John Kerry and others all doubt the effectiveness of CO2 capture against the climate crisis
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John Kerryfirst special envoy for the climate of the US presidency, has joined the chorus of skeptics: renewable sources of energy are the only solution to slow the climate crisis, unlike CO capture techniques2or carbon dioxide removal (Cdr) to put it in English. He’s not the only one who thinks so. Several world-renowned climatologists believe that there is no material time to aim for such a system that repairs the damage by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. It is still too expensive a method. They could perhaps give results in years while it would immediately provide an alibi for continuing to pollute when we get dangerously close to the irreparable threshold.
The analysis
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“Some scientists believe it is possible that the average global temperature could exceed the limit of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels,” Kerry told the British newspaper Guardian. According to him the idea of thinking about recovering by putting the clock back thanks to the capture of CO2 it would be dangerous. “We may already be too close to a point of no return, to irreversibility”. In short, there is no time and therefore there are no excuses for not cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately. With all due respect to those who, in Italy and abroad, believe that the CDR is the only true panacea.
He had said the same thing, albeit in different words, Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne when we met her in May last year in her office at ETH Zurich (Eth). Born in 1974, she is one of the most important Swiss experts on the climate crisis. You are a professor at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, you have co-signed three different reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set up by the United Nations itself. One of which, the one presented at Cop 21, established that a rise in temperature of one and a half degrees was the maximum we could have afforded.
“We need to cut emissions by 50% by 2030,” he explained. “Capturing the CO2 it’s expensive and we don’t have the facilities to do it on a large scale, planting trees is fine but it’s a palliative if we continue to exploit fossil fuels. The most immediate and feasible way is that of renewables. There are sectors that cannot reduce CO to zero2, however, we must bear in mind that in the end only 10% of what we put into the atmosphere today is sustainable. By this I don’t mean developing technologies to capture CO2 it is useless, far from it, but to achieve the 2030 objectives I doubt they will be useful to us given the limited time available”.
Yes, time. The question is all here. It is told well in the documentary Overcome the limits on Netflix, which features, among others, the English popularizer David Attenborough but above all the Swedish climatologist Johan Rockstrom. He has identified the nine areas that guarantee the balance of our planet. In some, compromised by the action of man, we have gone so far as to approach the point of no return.
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But it is an argument that in certain circles does not make inroads. In Esbjerg, on the Danish coast, in March this year they inaugurated the opening of the first CO storage site2. They’ve taken to putting it into a depleted oil field in the North Sea. It will be able to contain up to eight million tons a year, roughly 10% of the greenhouse gases produced by a country like Denmark. Or at least that’s the goal starting in 2030 and by then we should have cut emissions by half instead.
Behind the project, called Greensand, is the petrochemical giant Ineos. In practice, carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere, transformed into liquid gas, then solidified, and finally stored underground where once there were oil deposits. The CO2 in Denmark it arrived from Belgium and was transported overland. Completely temporary and also polluting system. In the future ships should be exploited for transport even though they are also propelled by diesel engines.
“Half of carbon dioxide will have to be removed from the atmosphere if we are to achieve the 2050 carbon neutrality goals, it is not enough to reduce emissions”, he stressed Brian Gilvary, head of Ineos Energy, on that occasion. “I don’t think we will be able to do without fossil fuels, not in the next few decades. The Greensand project is proof that there is an alternative to carbon credits.”
The interview
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The carbon credit system is an important piece in this story. Today it allows you to continue to emit greenhouse gases in exchange for the purchase of a security that guarantees its compensation with projects related to their reduction, such as planting trees for example. Currently a carbon credit in Europe, which is equivalent to the possibility of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide or other gases, costs around 92 euros. At Ineos they are convinced that the Greensand project can turn into a lucrative market with the progressive reduction of the costs of storing CO2 and process optimization. Let’s talk about the future, given that today the cost of carbon capture far exceeds 92 euros per ton.
Eni is also in the game with the Sleipner project in Norway, one of the first ever dedicated to the geological storage of CO2 for environmental purposes only. According to the Global Ccs Institute, where Ccs stands for carbon capture and storageThere are 197 projects globally, but the vast majority inject C02 underground to increase oil extraction efficiency using a technique called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). In practice, carbon dioxide and water are used to push oil up. Only nine projects were born for geological storage. Returning to Eni, he would also have another project in the United Kingdom on the table, HyNet North West, and one off the coast of Ravenna, along the Romagna coast.
“This is a great moment for Europe’s green transition and for our cleantech industry,” he commented Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, speaking about the Anglo-Danish Greensand initiative. “You are showing that it can be done, that we can grow our industry through innovation and competition, and at the same time remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere through ingenuity and cooperation.” In short, combining the old market logics with the new ones to safeguard the environment. Also Sir David King, an academic originally from South Africa but with a British passport, former head of the scientific committee of the British government and one of the architects of the Paris Agreements which in 2015 established the objective of avoiding the rise in temperatures beyond one and a half degrees , is not against the capture of greenhouse gases. Exactly the point on which Kerry does not agree.
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“Part of the challenge we’re facing right now is that countries that have technologies at their disposal aren’t deploying them at the pace they should be,” Kerry concluded. “Fatih Birol (executive director of the International Energy Agency, IEA, ed.) has long made it clear that all it takes to reach the 2030 goal of reducing emissions by 45% globally is to scale up renewable energy installations, and this is not happening. There is resistance right now that I see from many sides to doing what we know we have to do. our goals?”
A study also by the IEA has estimated that carbon capture and storage technologies will be essential to achieve long-term decarbonisation goals. They will contribute about 12% of the reduction of total emissions but only by 2050. Too little too late, according to Rockström, Seneviratne and now also Kerry.
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