracts, even increasing for longer-term maturities, suggesting that the relationship reflects long-term adjustments in the expected oil price path rather than temporary shocks. Through our analysis we find (i) the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill would have increased global oil consumption 2–4% and (ii) Waxman-Markey deliberations increased oil consumption by 8–27 million metric tons equivalent to 1–3 days of global oil consumption. So, not only would the bill have led to increased oil consumption if it had passed; the mere possibility of it passing led to millions of tons of extra oil consumption. The Green Paradox stands. One of the most important functions of economics is that it often shows that the means of policy-makers are not actually capable of achieving the desired ends. Policy-makers don’t like this, of course, which is why good economic ideas, like the Green Paradox, tend to be disparaged with terms like “controversial.” This shouldn’t surprise us. In his 1949 magnum opus Human Action, the economist Ludwig von Mises brilliantly highlighted this phenomenon: It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him. Long live the mischief-makers.

*SRM = Solar Radiation Management, CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, BECCS = Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, NET = Negative Emissions Technology, GE = Geoengineering

Here are some of the key reasons to oppose geoengineering, which will be discussed in more depth below: It doesn’t work: None of the technologies have a track record, all of them come with major risks and unknowns, and in some cases the effects would be obviously catastrophic. Weaponization: Computer models show that geoengineering interventions can have regional winners and losers; to the extent that geoengineering successfully changes climate patterns in a predictable way, it will inevitably be weaponized. Detracts from real solutions: By promising a quick fix, geoengineering threatens to delay the implementation of a transition away from fossil fuels, and could redirect funding and investments away from real climate solutions. Some geoengineering proposals require vast amounts of energy, which means less climate-friendly energy for everyone else. Human Rights and Biodiversity: Many geoengineering proposals require the intensive exploitation of vast amounts of land (in the case of BECCS, twice the size of India!). Those projects would inevitably displace millions of people and potentially wipe out entire ecosystems. The bottom line: geoengineering techniques do nothing to address the root causes of climate change, and evidence points to a high likelihood that rather than improving the climate, they would make things worse—potentially in catastrophic fashion. Negative Impacts & Magical Claims Ocean fertilization involves dumping thousands of tonnes of iron into the sea to stimulate plankton growth. There have not been many real-world geoengineering experiments, becauseof the problem with scale. Testing on small scales does not necessarily reflect what will happen if done on a much larger scale. Testing on large scale is de facto geoengineering. However, many researchers have attempted to model the potential effects these proposed measures could have on the weather, biodiversity, farms and ecosystems. In some cases, like Solar Radiation Management (SRM), blocking sunlight by spraying chemicals like sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere or launching giant reflective parasols into orbit, could have a cooling effect. However, models show that such manipulations come with high-stakes risks: entire regions could face drought, and if SRM was started and then abandoned, global temperatures could rise very rapidly. Ocean fertilization consists of dumping tonnes of iron-rich dust into the ocean to stimulate plankton growth in the hopes that it will absorb carbon and then sink to the bottom of the sea. Studies based on computer models suggest that it probably will not have the desired effect, and could create “dead zones” by removing oxygen from the water. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is considered a climate geoengineering technology in some cases. Its proponents claim that we can continue to burn fossil fuels if we just suck the carbon out of the air before it leaves the smokestack. CCS is extremely expensive and it’s not clear how well it actually works. If CCS becomes implemented at a large scale, where will the billions of tonnes of carbon be stored? Which communities and ecosystems will be put at risk of being poisoned when and if carbon dioxide, which can be lethal when concentrated, leaks? Furthermore, much of the current push to develop CCS is based on a desire to use captured CO2 for “enhanced oil recovery”. So-called Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) like Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) claim that we can increase energy production while decreasing emissions. These plans are based on growing and burning massive, country-sized quantities of biomass and they ignore the carbon emissions and ecological impacts caused by tearing up millions of hectares of land over and over again to create these plantations. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is based on the false claim that burning biomass is “carbon neutral”. Proponents claim that capturing and burying carbon from such a “neutral” process will make it carbon “negative”. This faulty logic ignores a growing literature showing that CO2 emissions from most bioenergy processes are large – even larger than for fossil fuels when the impacts on ecosystems and soils are taken into account. Millions of hectares of land would have to be converted to growing trees and crops for bioenergy to implement large-scale BECCS. So-called Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) are based on the wishful thinking that we can increase energy production while decreasing emissions. A wide range of technologies are being touted using this “win-win” rhetoric, including biofuels that result in biochar byproducts, using CO2 emissions to grow algae and various other processes. Some of these technologies have garnered much hype, but they are virtually nonexistent in reality. The Technofix Approach vs. Addressing Root Causes The mindset that embraces Technofixes assumes that solutions are somehow possible without addressing root causes. Each time we are threatened by a disaster that is caused by structural inequalities and abuse of concentrated power, those who are invested in and profit from those same structures say “we can fix it!” If we believe them, we can be temporarily fooled into taking a path that doesn’t address root causes and therefore only delays real solutions. Most of the time, technofixes don’t actually work; their real role is to be an effective, temporary distraction. Geoengineering presents politicians and leaders with vested interests with an option to avoid making difficult choices. Rather than putting an end to combustion of fossil fuels, destructive industrial agriculture, and the pursuit of endless economic growth, they can take the less politically contentious path of offering support for a technofix. But it is clear that climate change stems from multiple sources embedded in an economic system based on constant growth and ever-increasing consumption; it cannot be addressed by a “magic bullet” technofix. Trillions of dollars in profit and infrastructure investments by oil companies could be devalued if emissions are regulated. Because of the vast profits and investments that could be lost if we truly address the root causes of climate change, geoengineering represents a dangerous moral hazard. If oil companies see geoengineering as a possibility, they can back a technofix and present it as a solution instead of powering down their operations. That’s precisely what the fossil fuel industry is doing – quietly and behind the scenes, but with a lot of money. The Geoengineering CliqueNewt Gingrich is a recent geoengineering advocate. A number of commentators have pointed to the existence of a “geoengineering clique” that is promoting the technofix approach. The prominent voices on geoengineering that reappear again and again are actually a very small group of people. Most of them appear to be white men from rich countries, especially Europe and North America. Some of them have direct connections to the fossil fuel industry and many appear to have military connections. For example David Keith, one of the most prominent geoengineering proponents, has a private company funded by tar sands money. While the “geoengineering clique” project the image of reluctant advocates exploring geoengineering only as a “plan B” to reducing emissions, there are a range of motivations driving interest in geoengineering, including commercial and military interests. In fact, some of the heavyweight backers of climate geoengineering were climate deniers or downplayers not so long ago. Some call this odd switch the “Lomborg Maneuver,” after the pro-corporate environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, who poo-pooed the effects of climate change until he became a geoengineering proponent. Right-wing groups like the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute and politicians like Newt Gingrich have joined the geoengineering bandwagon as well. Part of the threat of commercialization of geoengineering techniques is that it could create a much larger group of people with a vested interest in pursuing a technofix approach. If the geoengineering clique becomes several times larger, it will become even harder to make rational decisions about the climate. Solutions to Climate Change Already Exist Agroecology practices are one of the most effective ways to reduce climate change. Real, fundamental, low- to no-risk, beneficial, long-term solutions to climate change are already available. They include agroecology, reducing emissions and resource consumption, implementing hard emissions limits, investing in public transportation and liveable and workable communities, and stopping deforestation, among many many others. The problem is not that these solutions don’t work, it’s that they are incompatible with any goal or mandate for an ever-expanding economy based on the exploitation of finite natural resources. Reducing emissions provokes opposition from big oil; public transportation is curbed by car manufacturers; large-scale expansion of agroecology raises the ire of industrial agribusiness conglomerates. For real solutions to work, the power of small farmers, communities and workers must increase in relation to that of investors and industry. The main barriers to their implementation are the polluting industries and their investors. A quick way to check the credibility and goodwill of any geoengineering proponent is to examine how much real effort they have put into advocating for real solutions to climate change – and to look at where their money is coming from. Governance and Weaponization One of the major problems with geoengineering is that large-scale projects can create winners and losers. If geoengineering schemes were implemented, some regions of the globe might see improved conditions, while other regions would see disastrous changes in rainfall or see their rivers dry up. Who decides what scheme is used and how it is implemented? Certain geoengineering enthusiasts have hinted that geoengineering schemes could move forward with only a few superpowers on board, and that a global consensus would not be necessary. Will powerful countries attempt to ensure that the ill effects of geoengineering fall overseas? Anticipating the difficulty of a global decision on geoengineering governance, geoengineers have already said they do not need the consent of every country that will be affected. Concern about unequal impacts raises a larger question: what’s to stop those who control geoengineering schemes from using them as a means of geopolitical manipulation and control –in other words, climate warfare? This is not without precedent: The United States has used cloud seeding as a weapon. Its government tried to extend the monsoon season in North Vietnam from 1967-72, and attempted to dry up Cuba’s sugar crop in 1969. What would stop this from happening again, on much larger scale?

*DAC = Direct Air Capture, MEA = Monoethanolamine, EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery

Of all the technologies proposed to combat the climate crisis, perhaps none is as intuitively appealing as direct air capture (DAC). The premise of DAC (sometimes called “open air capture”) is simple: Machinery would capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, then compress, transport, and store it in underground reservoirs. But despite decades of hype, DAC still plays no role in carbon removal. The recently announced proposal to build a facility in Texas — an $811 million project that would be the largest direct air capture facility in the world — gives a sense of the scale of the problem. The plant owners promise to capture “up to” 500,000 metric tons per year, one hundredth of one percent of U.S. CO2 emissions.1 Direct air capture is prohibitively expensive and energy intensive; if it were ever to be successfully deployed, it would likely create more greenhouse gas emissions than it would capture. The promise of capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere not only delays the transition away from fossil fuels, it also powers and subsidizes increasing fossil fuel extraction and use. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables — rather than using fossil fuels to pull carbon out of the atmosphere — is a proven and significantly more cost-effective method of addressing climate change. Direct Air Capture Cannot Be Scaled Direct air capture is materially and energy intensive because of the low concentration of CO2 in the air.2Building the technology that could pull carbon from the atmosphere would require considerable physical space — a DAC plant capable of capturing just one megaton of CO2 per year takes up to 409,000 square feet of space.3 More importantly, direct air capture also consumes large quantities of water and electricity.4 Food & Water Watch (FWW) found that if all electricity generated in the United States were used to power DAC, it would capture only one quarter of the carbon emissions generated by the country each year (see methodology section). Generating this electricity would create more greenhouse gas emissions than the CO2 captured at DAC facilities. According to calculations by FWW, capturing 1 ton of CO2 from the atmosphere using electricity from fossil fuels would create greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 3.5 tons of CO2. Using enough electricity from the U.S. grid to capture 1 ton of CO2 from the air would create 2.2 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions. While using electricity from renewable energy could theoretically avoid this problem, that would involve building out a massive amount of clean energy capacity just to support the continuing extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. It is far more advantageous to simply shift our grid from fossil fuels to renewable energy. For instance, FWW found that replacing natural gas with renewables in the electrical grid avoids three times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that could be captured by a DAC facility powered by renewable electricity. Additionally, the high temperature requirements of some common CO2 capture systems make the process unable to use electricity (potentially generated from renewable sources) without additional technological progress.5 Direct Air Capture Is Absurdly Expensive There is no way to turn a profit from capturing carbon pollution. To create an incentive for direct air capture, these facilities are eligible for a federal tax credit called 45Q. It is worth up to $180 per metric ton for captured CO2 that is sequestered underground, and $130 per metric ton for CO2 used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).6 However, several cost estimates put the costs of direct air capture systems at $600 to $1,000 per ton of CO2 captured. This suggests that to make the technology work, DAC will require more subsidies on top of the exorbitant 45Q tax credits.7 To illustrate the scale of the costs involved, consider that capturing one-quarter of annual U.S. CO2 emissions from the atmosphere would cost between $700 billion and $1.2 trillion per year8 — and would be worth between $153 billion and $212 billion per year in 45Q tax credits.9 In comparison, FWW found that reducing the same quantity of greenhouse gas emissions with direct investments in wind and solar projects would cost $45 billion, roughly one-fifteenth the cost of using DAC. Even assuming that 45Q subsidies are sufficient to finance DAC, there are significantly better technologies to subsidize. If 45Q credits were dedicated to making new renewable projects cheaper than operating the cheapest gas plant, the subsidies would be nearly ten times as effective at reducing greenhouse emissions, even ignoring the electricity demands of DAC. All Carbon Capture Systems Rely on Toxic Solvents In addition to being an ineffective means of reducing carbon pollution, DAC would create substantial environmental threats. The two most “promising” direct air capture solvent technologies are based on either aqueous hydroxide solutions (NaOH, KOH, etc.) or aminemodified solutions (such as monoethanolamine, or MEA).10 Industrial production of NaOH is very energy intensive and would massively increase production of chlorine gas, far exceeding utilization capacity. Capturing one-quarter of U.S. CO2 emissions would produce 245.5 million metric tons of chlorine gas, 3.2 times the current global use of chlorine gas.11 Since current chlorine demand exceeds production, chlorine gas is used rather than disposed; there is not currently a large-scale disposal system for chlorine gas.12 Chlorine gas is highly toxic and corrosive, with both acute and longterm negative human health effects.13 Transport of industrial chlorine gas has resulted in fatal accidents, and chorine gas has been used as a chemical weapon.14 Producing new MEA is associated with significant greenhouse gas emissions involving a similar supply chain to natural gas-based fertilizer production.15 When used to capture CO2 emissions, MEA degrades, releasing chemical carcinogens such as nitrosamines that, according to one study, “are toxic and carcinogenic to humans even at extremely low levels.”16 At power plants, carbon capture operations using MEA can have air emissions of MEA up to 0.8 kilogram per metric ton of CO2 captured. These emissions rates can exceed toxicity limits for drinking water and aquatic ecosystems.17 In addition to air emissions, MEA CO2 capture systems generate large quantities of MEA contaminated liquid waste.18 Historically, this waste was incinerated or landfilled, but neither of these disposal strategies are economically or environmentally sustainable, especially at much larger scales.19 Long-term Storage of CO2 Is a Scam Right now, around 95 percent of all captured carbon in the United States is used for enhanced oil recovery, a process of producing oil by injecting CO2 mixed with other chemicals in existing wells to flush out additional oil.20 This is far from a climate solution; EOR results in more carbon emissions than it stores. A ton of CO2 produces two to three barrels of oil when injected; when burned, that oil emits around 1.2 tons of CO2. 21 The other option with captured carbon is to store it underground. But CO2 sequestration also carries significant risks. CO2 must be injected under sufficient pressure to displace existing fluids. In small spaces, this can create rapid pressure increases that fracture containment layers.22 Earthquakes from injection can also rupture storage seals, allowing CO2 to leak.23 Since many storage locations are in and around fossil fuel reservoirs, abandoned oil and gas wellbores provide a pathway for CO2 leaking to the surface.24 CO2 can also slowly escape along well linings and has been shown to corrode materials used in well casings and seals.25 Not only does CO2 injection carry similar risks to wastewater injection (associated with technologies such as fracking), but reducing pressure to inject CO2 may require extracting wastewater from the reservoir and reinjecting it elsewhere.26 The precise constituents of the wastewater vary depending on the geology of the extraction site,27 but it can contain salts (chlorides, bromides, and sulfides of calcium, magnesium, and sodium), metals (barium, manganese, iron, and strontium), oil, grease, dissolved organics (benzene and toluene), and radioactive material (radium-226).28 These chemicals can cause cancer, disrupt the endocrine system, affect the nervous, immune, and cardiovascular systems, and affect sensory organs and the respiratory system.29 Underground injection of wastewater can put aquifers and drinking water at risk, 30 and extensive research links fluid injection and disposal to earthquakes.31 Conclusion Instead of betting on speculative, dangerous, and ultimately climate-destroying carbon capture technologies, the United States must embrace real climate solutions that already work. Off-theshelf technologies such as wind, solar, and batteries that generate and store carbon-free electricity are more than capable of addressing the climate crisis, at costs far lower than carbon capture.

*BECCS = Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, IPCC = Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN = United Nations

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has generated great interest as global emissions have soared to 50 billion tons (Gt) a year of CO2 equivalent. In theory, biomass could remove CO2 out of the air as it grows, and a CCS system on the bioenergy power plant could permanently bury the CO2, making BECCS potentially a “negative” emissions technology. But a growing body of research casts doubt on whether either bioenergy or BECCS are scalable climate solutions—or solutions at all. Those doubts are reinforced by findings from the first dynamic, integrated global modeling of BECCS by the researchers of Climate Interactive: 1. Policies to scale up bioenergy and BECCS would increase global warming for several decades, with net cooling not occurring until 2100 or beyond. 2. Scaling up BECCS to 2 to 3 Gt CO2/year would require a land area the size of India. 3. The best bioenergy strategy right now would be to let bioenergy plants retire without replacement, rather than putting CCS systems on them. So, treating bioenergy as inherently zero-CO2 or carbon neutral will invariably lead to policies harming the climate as it does in Europe—where wood is “likely to remain the biomass fuel of choice for electricity generation and heat, at least for the next 10 years and probably longer,” as a UK think tank noted in 2018. Scaling up BECCS is not carbon removal, but much more like deforestation. The world’s top mitigation experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scaled back BECCS projections in their 2900-page report assessing scientific knowledge on mitigation in 2022. They reported, “BECCS is not projected to be widely implemented for several decades.” The International Energy Agency has also steadily scaled back its use from “almost 5 Gt CO2” removal by 2060 in 2017 to only 1 Gt CO2 removal a year by 2050 in its September 2023 1.5°C (2.7°F) scenario. A 2022 review by the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) of the latest evidence on BECCS “finds that there are substantial risks of it failing to achieve net removals at all, or that any removals are delayed” beyond a useful timeframe. Because of this delay in net removals, analyzing BECCS requires a dynamic model that can look over decades. In 2021, a dynamic forest-level analysis found that after 20 years of operation, “the uncaptured emissions from BECCS” are nearly equal to that of a coal plant. BECCS has high emissions whether you are clear cutting or just thinning a forest. So, scaling it up would increase net U.S. emissions for decades. Why? It would take that long for the replanted seedlings to grow and absorb enough CO2 to make total BECCS life-cycle emissions negative compared to leaving the original trees alone and deploying the best low-carbon alternatives at that time. As the IPCC wrote in 2022, “In the case of BECCS, it should be noted that bio-energy typically is associated with early-on positive CO2 emissions and net-negative effects are only achieved in time (carbon debt), and its potential is limited.” And this carbon debt doesn’t even start to decline until biomass harvesting stops scaling up. Net negative would occur post-2100 if at all. And that means when scaling up, the effective cost per ton of net CO2 removed by BECCS is incalculably high because no net CO2 is removed. But seriously scaling up BECCS would likely require a billion acres or more. And “without a social justice lens, any attempt to fulfil the many land-based climate pledges is likely to perpetuate injustices” against indigenous people and local communities, a 2020 report found. Yet, as the EASAC noted, “the area of land required to generate energy from biomass is 50–100 times larger than for solar and wind and thus land usage for bioenergy is inefficient.” In 2021, the UN reported “agricultural systems [are] breaking down.” So, “there is little room for expanding the area of productive land, yet more than 95 percent of food is grown on land.” The impacts of large-scale BECCS (and worsening climate change) could sharply increase food prices. A multi-year study by the World Bank, UN, and others on how to feed the world in 2050 concluded that “the proportion of plant material diverted from food and fiber to energy would be unacceptably high— and that hopes of climate benefits are misplaced. We recommend phasing out bioenergy targets.” Finally, if the belief in BECCS leads the world to underinvest in real solutions like renewables now, then a 2020 study finds we risk overshooting our temperature target by “up to 1.4°C” (2.5°F)—and thus risk crossing dangerous climatic tipping points. The U.S. is headed toward misspending billions of dollars on Inflation Reduction Act tax credits for BECCS. Tax credits for continuing to scale up corn ethanol are an especially bad idea. Rather than being carbon neutral (even with CCS) corn ethanol is carbon intensive and should be phased out as we shift to electric vehicles running on renewables. Since BECCS is unlikely to be a scalable climate solution by 2050 if ever, the priority climate action this decade and next is to spend trillions of dollars deploying proven zero-carbon technologies, like solar, wind, and energy efficiency, while developing the next generation of zero-carbon technologies.

*BECCS = Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery

1 - BECCS produces significant emissions BECCS is proposed as a solution based on the assumption that bioenergy would be carbon neutral.2 But this assumption is incorrect, notably because of emissions from land use and forestry: today, 30 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere came from land use change (including deforestation), not fossil fuels (see Figure: Cumulative Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions).3 Even in a best-case scenario where bioenergy was only produced from ‘additional biomass sources’, carbon capture and storage (CCS) only captures emissions released from burning biomass. No mention is made of the indirect and supply chain emissions related to foregone sequestration, biomass production, harvest, transport, refining, capturing and storing. These release considerable emissions. THERE ARE THREE MAIN TYPES OF EMISSIONS TO CONSIDER: • Emissions from logging (which reduce the carbon stock in trees and soil). There is a significant time lag between the moment of harvest or combustion and the assumed regrowth. The general rule is that if you cut a forest down, it takes the same amount of time it took to grow for it to return to its previous level of carbon storage. Even this only works if a significant proportion of wood is left on site to decompose to allow forest regeneration (some carbon from the logged trees is already re-emitted at that point). On average this would be between 50 and 120 years, but there is also the possibility that a forest is never able to host as much carbon as before, especially if the logging method damages soils and depletes it of nutrients. It is also important to remember that due to the unprecedented climate crisis, future growth conditions are unknown. In addition, while a forest left standing continues to remove carbon, the moment it is cut down, sequestration stops. The lost sequestration of a harvested forest is known as foregone sequestration. Without bioenergy demand and the associated production of bioenergy crops, there could be larger climate benefits from letting forests simply get older, storing more carbon rapidly and becoming more resilient to the effects of climate change. Using timber for material uses, and not energy, would also contribute to storing carbon rather than emitting it.4 • Emissions from destructive land use changes. Cultivating dedicated biofuels crops can compete with food production and thereby trigger more deforestation, with forests being converted to agricultural land being one of the largest global drivers of climate change. Growing bioenergy crops could add to this problem and accelerate warming. In addition to direct land-use change, increasing demands for land can drive indirect land-use change (ILUC). For example, if an energy crop such as willow is planted to meet demand for wood chips, and it displaces agricultural land for food production, the food producer needs to find other land, which can drive deforestation. • Emissions from the production of biomass, the supply chain and CCS. The growth of biomass in dedicated crops can lead to a large increase in fertilizer use. Nitrous oxide (N2O), which is released in fertilizer creation, storage and use, is particularly problematic as it has a global warming potential up to 300 times higher than carbon dioxide. Scientists trying to quantify the global warming effect of increased use of N2O have shown that it can be equivalent to between 75 and 310 per cent of the carbon stored in trees. Fertiliser use alone could turn bioenergy into a source of greenhouse gas even before harvesting and combustion take place. Other concerns include that the CCS technology itself requires large amounts of energy to compress the carbon dioxide and inject it deep underground. The additional fuel required when CCS is applied is up to 31 per cent for coal fired installations, meaning any BECCS operation will need to use at least 31 per cent more biomass for the same energy output as a non-BECCS power plant. There is also a risk of carbon dioxide leaks from CCS sites. The weight of biomass means that supply chain emissions can be significant. In the case of dedicated bioenergy crops, emissions from transport, processing and using CCS technology already represents 64 per cent of all carbon stored. For one tonne of carbon dioxide sequestered and stored underground, emissions from the supply chain would amount to 1.11 tonnes of carbon dioxide. 2 - BECCS has technical barriers and is prohibitively expensive Most scenarios for keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees require BECCS to be available and functioning on a gigantic scale from mid-century onwards. There is an implicit assumption that BECCS can be deployed at an extremely rapid pace, but there are significant questions about feasibility, scale and cost. Costs of BECCS are difficult to estimate as they depend on the price of biomass feedstock, CCS components, infrastructure, operations and electricity. A synthesis of different cost estimates gives BECCS a price of €86-172 per tonne of carbon dioxide (tCO2). 5 A recent attempt at costing the BECCS project planned by Drax, in the UK, pointed to the need for a public financial support of more than £30 billion for just this one plant. As the cost of biomass feedstocks rise, so would the cost of BECCS. In comparison, forest protection, restoration and natural management are already in operation. Their costs depend on the price of land and other elements, but estimates range from <8.5- 85 €/tCO2. Technical barriers include the security of carbon dioxide pipelines and storage sites, as leaked highly concentrated carbon dioxide is a lethal risk to the public, ecosystems and the climate, as a recent US accident showed. Injecting compressed carbon dioxide into geological formations can also trigger small earthquakes, themselves possibly causing leakage from the CCS site. As with nuclear waste, storage would need to be permanent, which has significant cost implications. Thus, public concern may form a significant barrier to large scale use of CCS, even more so considering that at least part of the storage costs would be billed to the taxpayer. 3 - BECCS would require a huge amount of land and push up the price of food As the human population increases, more land is needed for food. But agriculture is already pushing humans beyond several ecological planetary boundaries. Where will the additional biomass come from? Studies compiled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that the rising price of bioenergy increases pressure on land and the price of agricultural commodities, including food. Scenarios for staying below 1.5 degrees include options for devoting less than 10 million hectares (Mha) to bioenergy, (the size of South Korea) to more than 1000 Mha (the size of Canada). Growing dedicated crops for BECCS would require 0.1-0.4 hectares of land per hypothetical tonne of carbon removed. The amount of land needed differs depending on the climate scenario, but one example which would give us a 50 per cent chance of keeping global warming below two degrees would require the growing of biomass on a land area 1-2 times the size of India (380– 700million hectares).6 This would correspond to converting 25–46 per cent of global arable land and permanent crops to biomass. The amount of land needed rises dramatically if the aim is to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. There are also huge differences when irrigated bioenergy production is excluded, pointing to the face that there would be a trade-off between water and land requirements if bioenergy is implemented at a large scale.7 Such huge land-use change could also cause serious deterioration of soil, making it harder to grow food, and having dramatic impacts on water and biodiversity. This use of biomass for energy becomes more concerning considering that, in most countries, solar systems can generate more than 100 times the useable energy per hectare than bioenergy is likely to produce in the future, even using optimistic assumptions. 4 - BECCS would harm biodiversity Between 1970 and 2012, vertebrate biodiversity declined by 58 per cent, mainly due to the rising human population and intensification of land use.8 Increasing demand for land for BECCS would therefore be an additional threat to biodiversity. The areas considered to have good potential for dedicated bioenergy crops overlap with protected areas, especially in central Europe, the Mediterranean, the US, Central America, South-East Asia and Central Africa. Biomass that comes from harvesting existing forests harms biodiversity, and this is even worse if the forest is converted to a monoculture plantation. A synthesis study on the impacts of different carbon removal technologies concluded that BECCS would almost certainly reduce biodiversity if implemented at scale. Large scale BECCS would reduce as many terrestrial species as a 2.8 degrees temperature rise. The IPCC’s views on bioenergy are contradictory, as they recognise the environmental impact of scaling-up bioenergy use, yet they include unsustainable levels in their 1.5 degrees scenarios. There is agreement among scientists that bioenergy should be limited to under 100 exajoules (EJ)/year of bioenergy in 2050 and that deployment at this or higher levels would put significant pressure on food prices and the ability to preserve biodiversity.9 Despite this fact, the average amount of bioenergy used in 1.5 degrees scenarios is over 150EJ per year in 2050. 10 This highlights the weaknesses of modelling scenarios that prioritise energy decarbonisation over other environmental impacts. 5 - BECCS would take a huge amount of water and threaten more planetary boundaries When climate modellers talk about ‘additional biomass’ requirements, it is important to consider the large amounts of water it would require. As well as increasing the price of land, biomass demand is expected to increase the price of water by the end of the century, especially in Asia Pacific (by 330 per cent) and Latin America (by 460 per cent). Irrigation is the leading cause to groundwater depletion globally. Already nearly half of the world’s population live in areas with water scarcity and this is expected to increase to five billion people by 2050. It is estimated that to produce enough biomass for BECCS to meet the two degrees aim would require more than doubling the amount of water currently used to irrigate food production. As well as pushing us beyond the limits of our freshwater use, BECCS is likely to push us beyond other planetary boundaries. 11 Researchers have calculated that if regional environmental limits are adopted as precautionary measures the potential for negative emissions from bioenergy plantations is marginal – removing less than 0.1 billion tonnes of carbon per year – a tiny amount of the between 0.6 and 4.1 billion tonnes that is expected to be needed per year by 2050. 6 - BECCS is a barrier to the energy transition There are already many ways we could reduce fossil fuel emissions globally, such as reducing unnecessary use, improving efficiency, and increasing solar and wind. But instead of delivering on those solutions, the fossil fuel industry is keen to tout BECCS as a fossil fuel-free source of energy, while expecting governments to pay (directly or via incentives) for the actual development costs. BECCS also encourages continued fossil fuel use in several concrete ways, particularly when it comes to coal and oil. For example, instead of being decommissioned, many coal power plants are being converted to allow the co-firing of biomass and coal. BECCS power stations that allow for co-firing of biomass with coal would be no different. Co-firing is envisaged as the way to make BECCS facilities economically and technically more feasible. Demonstration projects in the UK and Norway are already testing the CCS of emissions from co-firing biomass with coal. Even more worrying is the prospect of using the carbon dioxide captured from BECCS plants to extract oil from depleted oilfields through a technique known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). It involves pumping gas at high pressure underground to drive oil to the surface and currently allows a further 5 -15 per cent of oil in some reservoirs to be exploited. Carbon dioxide captured from the current generation of CCS applications (mostly fitted to coal power stations and high emission industrial plants) is already being used on a considerable scale for EOR, partly because CCS is an expensive technology and selling the captured carbon dioxide to oil companies to help them extract more oil is a way of financing the investment. For example, a recently completed largescale retrofit application of CCS to a power plant at Petra Nova in Texas is expected to pay for itself in less than 10 years as a result of carbon dioxide being piped for EOR. Another concern is the possibility of carbon dioxide leakage, which undermines the climate value of sequestering it in the first place. The US oil industry estimates that about 30 per cent of carbon dioxide piped to an EOR site is directly emitted back into the atmosphere. If old oil fields are not capped properly, carbon dioxide held underground may also find a way out.

*CDR = Carbon Dioxide Removal, BECCS = Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, DACCS = Direct Air Capture and Storage, GE = Geoengineering

GENEVA, June 4, 2024 — CIEL’s experts react to this week’s launch of the University of Oxford-led “State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report” a global assessment of the state of carbon dioxide removal technologies worldwide. Lili Fuhr, CIEL’s Fossil Economy Program Director, released the following statement: “The launch of the State of CDR report highlights a concerning trend where carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly being touted as a solution to climate change. However, this focus on carbon removal technologies represents a dangerous distraction from what is urgently needed to tackle the climate crisis: a full, fast, fair, funded phase-out of all fossil fuels. The IPCC has made it unequivocally clear that overshooting 1.5°C will lead to irreversible impacts, and that there are significant uncertainties and risks associated with large-scale carbon removal. The fossil fuel economy is under threat, and those profiting from the status quo are aggressively promoting greenwashing and delaying genuine climate action. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is their primary defense, and CDR serves as a convenient cover to continue expanding fossil fuel extraction and usage. These delay tactics are designed to divert policymakers from implementing readily available and effective solutions”. Technologies such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) pose immense risks to ecosystems and communities. Marine carbon removal technologies – like Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, Algae and Biomass Cultivation/Sinking, and other marine geoengineering approaches – are highly speculative and come with enormous risks that include potential changes to the chemistry of oceans, and in nutrient levels, thereby altering delicate equilibriums of interactions between species. Last year, the London Convention / London Protocol stated in relation to four key categories of marine geoengineering ‘there is considerable uncertainty regarding their effects on the marine environment, human health, and on other uses of the ocean’, and expressed concern about ‘the potential for deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting or severe’, and signaled the intention to bring these techniques under strict regulation. CDR technologies like BECCS, DACCS, and marine geoengineering are also covered by a de-facto global moratorium at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 2010. More and more companies are selling and buying carbon removal offsets, and governments are debating whether to integrate removals into emission trading schemes at the national, regional, and international levels. However commercial use of carbon removal technologies is in direct contradiction to the moratorium under the CBD and the move towards stricter regulation under the London Protocol/London Convention for marine geoengineering. Erika Lennon, CIEL’s Senior Attorney, said: “It would be grossly irresponsible to allow the very industry that has driven us to the brink of climate catastrophe to develop new carbon management or carbon removal business models that profit from continued pollution. Carbon offsets provide a free pass for polluters, and we cannot afford to waste time on dangerous distractions. Curtailing deforestation and forest degradation, which drive the climate crisis, must happen. But the benefits of these “removals” for keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C is negated when sold as offsets to polluters. We must focus on deep emission cuts now, and provide the necessary finance for it, not rely on pollution credits as offsets or uncertain and potentially harmful technologies that could violate human rights and exacerbate the climate crisis.”

*CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the shiny toy in climate change mitigation spaces these days, expected to draw all eyes at COP 28. The technology proposes to reduce emissions by capturing carbon dioxide from industrial processes and injecting it deep underground. Many oil and gas-producing countries, such as the United States and Canada, are looking to CCS to reduce emissions from production, while coal-reliant nations, such as China and India, are exploring the feasibility of fitting coal-fired power plants with the technology. Despite the substantial interest that has been stirred up around the technology, many questions remain about its feasibility, persistently high costs, and track record to date. What is the current status of CCS technology, and why doesn’t it live up to its reputation as a definitive solution? What Is CCS? CCS technology aims to capture emissions at a large source before they are released into the atmosphere. This is different from carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which focuses on retroactively withdrawing CO2 already in the atmosphere through means such as planting trees or using direct air capture technologies. When CCS is used in fossil fuel production, it aims to capture upstream emissions—those created during the extraction and processing of the fuels—but does not reduce the bulk of emissions that are produced downstream when the fuel is burned. It also requires significant amounts of energy to operate the CCS technology itself, leading to more emissions if that energy is from fossil fuels. In fact, critical analysis of CCS technology finds that CCS can in some cases produce more emissions than it sequesters. Studies that try to show the promise of CCS technology often don’t include a full life-cycle analysis of the CCS process, thereby missing the full picture of the technology’s true inefficiency. While CCS is currently one of the only means to address emissions in hard-to-abate sectors such as the cement industry, fossil fuel energy with CCS is outcompeted by renewable energy. CCS in the fossil fuel sector is proposed as a pathway to allow continued expansion of fossil fuel production. Is CCS Technologically Feasible at Scale? CCS has developed at a snail’s pace over the past few decades. Despite decades in development, there are only 30 commercial CCS projects globally, capturing a total of around 42.5 MtCO2/year, or less than 0.2% of the necessary emissions reduction needed to close the emissions gap by 2030. This falls dramatically short of the International Energy Agency's previous projection that we would reach 300 MtCO2/year of storage by 2020. A majority of the 149 CCS projects that were projected to be storing carbon by 2020 globally have been either cancelled or put on an indefinite hold because of incredibly high costs and technological challenges. Is it possible to rapidly scale up CCS in the fossil fuel sector? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessed this potential and found that there are big challenges associated with sequestering lots of CO2 (more than 3.8 GtCO2/year by 2050). In other words, the IPCC indicated that there are serious feasibility concerns over the large-scale deployment of CCS in the fossil fuel sector and that we ought to limit our expectations. Despite this, many emissions reduction models still design scenarios with fossil fuel CCS playing a much larger role (up to 10GtCO2/year by 2050) to compensate for slower declines in fossil fuel production and consumption. But achieving these levels of carbon storage would imply building the equivalent of the world’s biggest current carbon capture facility—capturing about 7MtCO2/year—every week until 2050. Moreover, the potential for safe geological storage of the CO2 underground might be more limited than expected. Analysis of financial, contractual, and institutional barriers of long-term CO2 sequestration indicates that global use of CCS technologies is unlikely to be able to store more than 5 GtCO2/year underground by 2050. The long distances between where the emitting facilities are located (where the carbon would be captured) and the appropriate geological repositories often constitute a barrier to implementation. Transporting the CO2 requires significant investment in pipelines and transportation infrastructure. Currently, it is common for the fossil fuel industry to avoid the need for transportation by injecting the CO2 into ageing wells on-site, which in turn increases pressure and helps extract more oil through “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR). The irony is that CCS is supposed to help reduce emissions, and EOR ultimately generates more carbon emissions by producing more oil. Is CCS Cost Competitive? The costs of CCS vary depending on various factors, such as the industrial process that it’s applied to and how concentrated the CO2 is, how far the CO2 is transported, and where it is stored. CO2 capture costs are projected to range from CAD 27–48/tCO2 to CAD 50–150/tCO2. But these cost estimates are mostly drawn from modelling; there are too few projects that have been operational long enough to give a good sense of long-term costs. Despite decades of development of the technology, the costs of CCS in the oil and gas sector have been slow to fall. This is because the technology design is complex, with many different components, making innovation slow. It also needs to be highly customized for different applications; CCS in a refinery is much different than CCS in cement production, for instance. While technologies such as solar PV and batteries for electric vehicles have experienced dramatic cost reductions as they reached economies of scale, it’s unlikely that the same will happen for CCS. Figure 1. Cost and potential efficacy of emissions reductions by CCS, methane (CH4) reduction, and renewable energies Graph on CCS cost and efficiency Because of its high cost, CCS in the fossil fuel sector continues to rely heavily on government subsidies in order to be economically viable. At the same time, oil and gas companies globally are investing very little of their own money in CCS or renewable energy, spending less than 1% of their capital expenditures on clean energy investment in 2020. In determining cost competitiveness for emissions reductions, CCS in the energy sector should be judged against alternative energies that can reduce emissions by replacing fossil fuels. The IPCC finds that CCS in the energy sector is among the most expensive and least effective mitigation technologies in the near term. Closer Look: CCS in coal-fired power generation As of November 2023, four coal-fired plants with CCS are operational worldwide: two in China, one in the United States, and one in Canada. The development of CCS technology for coal power has been particularly slow, with only one plant operational as of 2021. China's two CCS facilities, launched in 2021 and 2023, capture a combined 0.65 Mtpa of CO2 annually. The Petra Nova plant in the United States, operational since 2016, was temporarily shut down in 2020 due to declining oil prices and reopened in September 2023. This facility, used for EOR, has historically not achieved its target of 1.4 Mtpa of captured emissions. Canada’s Boundary Dam CCS facility, operational since 2014 in Saskatchewan, had an original target to capture 90% of the plant’s emissions but captures only about 50% on average. Collectively, these four CCS facilities represent billions of dollars of investment and capture less than 0.02% of the coal industry's total emissions. In India, the national government has not announced any policy support for CCS, but there is emerging interest in the technology from power producers. Closer Look: CCS in Canada’s oil and gas sector Canada currently has seven operational CCS projects, mostly in the oil and gas sector. These projects capture only about 0.5% of the country's total emissions, and the majority of the carbon captured is used to enable further extraction through EOR. Despite its limited efficacy, CCS is being touted as the central emissions reduction solution by Canadian oil and gas proponents such as the Pathways Alliance and has received extensive financial support from governments in Canada. The federal government has committed at least CAD 9.1 billion, in addition to CAD 3.8 billion from the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan, with Alberta set to invest more. This level of investment outpaces support offered by the 2022 U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. This public investment in CCS is risky for taxpayers and takes away from funds available to support other, more cost-effective emission reduction strategies. Moreover, investing in CCS for oil and gas prolongs production of and reliance on the fuels without addressing the vast majority of emissions that are created when those fuels are burned downstream. Not to mention that these supports for CCS in fossil fuel production constitute subsidies under the World Trade Organization’s definition and contradict Canada’s commitment to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. What Role Will Fossil Fuel CCS Play in Limiting Warming to 1.5°C? In order to limit warming to 1.5°C, the IPCC finds that the production of oil and gas needs to decline by 65% by 2050. IISD research further shows that selected IPCC 1.5°C scenarios that rely only on feasible levels of CCS indicate that the world should be producing 30% less oil and gas by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. Coal production needs to decline by nearly 80% this decade to align with the 1.5°C target. These findings are echoed by the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emissions scenario, which concludes that there is no room for any new fossil fuel extraction projects. Extraction and use of fossil fuels from mines and fields that are already in operation or under development today is more than enough to meet global demand under 1.5°C pathways; there is no need to develop any more oil and gas fields. In addition to the IPCC scenarios, IISD analysis shows that 1.5°C pathways from the International Renewable Energy Agency, UNEP Production Gap Report, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and various other authoritative intergovernmental organizations and energy consultancies all feature such steep declines in oil and gas production that developing any fossil fuels extraction activities from new fields or mines would generate emissions in excess of what is necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C. Figure 2. Global oil and gas production, based on other selected 1.5°C pathways Global oil and gas production graph Closer Look: CCS and the push for phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuel production at COP 28 The topic of phasing out fossil fuels promises to be a central part of the discussion at COP 28 in Dubai. The European Union, among others, is calling for a phase-out of "unabated" fossil fuels. The language of "abatement" leaves a loophole for continued use of fossil fuels as long as a technology to capture the emissions from production is used. The technological and economic feasibility of CCS is central in the conversation around "abated" production. Given the challenges that the technology has faced, limiting its use and efficacy to date, it is clear that CCS is not able to abate emissions from fossil fuels sufficiently. Given the absence of other deep and fully developed emissions reductions technologies, abated production is not possible. Moreover, this loophole is being used to push for prolonging and expanding fossil fuel production and use, with the assumption that CCS and other emissions reduction technologies will suffice. This is problematic, given that the majority of emissions are produced at the end uses of fossil fuels, which are not addressed through CCS. Countries are already planning to produce double the amount of fossil fuels as would be needed under a 1.5°C scenario in 2030, exceeding expected global demand, a gap that CCS will not address. Conclusion Despite the hype, the science behind CCS technology doesn’t measure up. The technology is incredibly expensive, captures relatively minimal amounts of CO2, and is heavily reliant on large government subsidies. In the coal industry specifically, CCS has demonstrated a particularly poor performance, with a sluggish rollout that further underscores the inefficiency of the technology. Worryingly, some fossil fuel companies have been trying to use CCS technology as a justification for a further expansion of production, which is incompatible with global climate targets. Heavy reliance on CCS in the energy sector is misguided, as renewable energy has seen dramatic cost reductions that make it more and more economical. Discussions of "abated" fossil fuels at COP 28 and beyond should take a closer look at the technology behind the promise.

*CCS = Carbon Capture and Storage, EOR = Enhanced Oil Recovery, DAC = Direct Air Capture

Neither of the two principal industrial carbon removal (ICR) methods being promoted and subsidized by governments meets the collective biophysical need of atmospheric CO2 reduction, and both are net CO2 additive as presently practiced. These are point-source capture in which the captured carbon is used for oil production, and direct air capture when wholly fossil fuel powered and all emissions produced by the process are accounted for. Point-source CCS cannot reduce atmospheric CO2, since it can never store more than it captures, and as currently practiced is also net additive (with only rare and minor exceptions where the captured CO2 is simply injected underground). Point-source CCS even at its theoretical best is somewhat net CO2 additive. (Indeed, CCS is not normally considered a “negative emissions technology.”) DAC, when fossil fuel powered and the full process and emissions are accounted, is also net CO2 additive. That is, in both cases the processes add more CO2 to the atmosphere than they remove, emitting—in the case of point-source capture—from 1.42 to 4.7 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere for each ton removed (see Table 3) and—in the case of direct air capture—emitting from 1.46 to 3.44 tons of CO2 for each ton removed.6 Nevertheless, as explained in the “Discussion” section, some studies, through their methodological choices, report point-source capture and direct air capture to be climate mitigating or net CO2 reductive—by leaving out part of the life cycle process, by assuming low or zero-carbon power sources, by invoking an emissions-discounting “displacement” assumption or by ignoring that, in real-world practice, captured CO2 is primarily used for oil production. Captured CO2 is primarily used for oil production— “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR) in which CO2 is injected into partially depleted oil reservoirs to extract residual oil. In the United States, which is the world leader in CCS, virtually the only use of the captured carbon is EOR (Foehringer Merchant 2018). EOR is also the primary use of captured CO2 globally—the vast majority of captured CO2 that has been injected for subterranean storage worldwide was frst used for oil extraction via EOR (Global CCS Institute 2018). An analysis of the “Facility Data” on the Global Carbon Capture Institute website also indicates that most captured CO2 is used for EOR.7 As Dismukes et al (2018) stress: “The use of EOR changes the nature of carbon from being a pollutant to a valuable commercial input…” EOR is the predominant use of CO2 not only in point-source capture, but also is emerging as the predominant use in DAC (Blum 2019; Storrow 2020), something that is not generally acknowledged in the technical literature on DAC. Scientifc and technical papers commonly argue that captured CO2 could be “utilized” for a variety of products other than oil, including synfuels, chemicals, building materials, and cement (e.g., Sandalow et al. 2017; Davis et al. 2018; Soltof 2019; Hepburn et al. 2019). However, there is no climate-signifcant level of alternative demand for captured CO2 at this time or in the foreseeable future because utilization volumes fall far short of sequestration need (Bennett et al. 2014; Schäfer et al. 2015; Mac Dowell et al. 2017; Foehringer Merchant 2018; Center for International Environmental Law 2019; van Renssen 2020; Global CCS Institute, undated) and most of these uses would result in the CO2 soon being recycled back into the atmosphere. For details see Online Appendix 1. In principle, it may be possible for DAC to be net CO2 reductive if powered by a non-carbon energy source and if the captured carbon is stored underground and not used for commercial production. Operationally there are only extremely small-scale pilots (e.g., Climeworks experiments in Switzerland and Iceland). We found no analyses of a fullscale, renewables-powered DAC process based on a full life cycle (see Fig. 1) and including embodied emissions and emissions from chemicals (e.g., sorbent) manufacture. Yet, the major, but generally ignored, policy issue about subsidizing renewables-powered DAC is whether renewable energy should be channeled for carbon removal rather than used directly to reduce carbon emissions by powering homes, industry, businesses, and transport.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has so far survived Republican-led attempts to repeal major parts of its $369 billion in clean energy and climate spending. But President Joe Biden’s signature legislation faces a new threat: the possible re-election of Donald Trump.

Recent polls show Trump leading Biden in key swing states that will likely decide the 2024 election.

After years of federal lease sales to oil, gas and coal companies, environmentalists had hopes that President Biden would end the fossil fuel bonanza.

But one year after announcing a halt to any new federal oil and gas leasing, Biden has outpaced Donald Trump in issuing drilling permits on public lands. After setting a record for the largest offshore lease sale last year in the Gulf of Mexico, the Interior Department plans to auction off oil and gas drilling rights on more than 200,000 acres across Western states by the end of March, followed by 1 million acres in the Cook Inlet, off the coast of Alaska.

Let’s start with inflation. Over Biden’s near-four years in office, inflation is up roughly 20%. Under Trump, inflation was up 8%. So how could anyone argue that Biden will be better on inflation given that his rate is nearly three times HIGHER than Trump’s. This would be like saying a batter who has struck out four times in a row is more likely to hit a home run than a batter who has hit three homers in his last four at bats. By the way, Biden did NOT inherit inflation from Trump. In his last four months in office the inflation rate was Oct. 20—1.2% Nov. 20—1.3%  Dec. 20—1.5% Jan. 21—1.4% Then, 18 months later, under Biden, it was 9.1%. Now let’s look at interest rates. The mortgage interest rate was 2.9% when Trump left office. The mortgage interest rate is now roughly 7%. That’s more than twice as high. The higher interest rates and the inflation in rents and housing prices mean that the mortgage payment on a median value home is now TWICE as high under Biden as under Trump. How about the interest rate on federal borrowing? During Trump’s last year in office, the 10-year Treasury bill was 0.9%. After three and a half years of Biden, the interest rate is at 4.3%. Finally, there is the issue of the federal deficits and debt. Neither president has a good record on controlling spending and borrowing. That’s because both parties like to spend money and play Santa Claus. The question is which president had a worse record? When we take out the two COVID years, 2020 and 2021, we find that the average deficits under Trump were roughly $750 billion. That’s bad. But under Biden, the average deficit was $1.5 trillion. Even adjusting for Bidenflation, deficits have been at least 50% higher under Biden than Trump. But let’s put aside the real world record of Trump and Biden and look at their policy proposals. Trump wants to make the tax rate reductions permanent, continue to deregulate the economy, and encourage greater production of U.S. energy.