Progress on Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage Is Good News

In early March, oil and gas firms Chevron and Talos Energy announced their intention to triple the size of the proposed Bayou Bend carbon capture and storage hub, which will collect and store greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities along the Gulf Coast. The expanded hub could store more than one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂), making it one of the largest carbon storage projects in the world upon completion.

Not everyone is convinced that recent progress on large-scale carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects is good news. Critics argue that CCUS technology is costly, unproven, and will give fossil fuels an undesirable “new lease on life.” But if the world is serious about addressing climate change, we should welcome forward momentum on this critical technology.

CCUS technology—which captures CO₂ emissions from industrial facilities and reuses or stores them underground—supports the energy transition in several ways. These include reducing emissions from existing power plants; providing decarbonization solutions in hard-to-abate sectors such as cement, iron and steel, and chemical manufacturing; supporting the rapid scaling up of low‐carbon hydrogen production; and enabling negative emissions technologies like direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.