Genetic Literacy Project, January 2025
More than 200 kilometers off Norway’s coast in the North Sea sits the world’s first offshore carbon-capture-and-storage project. Built in 1996, the Sleipner project strips carbon dioxide from natural gas — largely made up of methane — to make it marketable. But instead of releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, the greenhouse gas is buried. The effort stores around 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year — and is praised by many as a pioneering success in global attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. [In 2023], total global CO2 emissions hit an all-time high of around 35.8 billion tons, or gigatons. At these levels, scientists estimate, we have roughly six years left before we emit so much CO2 that global warming will consistently exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above average preindustrial temperatures, an internationally agreed-upon limit. (Notably, the global average temperature for the past 12 months has exceeded this threshold.)
Phasing out fossil fuels is key to cutting emissions and fighting climate change. But a suite of technologies collectively known as carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, are among the tools available to help meet global targets to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2030 and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. These technologies capture, use or store away CO2 emitted by power generation or industrial processes, or suck it directly out of the air. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body charged with assessing climate change science, includes carbon capture and storage among the actions needed to slash emissions and meet temperature targets.
