The Carbon Capture Mirage: Why We’re Betting on a Fantasy

It seems like many people out there are still sniffing techno-hopium by the tank-load.

As much as I'd love for them to be right, it's just too easy to show why they're wrong. Or at least how they're overrelying on unreasonable assumptions.

Today, let’s talk about carbon capture and storage. CCS. The “get out of jail free” card for the fossil fuel industry. The darling of politicians who want to look like they’re doing something about the climate crisis, without actually changing a thing.

But here’s the truth: CCS is a mirage. It makes great promises, but delivers little.

Let’s break it down.

The dream goes like this: we’ll keep burning fossil fuels, but we’ll catch all that nasty carbon before it escapes into the sky. We’ll stuff it deep underground, lock it away for eternity, and keep the party going. No need to change. No need to transform. No need to face the music.

It’s a seductive idea. It’s also a dangerous one.

Because it rests on a tower of assumptions, each one shakier than the last.

First, we assume CCS can actually capture 90, 95, maybe even 100 percent of the carbon emissions from a power plant or factory. Slick brochures and ads imply this possibility.

But reality? The best we’ve ever done, anywhere on earth, is 83%. That’s the high score. Most projects limp along, capturing far less. Some fail outright. Some refuse to even publish their data.

Second, we assume CCS will get cheaper as we build more. That’s how it worked for solar panels, wind turbines, VCRs and many other new technologies. Build more, befit from scale, costs plummet, everyone wins. But CCS is different. It’s bespoke. Custom-built for every site, every smokestack, every underground formation. No mass production. No assembly line. Just endless engineering headaches, unique to every project.

Third, we assume the carbon will stay underground. Forever. Not for a decade, not for a century, but for thousands of years. But geology is tricky. Wells leak. Rocks crack. Pressure builds. Monitoring is expensive. Who’s going to pay for it in 50 years, 100 years, when the company’s long gone and the world’s moved on? Nobody knows.

Fourth, we assume we can quickly scale CCS to meet remediation objectives. Tbis is a massive undertaking. We’re talking gigatons of carbon every single year.

Right now, after decades of hype, the world’s total CCS capacity is only about 50 million tons a year. That’s less than 0.1% of global emissions. A rounding error.

The Gorgon project in Australia, one of the world’s biggest, cost billions. It’s delivered half of what it promised. The In Salah project in Algeria? Shut down after seven years. Shute Creek in the US? Underperformed by a third. Most projects are subsidized by governments, propped up with taxpayer money, and still can’t deliver what they promise.

Meanwhile, the costs haven’t budged. CCS costs anywhere from $30 to $150 a ton of CO2, depending on the source. That’s before you even count the pipelines, the monitoring, the insurance for leaks.

And the kicker: even when it works, CCS uses a ton of energy. You have to run the capture equipment, compress the gas, pump it underground. That means burning more fuel, making more emissions. The net savings? Often 10-20% less than the headline number. Sometimes, not much at all.

Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room: emissions are still rising. Every year, we burn more oil, more gas, more coal. And every year, the gap between what CCS can do and what we need grows wider.

The International Energy Agency says we’d need to multiply CCS capacity by ten, twenty, fifty times to make a dent. And that’s just to keep up with today’s emissions, never mind tomorrow’s. The math doesn’t add up. The timeline doesn’t work. The fantasy falls apart.

Here’s the part nobody talks about. Every dollar we pour into CCS is a dollar we didn't invest into ways to slow the collapse and mitigate its impacts. Instead, we’re propping up the status quo hoping it doesn't topple.

CCS is the fossil fuel industry’s last, best hope. It’s the fig leaf that lets them say, “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.” But they don’t. The numbers don’t lie. The projects don’t deliver.

Why do we cling to CCS? Because it lets us believe we don’t have to change. That we can keep driving, flying, consuming, as if nothing’s wrong. It’s denial, dressed up as technology. It’s hopium in its most dangerous form.