The Future of Carbon Storage: Insights from Royal Society Policy Briefing
By Lucy Martin
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is emerging as a key technology in the global effort to transition to a net-zero energy system. The policy briefing “Locked Away – Geological Carbon Storage,” explores the latest understanding, technical considerations, and key challenges surrounding CCS technologies and their essential role in the long-term energy transition. Professor Andy Woods, Head of the IEEF, chaired the report’s working group.
According to the report, CCS is not only crucial for curbing residual emissions from industries that are difficult to de-carbonise, but necessary to reduce fossil fuel emissions during the time it will take to re-engineer energy infrastructure and secure alternative energy supply. The report examines the options for geological CO2 storage, with a particular focus on the offshore injection of CO2 into deep saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields.
The full 58 page report provides detail on the following topics:
- The Geological Storage System
- Existing Carbon Storage Projects and Experience
- Surface Infrastructure for Storage
- Monitoring and Assurance
- New Approaches
- Scaling Up
- Policy Recommendations
The scale of the challenge is immense. Current global CCS infrastructure can store around 40 million tonnes of CO2 per year. However, to meet climate goals and limit warming to the 1.5 or 2 degrees thresholds, storage capacity will need to increase to between 7-8 gigatonnes per year by 2050, and cumulative storage may need to reach as high as 1200 gigatonnes by 2100. Achieving this would require the development of thousands of new injection wells—a daunting task given the current multi-year time frame required for planning, developing, and commissioning wells and associated infrastructure.
The Royal Society briefing underscores that while the path to large-scale CCS deployment is complex, it may be achieved with sustained commitment to research, innovation, and policy support.
“The technical building blocks are available to build up this industry, but this will need to be underpinned by fundamental research and development to optimise and improve transport, storage efficiency, monitoring and assurance technologies, the systems that link these elements and to identify high quality, secure storage resource
Page 49, Geological Carbon Storage Policy Briefing
A major takeaway from the briefing is that while the technical foundations for the CCS industry are largely in place, significant new challenges lie ahead. These include ensuring the integrity of geological storage sites, optimising storage efficiency, and developing better systems for monitoring and assurance. As the CCS industry scales up, researchers will play pivotal roles in identifying and addressing these challenges.
Researchers at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Flows (IEEF) are already working on a variety of important research insights to technical challenges and knowledge gaps in this area. Read more about our work on the carbon storage research page.