What Is Carbon Capture?

Written By Teacher: Liz Ransom

As a High School Spanish teacher and student newspaper advisor, Liz has taught for over 20 years and has served as World Languages Department Chair and K-6 summer camp activities leader. She has worked in Ohio, Maine, New Jersey, Maryland, and Chile.

 Although solutions to climate change often focus on reducing carbon emissions, students will be intrigued to discover carbon capture as another tool in the fight against climate change. This video explains carbon capture in detail, as well as the pros and cons of this technology. This lesson from MIT engages students through multiple activities to analyze the large-scale possibilities of carbon capture. For a shorter take on the topic, this Ted talk describes an innovative way of turning cement from a carbon polluter into a carbon sink. These resources are sure to inspire students to stretch their imaginations and consider new possibilities for solving the climate crisis.

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to a collection of technologies that can combat climate change by reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The idea behind CCS is to capture the CO2 generated by burning fossil fuels before it is released to the atmosphere. The question is then: What to do with the captured CO2? Most current CCS strategies call for the injection of CO2 deep underground. This forms a “closed loop”, where the carbon is extracted from the Earth as fossil fuels and then is returned to the Earth as CO2.

How does CCS work?

Today, CCS projects are storing almost 45 million tons of CO2 every year, which is about the amount of CO2 emissions created by 10 million passenger cars. Capture generally takes place at large stationary sources of CO2, like power plants or industrial plants that make cement, steel, and chemicals. Most current carbon capture projects use a liquid to chemically remove the CO2 before it goes out the smokestack, but several new types of capture processes are under development.

The captured CO2 gas is then compressed so it becomes liquid-like and transported to a storage site, generally through a pipeline. Ship transport is more expensive than using pipelines, but it is being considered in both Europe and Japan. Once at the storage site, the CO2 is pumped more than 2,500 feet down wells into geological formations like used-up oil and gas reservoirs, as well as formations that contain unusable, salty water.