Why can’t we just trap carbon dioxide direct from power stations and bury it deep underground?
The technology now exists to capture carbon dioxide direct from any major source emitting the gas, such as power plants, and store the gas underground; an approach commonly referred to Carbon Capture and Storage (or CCS). A number of options are available to store the gas below the surface, including saline aquifers, existing oil and gas fields, and unmineable coal seams. Unfortunately, there are still major problems with this approach. Not only are there real concerns that captured gases may escape back to the atmosphere, but CCS only deals with greenhouse gas emissions produced by large single sources, such as power stations. Although these represent up to 60% of global emissions of carbon dioxide, this still leaves 40% of the problem escaping to the atmosphere. If this wasn’t enough, CCS won’t become commercially available for at least another decade and can only capture carbon dioxide being released in the future; it does nothing to claw back the CO2 that is already in the atmosphe
