CCS numbers systemically overestimated – Imperial study

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A new study from Imperial College London has found that the amount of CO2 sequestered by carbon capture and storage (CCS) from 1996-2020 has been overestimated by up to 30 per cent.

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Published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the report outlines the significant role that CCS has played in climate change mitigation. However, it also warns that the reporting mechanisms used to quantify its impact are leading to skewed figures, which could ultimately undermine the technology’s role in tackling the climate crisis.

According to the Imperial team’s calculations, CCS has removed 197 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere between 1996 and 2020. This falls short of official reports by 19-30 per cent, giving an inaccurate picture of the technology’s contribution to fighting climate change.

“Carbon capture and storage is rightly a cornerstone of climate change mitigation, but without a centralised reporting framework we approach climate change on the back foot when we need to be more proactively tackling the issue with robust and accurate reporting,” said lead author Yuting Zhang, PhD candidate at Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering.

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