Major step up in carbon capture and storage needed to keep warming below 2 °C

J. Jewell & T. Kazlou. (2024). Major step up in carbon capture and storage needed to keep warming below 2 °C. Nature Climate Change 1–2. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02112-0

A feasibility analysis reveals that carbon capture and storage capacity might be able to expand fast enough to meet the requirements of 2 °C climate pathways but will unlikely meet those for 1.5 °C. Moreover, carbon capture and storage is unlikely to capture and store more than 600 Gt of CO2 over the twenty-first century, which has implications for the global carbon budget.

Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets

T. Kazlou, A. Cherp & J. Jewell. (2024). Feasible deployment of carbon capture and storage and the requirements of climate targets. Nature Climate Change 1–9. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02104-0

Climate change mitigation requires the large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS). Recent plans indicate an eight-fold increase in CCS capacity by 2030, yet the feasibility of CCS expansion is debated. Using historical growth of CCS and other policy-driven technologies, we show that if plans double between 2023 and 2025 and their failure rates decrease by half, CCS could reach 0.37 GtCO2 yr−1 by 2030—lower than most 1.5 °C pathways but higher than most 2 °C pathways. Staying on-track to 2 °C would require that in 2030–2040 CCS accelerates at least as fast as wind power did in the 2000s, and that after 2040, it grows faster than nuclear power did in the 1970s to 1980s. Only 10% of mitigation pathways meet these feasibility constraints, and virtually all of them depict <600 GtCO2 captured and stored by 2100. Relaxing the constraints by assuming no failures of CCS plans and growth as fast as flue-gas desulfurization would approximately double this amount. Carbon capture and storage is a key component of mitigation scenarios, yet its feasibility is debated. An analysis based on historical trends in policy-driven technologies, current plans and their failure rates shows that a number of 2 °C pathways are feasible, but most 1.5 °C pathways are not.

Have climate policies accelerated energy transitions? Historical evolution of electricity mix in the G7 and the EU compared to net-zero targets

M. Suzuki, J. Jewell & A. Cherp. (2023). Have climate policies accelerated energy transitions? Historical evolution of electricity mix in the G7 and the EU compared to net-zero targets. Energy Research & Social Science 106, 103281. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2023.103281

Climate policies are often assumed to have significant impacts on the nature and speed of energy transitions. To investigate this hypothesis, we develop an approach to categorise, trace, and compare energy transitions across countries and time periods. We apply this approach to analyse electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU between 1960 and 2022, specifically examining whether and how climate policies altered the transitions beyond historical trends. Additionally, we conduct a feasibility analysis of the required transition in these countries by 2035 to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5°C. We find that climate policies have so far had limited impacts: while they may have influenced the choice of deployed technologies and the type of transitions, they have not accelerated the growth of low-carbon technologies or hastened the decline of fossil fuels. Instead, electricity transitions in the G7 and the EU have strongly correlated with the changes in electricity demand throughout the last six decades. In contrast, meeting the 1.5°C target requires unprecedented supply-centred transitions by 2035 where all G7 countries and the EU must expand low-carbon electricity five times faster and reduce fossil fuels two times faster on average compared to the rates in 2015–2020. This highlights the insufficiency of incremental changes and the need for a radically stronger effort to meet the climate target.