Given that oil and gas producers dominate the sector, many environmental groups and civil society organizations suspect that investments in Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) are being used to divert attention and resources away from a quicker build-out of renewable energy systems and other proven methods of addressing climate change. At the end of 2022, as several of the world’s largest petrochemical firms announced ambitious CCS investment plans, the European Union finally released a draft of their proposed CCS framework. As lead blogger and podcaster Michael Buchsbaum discusses, hundreds of environmental, climate and civil society groups, including the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, immediately deemed it a “smokescreen for inaction.” Saudi Aramco to create massive CCS hub According to the Global CCS Institute’s database, about 220 commercial-scale CCS facilities of various sizes are now planned worldwide. Of those, 15 are specifically intended to use captured CO2 to produce more oil, a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), with the rest storing their CO2 geologically. This differs dramatically from the current state of CCS, where 22 out of the … Continue reading Smokescreen for climate inaction: CCS starts to take off in Saudi Arabia and Europe