ECO’s worried that sleep-deprived Parties are mixing up their cappuccinos and their carbon, thinking that it’s possible to decarbonize oil and gas like we decaffeinate coffee. Wake up, wake up, wake up!
There’s no such thing as carbon-free or low-carbon fossil fuels.
We cannot decarbonize oil, gas, and coal. We need to decarbonize the economy, by ending reliance on fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel producers are falling over themselves to sell their products as the cleanest dirty energy around. ECO’s not buying it. Nor are many others in this venue.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) cannot make gas green, oil clean, or coal climate-safe. CCS is not a climate solution – so we should not be baking it into our climate plans. Ample evidence demonstrates that CCS is unnecessary for the rapid emission cuts we need, unproven at scale, and unjust for communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and the buildout of carbon pipelines and CCS infrastructure. It’s no surprise that the most recent IPCC report ranked carbon capture as one of the costliest and least effective mitigation options for reducing emissions by 2030—the most critical period for avoiding further catastrophic harm.
Of course, oil and gas companies know all this. They’re not interested in CCS as a way to take climate action – for them, it’s a greenwashing scheme to protect their business-as-usual of digging up fossil fuels and stalling the energy transition. Despite being around for 50 years, CCS hasn’t made a dent in global emissions. It has repeatedly failed to deliver the emissions reductions promised by its promoters and included in models. Instead, CCS has mostly helped to pump more oil out of the ground, through enhanced oil recovery. No wonder it’s the fossil fuel industry’s favorite false solution.
No amount of investment in CCS can bring about the needed transition to a fossil-free future. By design, CCS prolongs reliance on fossil fuels, literally and figuratively locking in place the polluting facilities onto which it is applied.
ECO knows that the only “clean” oil, gas, and coal is the oil, gas, and coal we leave in the ground. There is no fixing fossil fuels, we need to ditch them.