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PERSPECTIVE
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 5 APRIL 2017 | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3231
Web End =DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3231
The role of CO2 capture and utilization in mitigating climate change
Niall Mac Dowell1,2*, Paul S. Fennell3, Nilay Shah2,3 and Georey C. Maitland2,3
To oset the cost associated with CO2 capture and storage (CCS), there is growing interest in nding commercially viable enduse opportunities for the captured CO2. In this Perspective, we discuss the potential contribution of carbon capture and utilization (CCU). Owing to the scale and rate of CO2 production compared to that of utilization allowing long-term sequestration, it is highly improbable the chemical conversion of CO2 will account for more than 1% of the mitigation challenge, and even a scaled-up enhanced oil recovery (EOR)-CCS industry will likely only account for 48%. Therefore, whilst CO2-EOR may be an important economic incentive for some early CCS projects, CCU may prove to be a costly distraction, nancially and politically, from the real task of mitigation.
mitigation scenario (LMS) reference scenario, ELMS. Therefore, MC can be expressed as equation (1):
=
MC
(t t )(E (t )E )
2
The continued growth in anthropogenic CO2 emissions would appear to be characterized by one wordinexorable. Despite a growing number of climate change mitigation policies, anthro
pogenic CO2 emissions in the period 20002014 grew at an average rate of 2.6% per year, in contrast with an average rate of 1.72% per year in the period 197020001,2. Indeed, in the period 20102014, emissions increased from approximately 31.9 to 35.5GtCO2 per year;
an average rate of 2.75% per year2. With the exception of a one-year reduction from 2008 to 2009, every year of this century has seen a year-on-year increase in anthropogenic CO2emissions.
It has become commonplace to discuss future emission trajectories in terms of scenarios from, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) or the IPCC. Both the IEA and IPCC project that a world commensurate with no more than 2C of warming above pre-industrial levels is one in which total anthropogenic CO2 emissions are reduced to something less than 20 GtCO2 per year by 2050, with further reductions to near-zero or even net-negative emissions by the end of the century. This is typically referred to as the two-degree scenario or 2DS. At the other end of the...