The world is not going to be carbon-free any time soon: that much is clear. Developed and developing countries alike rely on fossil fuels for transport, industry and power, all of which release CO2 into the atmosphere. But as sea levels rise, ‘unprecedented’ weather events become commonplace and the polar ice caps melt, how can we balance our use of fossil fuels with the imperative to combat the catastrophic effects of climate change?

“Everything suggests that we won’t be able to stop burning carbon-based fuels, particularly in rapidly developing countries like India and China,” says Professor Mike Bickle of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Along with increasing use of renewable energy and improved energy efficiency, one way to cope with that is to use carbon capture and storage – and there is no technical reason why it can’t be deployed right now.”

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a promising and practical solution to drastically reducing carbon emissions, but it has had a stilted development pathway to date. In 2015, the UK government cancelled a £1 billion competition for CCS technology six months before it was due to be awarded, citing high costs. Just one year later, a high-level advisory group appointed by ministers recommended that establishing a CCS industry in the UK now could save the government and consumers billions per year from the cost of meeting climate change targets.

CCS is the only way of mitigating the 20% of CO2 emissions from industrial processes – such as cement manufacturing and steel making, for which there is no obvious alternative – to help meet the world’s commitments to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. It works by trapping the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuels, which is then cooled, liquefied and pumped deep underground into geological formations, saline aquifers or disused oil and gas fields. Results from lab-based tests, and from working CCS sites such as Sleipner in the North Sea, suggest that carbon can be safely stored underground in this way for 10,000 years or more.

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