created to engineer this shift, is even more direct. Buffeted
by today’s push for lower-carbon energy, “oil companies
need a reason to exist,” says Cottone, who contends that
reason should be to serve up CCS. “It’s a second chance.”AS CONSUMERS eye a torrent of natural
disasters indicative of a warming world,
scientific experts say curbing carbon
emissions enough to avert the worst conse-
quences of climate change will require
deploying CCS at grand scale. The existential task, accord-
ing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or
IPCC, a scientific body whose pronouncements frame con-
ventional wisdom on global warming, is to slash emissions
by 2050 to “net zero,” meaning any remaining emissions
would have to be offset by pulling CO 2 out of the air.
So far, emissions continue to rise. Although renew-
able energy use is growing fast, the International Energy
Agency projects fossil fuels, which provided 81% of global
energy in 2018, still will provide 74% in 2040. If there’s
any chance to meaningfully decarbonize the economy,
it will require decoupling the emission of greenhouse
gases from the burning of hydrocarbons. And that will
mean grabbing as much as possible of the approximately
33 billion metric tons of CO 2 that fossil fuel combustion
produces annually and siphoning it away.
That is why governments are racing to support CCS—
from Sacramento to Washington, from Texas to NorthDakota, from Canada to the U.K. to Norway
and beyond. Some of them view the technol-
ogy as a way to sustain their own fossil-fueled
economies. Others see it as a bridge to a
future when renewable energy is cheap and
robust enough to power the world largely on
its own.
Carbon capture, in short, presents heavy
industry and all who profit from it with
the possibility of switching in the public
eye from climate villains to climate sav-
iors—without abandoning their reliance on
fossil fuel, and largely at public expense. It’s
a potential new lease on life at a time when
markets—far more than policymakers—are
pushing polluters to clean up their acts. In
January, BlackRock, the world’s largest
asset manager, announced it will reorient
its investments to trim their climate risk,
including reducing fossil fuel exposure. In
February, BP, the British oil behemoth, said
it would aim for net-zero carbon emissions
by 2050, a plan that depends largely on CCS.
With real money suddenly on the line, the
race to scale up CCS has entered a cutthroat,
meaning very real, phase. The competition isREJUVENATOR Pumping systems like this one at West Seminole could use recycled CO 2 to help old oil wells stay productive longer.CAR.W.04.20.XMIT.indd 61 FINAL 3/10/2020 8:24:18 PM