Patent filings highlight carbon capture innovation

Created by intellectual property firm Appleyard Lees, the Inside Green Innovation:Progress Report 2022 notes a steady growth in CCUS patent filing in recent years, with more than 140 filed in 2020. This represents a 60 per cent increase on numbers from 2015, with the IP firm anticipating further growth across the 2021-2022 period.

“Capturing and storing carbon is essential to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global temperature increase to no more than two degrees Celsius and achieving net zero by 2050,” said patent attorney Sarah Gibbs, senior associate at Appleyard Lees.

“Our research shows that the number and scale of CCUS projects worldwide is accelerating, including new storage site activity in the North Sea.”

In a recent interview with The Engineer, former UK chief scientific advisor Sir David King outlined how removal of carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere was vital for rebalancing the planet’s climate. So far, however, the technology to remove CO2 at scale has been elusive, with just a handful of pilot projects up and running.