Carbon dioxide capture and storage ("CCS") technologies present one possibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with fossil fuel use.  Among the many options for carbon mitigation, CCS stands out because of its relationship to contemporary patterns of energy use around the world. Fossil fuels dominate the global energy mix, and are projected to do so for years to come (e.g. IEA, 2008).

To date, many studies have described the engineering and geologic aspects of CCS. Some have projected the technical potential for sequestration as a climate mitigation option. Most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (2005), synthesizing the available literature. In particular, the Special Report discussed the contribution of CCS to the results of the IPCC Third Assessment Report mitigation scenarios (IPCC, 2001). As I discuss in the next section, the IPCC suggests a large and important role for CCS in controlling anthropogenic CO2 emissions, with the scale depending on the economic, technological, and demographic path global society takes.

However, there are only a small handful of carbon dioxide storage projects operating at present, totaling about 7 MtCO2 per year (Rai et al., 2008). Furthermore, most projects operate for the purpose of enhanced oil recovery, rather than climate mitigation; there is not a single, commercial-scale power plant in operation that sequesters its emissions. Hence, all studies on future costs and deployment of commercial CCS systems are either based on limited inference, or purely theoretical constructs.

Now, with the release of a database of publicly known CCS projects under development (Rai et al., 2008), it is possible to gauge the short-term potential for CCS. Based on this database, I create four empirically grounded scenarios about the development of the CCS industry to 2020. I then calculate the sustained growth needed to meet the sequestration estimates reported by the IPCC over the course of this century from these possible starting points.  

The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the current expectations for CCS as a climate mitigation option. Section 3 describes the data and methods used to analyze the potential for CCS in this study. Section 4 reports the results of my analysis. Finally, Section 5 discusses the implications of these results for the energy modeling and climate policy communities.