Humanity's failure to draw down planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions – 41 billion tonnes in 2022 – has thrust once-marginal options for capping or reducing CO2 in the atmosphere to centre stage in climate policy and investment.
Carbon capture and storage and direct air capture are complex industrial processes that isolate CO2 but these newly booming technologies are fundamentally different and often conflated.
CCS siphons off CO2 from the exhaust, or flue gas, of fossil fuel-fired power plants, as well as heavy industry.
The exhaust from a coal-fired power plant is about 12 per cent CO2, while in steel and cement production it is typically double that.
Unlike CCS, which by itself only prevents additional carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, DAC extracts CO2 molecules already there.
Crucially, this makes DAC a "negative emissions" technology.
It can therefore generate credits for companies seeking to offset their greenhouse gas output – but only if the captured CO2 is permanently stored underground, such as in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or in saline aquifers.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in ambient air is only 420 parts per million (about 0.04 per cent), so corralling CO2 using DAC is far more energy intensive.
Once isolated using either CCS or DAC, CO2 can be used to make products, such as building materials or "green" aviation fuel, although some of that CO2 will seep back into the air.
"If the CO2 is utilised, then it is not removal," said Oliver Geden, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International Security Affairs.
The fossil fuel industry has been using CCS since the 1970s but not to prevent CO2 from leaching into the atmosphere.
Rather, oil and gas companies inject CO2 into oilfields to extract more crude more quickly.
Historically, bolting CCS facilities on to coal and gas-fired power plants and then storing the CO2 to reduce emissions has proven technically feasible but uneconomical.
The world's largest CCS plant, the Petra Nova facility in Texas, was mothballed three years after opening in 2017.
But the looming climate crisis and government subsidies have revived interest in CCS for the power sector and beyond.
At the end of 2022, there were 35 commercial-scale facilities worldwide applying carbon capture technology to industry, fuel transformation or power generation, isolating a total of 45 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2, according to the International Energy Agency.
DAC, by contrast, is very new. A total of 18 DAC plants globally only captured about as much CO2 last year (10,000 tonnes) as the world emits in 10 seconds.
Both CCS and DAC must be massively scaled up if they are to play a significant role in decarbonising the global economy.
To keep the midcentury net-zero target in play, CCS will need to divert 1.3 billion tonnes a year from power and industry – 30 times more than last year – by 2030, according to the IEA.
DAC must remove 60 metric tonnes CO2 per year by that date, several thousand-fold more than today.
But the nascent industry is burgeoning with new actors, and the first million-tonne-per-year plant is scheduled to come on line in the United States next year, with others following.
"It's a huge challenge but it's not unprecedented," University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gregory Nemet told AFP, citing other technologies, including solar panels, that have scaled up dramatically in a matter of decades.
Preparing a site to stock CO2 can take up to 10 years, so storage could become a serious bottleneck for both CCS and DAC development.
Carbon capture costs $15 to $20 per tonne for industrial processes with highly concentrated streams of CO2, and $40 to $120 per tonne for more diluted gas streams, such as in power generation.
DAC – still in its infancy – has much higher costs, ranging today from $600 to $1,000 per tonne of CO2 captured.
Those costs are projected to drop sharply to $100-$300 per tonne by 2050, according to the inaugural State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, published earlier this year.
As countries and companies feel the pinch from decarbonisation timetables and net-zero commitments, more money – public and private – is flowing towards both CCS and DAC.
In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act earmarks billions of dollars in tax credits for CCS.
The earlier Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides about $12 billion over five years.
Canada's 2022 budget also extends an investment tax credit that cuts the cost of CCS projects in half.
South Korea and China are also investing heavily in the sector, with China opening a 500,000 metric tonnes plant last month in Jiangsu Province.
In Europe, support comes at the national level and is orientated towards industry and storage, especially in the North Sea.
For DAC, a range of companies – Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, Stripe, Microsoft and H&M Group – have paid into a fund with a promise to collectively buy at least $1 billion of "permanent carbon removal" between 2022 and 200.
Last month, JP Morgan struck a $20 million, nine-year carbon removal deal with DAC pioneer Climeworks, based in Switzerland.
Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
More on animal trafficking
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What is the Supreme Petroleum Council?
The Abu Dhabi Supreme Petroleum Council was established in 1988 and is the highest governing body in Abu Dhabi’s oil and gas industry. The council formulates, oversees and executes the emirate’s petroleum-related policies. It also approves the allocation of capital spending across state-owned Adnoc’s upstream, downstream and midstream operations and functions as the company’s board of directors. The SPC’s mandate is also required for auctioning oil and gas concessions in Abu Dhabi and for awarding blocks to international oil companies. The council is chaired by Sheikh Khalifa, the President and Ruler of Abu Dhabi while Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, is the vice chairman.
EA Sports FC 25
Developer: EA Vancouver, EA Romania
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3.5/5
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
THE SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Power: 110 horsepower
Torque: 147Nm
Price: From Dh59,700
On sale: now
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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UAE
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
