Carbon Capture and Storage

I have a separate site on this topic and just a relatively short summary here.

Carbon capture and storage refers to capturing carbon dioxide as it is being generated by fossil fuel power stations and pumping it into underground reservoirs. Carbon dioxide is a gas at atmospheric pressure and temperatures down to -57℃. Uncompressed gases take up a lot of space, so the carbon dioxide would have to be stored under pressure.

It is not feasible to refit this technology to existing power stations. It can be added to new power stations, although this would add to the cost and use up some of the energy generated by the power stations.

Why is this a problem

• Carbon dioxide does not degrade. So we would have to be confident that carbon dioxide will not leak, not just in our lifetime but for the life of the planet, as we obviously should not create a problem for future generations. However, the research says that even when sites are selected and managed appropriately, they will leak, though slowly.
• "Available technology captures about 85-95% of the CO2 processed in a capture plant." See Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on CCS. This means that even if the CO2 does not leak, some will still end up in the atmosphere.
• The private sector is evidently not prepared to take on liability for any future leaks, so the federal government does this here in Australia. Almost certainly it will be the same elsewhere.
• The process of capturing, compressing and transporting carbon dioxide uses up a proportion of the energy being produced, meaning more fossil fuels need to burned for a given amount of usable electricity.
• The sites may require ongoing monitoring and maintenance and thus impose an ongoing and indefinite cost on future generations.
• The cost of this scheme takes money away from true climate change solutions.

But really, the main problem is this:

Carbon Capture and Storage could allow current generations to emit apocalyptic amounts of CO2 which will ultimately not be contained, to the detriment of future generations.

This technology is in my opinion the absolute worst option for dealing with climate change. It is even worse than nuclear energy. At least nuclear waste degrades, though slowly. I thought the time for carbon capture and storage had passed. It was talked about a lot a few years ago. Then it was rarely mentioned until the current Coalition government revived the idea in 2020.

CSS Projects in Australia

At this stage, there are only experimental projects in Australia. But the federal government intends for there to be new fossil fuel power stations.

Australian Legislation

I cover the legislation in much more detail on my carbon capture and storage site.

There are two main problems with the legislation:

• The legislation shifts long-term liability from the people and companies that implement carbon capture and storage to the federal government. This liability can commence as soon as 15 years after injection of CO2 into the storage site is finished and the storage site is sealed.
• The legislation contains no clear obligation for the storage sites to be leak proof.

The defects in the legislation are obviously problems in and of themselves. But to truly appreciate the gravity of these defects we need to ask why the legislation was written this way.

Looking at how the legislation is written, it is difficult to avoid the inference that the people who decided on the content of the legislation were fully aware that CCS is not a safe technology and that the companies that would deliver it are not confident that they can deliver safe and leak-proof CCS.

Almost certainly, there would have been consultation with industry. And it would have become clear that private sector companies will not get involved without their liability being legislated away because they are not confident that they can deliver safe and leak-proof CCS. And we are not talking about time frames like the lifetime of the planet. We are talking about the lifetime of the companies or possibly the lifetimes of the decision makers within those companies who might fear that they would be personally held accountable.