Oil, gas and coal still made up 81.5 percent of the global energy mix in 2022 — down just 3 percent from 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was signed. 

Given the slow pace of the energy transition, carbon capture and storage, or CCS, has the potential to become an important technology for achieving net zero. Advocates believe that without CCS — which gathers emissions, processes them and stores them safely underground — we simply won’t meet our climate targets. 

But the technology faces a range of obstacles. Campaign groups believe CCS offers oil and gas companies a free pass to keep extracting and burning fossil fuels. Others worry about the safety of stored carbon dioxide. There are also practical constraints. CCS technology, while proven, is expensive to install, and needs subsidies and financial incentives to encourage the industry to make the short-term capital investment needed.  

In this podcast episode produced by POLITICO Studio, science and technology writer Adam Green interviews leading European experts from industry and policy about the need for CCS, what’s holding it back and where it fits into Europe’s energy transition.  

Ruth Herbert, CEO of Carbon Capture and Storage Association, breaks down the fundamentals of CCS. Chris Davies, a former member of the European Parliament and now director of CCS Europe, talks about the need to educate the public on the safety of onshore CCS. Jan Theulen, of building material producer Heidelberg Materials, explains why industries such as cement, where production itself results in large CO2 emissions, will need CCS most. And Torbjørg Klara Heskestad, vice president for global CCS solutions at Equinor, speaks about shared infrastructure that will help reduce the costs of CCS for carbon emitters.  

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