Can carbon capture and storage unlock `unburnable carbon'?

Abstract

The concept of ‘unburnable carbon’ emerged in 2011, and stems from the observation that if all known fossil fuel reserves are extracted and converted to CO 2 (unabated), it would exceed the carbon budget and have a very significant effect on the climate. Therefore, if global warming is to be limited to the COP21 target, some of the known fossil fuel reserves should remain unburnt. Sev eral recent reports have highlighted the scale of the challenge, drawing on scenarios of climate change mitigation and their implications for the projected consump tion of fossil fuels. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a critical and available mitigation opportunity and its contribution to timely and cost - effective decarbonis atio n of the energy system is widely recognised. However, while some st udies have considered the role of CCS in enabling access to more fossil fuels, no detailed analysis on this issue has been undertaken. Th is paper presents a critical review focusing on the technologies that can be applied to en able access to, or ‘unlock’, fossil fuel reserves in a way that will meet climate targets and mitigate climate change. It also quantifies the impact of CCS in unlocking unburnable carbon in the first and in the second half of the century.