{"id":2474,"date":"2022-04-20T10:27:15","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T10:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatetransform.com\/?p=2474"},"modified":"2022-06-30T11:17:20","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T11:17:20","slug":"past-failures-of-ccs-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatetransform.com\/past-failures-of-ccs-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Failures of CCS Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has long been accused of over-promising and under-delivering. Norway first trialled it in 1996, but it never took off as expected. Most countries stopped paying attention to CCS energy after Norway’s experiments. Even today, just 21 facilities capture around 40 million tonnes of carbon<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2013 a small fraction of the 36 billion tonnes emitted each year.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But the political urgency over climate change has brought CCS technology back into focus. As more countries and companies announce plans to achieve \u2018net zero\u2019 carbon emissions, many say that CCS should play a vital role. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that CCS has the potential to \u201cincrease flexibility in achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions\u201d.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In 2013, Norway closed down its flagship carbon capture and storage<\/a> (CCS) plant due to cost overruns. The project had promised to capture one million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from an oil refinery and gas power plant. But the reasoning behind its closure wasn\u2019t so simple.<\/span><\/p>\n An environmental NGO said that Norway\u2019s failure was \u201ca reflection not of the technology involved, but rather the shoddy organization and perpetual equivocation on behalf of the Norwegian government\u201d. But the country\u2019s auditor general said that the government had overspent on the project and handled the financial risks poorly. \u201cThe complexity of implementing CCS was underestimated in 2006 (when the project was launched)\u201d, it added. <\/span><\/p>\n Norway\u2019s failure was not the only one. Several other European countries, such as Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, also experimented with CCS projects. These were also abandoned<\/span> due to their complexity.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nCountries abandoned CCS energy due to its cost inefficacy<\/h2>\n