What are the benefits and drawbacks of carbon storage technologies?

There's no path to net zero without carbon storage anymore. Best estimates show we must remove roughly 10 gigatons from the atmosphere annually by mid-century to realistically limit climate effects. We need not one, but ALL types of carbon storage to bring down atmospheric CO2. I'm particularly interested in ocean storage, which if implemented correctly, has the potential to be the lowest cost, lowest energy form of carbon capture. After an initial energy input, the ocean will naturally drawdown carbon and store it in the deep ocean (essentially permanently - on the order of 10,000 years). We have potentially limitless ocean, which is not the case with land-based storage. This is a fantastic way to return carbon to its long-term cycle.

The many different carbon capture and storage approaches offer different time periods of storage. This is important to understand when companies and countries develop their portfolio of solutions to offset their carbon emissions. These can range from a few years to tens of thousands or longer. For food, as an example, is stored for just days as once eaten, an adult breaths about 1kg of CO2 per day, which came from food. Storage of CO2 into more permanent and medium to long term reservoirs must be prioritized. The requirement of storage is a monumental task and will necessitate storage of at least 94Gt of CO2 by 2050. This means development of hundreds of CO2 storage projects, each at millions of tons per year need to be deployed annually.

Adding to social and environment it may be used to extract geothermal heat if exists there. And in manufacturing different chemicals like polymers. It may generate job opportunities for skilled personnel. Negatively, it may leak, generate syngas, and may defeat ccs.

Search the internet (e.g. Wikipedia) using the search term CARBON ENGINEERING. There is much more information stored than I expected.

Carbon capture and storage has become an offshoot of fossil industries and thus become inevitable, as the world is struggling to move away from usage of fossil fuel due to lack of cheaper alternative. Carbon capture is nothing new as it has been practised by chemical industries for decades as part of petrochemical industries such as in Urea production.However the same technology becomes expensive when applied to power industry due to low percentage of CO2 in flue gases. Unless CO2 already emitted and absorbed by air and sea is captured economically and used to produce fuels such as SNG for recycling purpose (Carbon recycling technology) the CO2 emission along with water vapur will remain unabated and continue to cause global warming.

First and foremost, carbon storage buys us much needed time. While we wait for society to fully decarbonize, we need as much time as we can get. Carbon storage slows down the climate clock, a true climate time machine. This gives technology, business, and government policy a chance to catch up with a newly decarbonized world.

We have to deal with carbon in two ways, one by stopping the emission and another by removing the already added CO2. CO2 in ppm is already at its peak and CCUS can play a major role in removing already existing emissions.

CCS (Capture Capture and Storage) can reduce the emission and allow Industries to operate without polluting the atmosphere. CO2 can be converted into supercritical fluid, which then can be used to help run power generation turbines more efficiently.

Sequestering captured CO2 from the atmosphere is important for stabilizing climate. CCS is an emissions mitigation tactic to keep CO2 from entering the atmosphere from a combustion source. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a remediation strategy to reduce CO2 concentrations already in the atmosphere. However, reducing CO2 concentrations without ending emissions is like mopping up an overflowing sink without turning off the water. If atmospheric CO2 concentrations can be reduced from 420 to 300 ppm, almost pre-industrial levels, climates should stabilize.

When contemplating existential questions, the answers will vary depending on who you ask. State-of-the-art carbon storage technologies can enable powering the economy with lower GHG emissions while downsides to overcome are higher costs and potential reliability challenges due to higher operational complexity. So far, a relatively small number of professionals and social groups have had direct interaction with CCUS, usually through carbon sequestration projects and policy development. Therefore, CCUS is similar to a Zen koan: it offers a challenge and opens a dialogue that could ultimately pave the way to enlightenment. We have the Responsibility of Choice. It could be argued that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in this situation.

Basically its biggest drawback is that there are no large scale carbon capture operations yet. When carbon capture is actually up and running at a large scale, I will take it seriously. Also oil and gas companies should pay for it rather than governments.

Unbeknownst to most of us, injection of CO2 is nothing new. CO2 injection into wells has been around since the 1970's and had been used primarily as a method for enhancing hydrocarbon recovery from maturing fields. Ultimately, that is why the science/geoscience is paramount to derisk and minimize loses, and that is why geosciences and petroleum engineers will be relevant in this new energy mix.

Monitoring, verification, and reporting are incredibly difficult with carbon storage. "Carbon credits" have been on the market for years, but there has yet to be a global standard for tracking and verifying that carbon credits are transparent and accurate. There are also different quality forms of storage - permanent storage like that in geological formations or the ocean, and short-term storage in forests and biomass, which could be potentially released in a fire or similar. How are we keeping track of this "stored" carbon that maybe only stayed stored for 10 years? There is a lot to figure out still on this front.

Carbon dioxide needs better economics. There is a cost involved on all of the various capture techniques, and not many ways to recoup that cost. There are tax credits, recently increased in the U.S., that still barely cover costs. Carbon offset sales are another way to monetize carbon by selling credits to companies that emit CO2 in exchange for capture and storage. These are completely unregulated with widely variable prices and challenges tracking actual CCS. Captured CO2 is most often used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by re-pressurizing depleted oil fields to sweep out residual oil. This is profitable but of course not very helpful to climate. If captured CO2 can be monetized, the industry would blossom.

Every technology have some drawback and it's important to understand them and work on them. One of major issue is that CCUS require a lot of energy to run and if your grid is already at high fossil fuel then overall impact may go negative. Its also important to see other drawback and do more R&D as currently this technology is in initial stages only.

Geological carbon storage has several options under consideration. The first is depleted oil fields. These have existing wells and a trap and seal structure that can contain CO2. An oil company needs to be involved for access, equipment, and expertise, but so far few have shown interest. A second option is deep saline aquifers, which can contain the CO2 in solution at great depth. The drawback here is drilling costs to reach these depths. A third option that is actually being used in Iceland is basalt rock. These volcanic rocks react with aqueous solutions of CO2 to produce solid carbonate minerals in as little as two years. Farther out ideas include coal seams and depleted shale gas wells, which store the CO2 as an adsorbed gas.

Something we haven't considered as much as we should've in the past is the environmental and social effects of the big projects that make our world go round. I'm thinking of big energy - large capital projects to extract oil and gas haven't only led to the climate effects we see today, but have had negative effects on the local environment and communities. While carbon capture has good intentions, we must make sure we don't repeat our mistakes. Fully understanding any negative effects on local peoples is essential in understanding carbon storage tradeoffs. Getting community buy in based on well-rounded education of the issue is key. Only then will we be able to scale at the rate required and see global success in this field.

Carbon capture, both CCS and CDR are very much on the minds of frontline communities who don't want to be saddled with yet another industrial project that provides them with almost no benefits. Anyone working in this area needs to be acutely aware of how carbon capture might be perceived by the locals. Getting out into the community and educating people before starting the project is critical. The potential for a CCS project to affect their air quality, water quality, or economy will be questions that require answers.

carbon storage facilities can help reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and mitigate climate change, but they can also be expensive, have varying effectiveness, and pose safety concerns. It is important to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of carbon storage facilities when considering their implementation.