Safer carbon capture and storage

Sunset over the oil industry: Depleted oil fields are one of the targets for carbon dioxide burial. Depleted oil fields are one of the targets for carbon dioxide burial and related technology development. The paper by Tyne et al., published in Nature December 2021 shows that subsurface microbial activity may make this type of carbon burial target more complex than originally thought - Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have increased significantly over the last 50 years, resulting in higher global temperatures and abrupt changes to Earth's climate. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the new technologies that scientists hope will play an important role in tackling the climate crisis. It involves the capture of CO2 from emissions from industrial processes, or from the burning of fossil fuels in power generation, which is then stored underground in geological formations. CCS will also be key if we want to produce "clean-burning" hydrogen from hydrocarbon systems. The UK government recently selected four sites to develop multi-billion-pound CCS projects as part of its scheme to cut 20-30m tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 from heavy industry.