Causes for optimism for nascent CCS

Progress with CCS is slow, but it's still progress, say Gardiner Hill, director of CCS technology at BP, and Lewis Gillies, head of Hydrogen Energy

CARBON capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that will – probably – be indispensible to attempts to prevent climate change. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), it could provide a fifth of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions cuts the world needs to make by 2050. But unlike many other low-carbon technologies – renewables, nuclear and energy efficiency – the idea remains untested. The most frequent criticism of the sector's development is that the demonstration projects needed to prove that CCS can operate safely and economically at scale aren't sufficiently advanced. "There's a gap in our strategy that needs to be plugged immediately," says Gardiner Hill, director of CCS tec