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Planet Keep’s summary of "The Role of Carbon Capture in Climate Change Policy" from the Citizen’s Climate Lobby’s article

This piece provides a well written overview of the current state of Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS).  Carbon (i.e. Carbon Dioxide equivalents (CO2e) which includes all GHGs with Global Warming Potential (GWP ) capture is critical as achieving carbon neutrality will require more than simply reducing GHG emissions.  We will also need to recapture CO2e out of the atmosphere and store it to meet our climate goals.  GHG reductions are now known as Scope 4 emissions under the GHG Protocol.  As the article points out  "To store the vast amounts of CO2 that are emitted today, geological sequestration is needed. Potential destinations for storing large amounts of CO2 are in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep underground formations capped off with impermeable rock, or even underground deposits where it gradually combines with existing minerals."
As the author Knight points out, there is "a new tax credit called the 45Q credit and a lot of projects are moving forward around the world. In the US, the 45Q policy will pay $60 per ton of CO2 if it’s used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), and $85 per ton if it’s converted into products or sent to geological sequestration…(prior to 45Q) there was only one way to recover the cost:… selling the CO2 to oil producers for EOR, where the CO2 is injected into depleted oil wells to force out more oil."  Knight also points out that…"Methods to capture CO2 in various solvents have been around for more than 100 years, so applying those methods to remove CO2 from the exhaust of various kinds of plants is a relatively straightforward engineering task".  
While EOR has been an effective approach to maximize the efficiency of fossil fuel reserves, it is time to move on to "more climate-friendly utilization options include sequestering it chemically in cement or concrete, incorporating it into polymers, converting it into carbon fibers, or using it to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels (electrofuels)." That said, in terms of meaningful capture and reduction at scale it is geological sequestration that will need to handle the volume of CO2e reductions necessary to have any hope of meeting climate goals.
 

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