Pros and Cons of CCUS

Advantages of CCS / CCUS technologies:

1. Reducing CO2 emissions at source, in energy production and industry, which makes it an important part of tackling climate change.

2. Enabling carbon capture at large point sources as opposed to direct air capture where CO2 concentration is low.

3. CO2 could be used as alternative fuel; however, this requires further development.

4. Placing the CO2 into geothermal reservoirs for storage can help the extraction of the geothermal resource leading to the creation of renewable geothermal energy.

5. Converting carbon into products through chemicals and plastics manufacture.

6. Implementation of these technologies creates new job opportunities.

Disadvantages:

1. Currently the cost of CCS technology is high. Deployment of equipment, materials, building the infrastructure for transporting and storing carbon is very expensive.

2. Due to the additional steps involving extracting and capturing carbon, a plant process would use more energy, which makes it more expensive. Also, more fuel ends up being burnt in the process which defies the purpose.

3. The process of capturing and injecting CO2 into depleted oil wells to free up hard-to-get oil, known as enhanced oil recovery, leads to more fuel burning and emitting additional CO2 which is also in conflict with decarbonisation efforts.

4. The amount of storage capacity for captured carbon is hard to calculate and is uncertain.

5. Though very low there is always a possibility of carbon dioxide leakage at any stage be it transporting, injecting or storing underground. CO2 is highly toxic and its leakage can cause serious environmental issues and put the health of people at risk.