The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a 5-page report on the current state of carbon management.
The five pages were published on July 12, 2023, by the Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) unit of the IEA and are part of the larger Tracking Clean Energy Progress 2023 report.
According to the report, there is certainly a substantial growth in momentum in the carbon capture space with more than 500 new projects underway.
Since the beginning of last year, project developers have promised to have over 50 new carbon capture facilities up and running with a total capacity of capturing up to 125 million tons of CO2 per annum by 2030.
Even so, the deployment of carbon management technologies is still critically below the estimated capacity of capturing 1.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year that is required to reach net zero emissions by mid-century.
It is a similar situation with the announced storage capacity and the connecting infrastructure.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) efforts have also gained considerable momentum, particularly as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stressed the importance of not only reducing emissions but also removing residual CO2 from the atmosphere.
Relevant: IEA Says Carbon Markets Can Scale Direct Air Capture Tech
Technological solutions such as direct air capture or DAC are now in the spotlight, as the IEA report says, 130 new DAC facilities are expected to join the ranks of the existing 27 to hopefully achieve the goal of removing 75 Million tons of CO2 per year by 2030.
Other solutions like Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) are heavily falling behind, though, with removals from BECCS said to only reach 50 million tons of CO2 yearly by 2030, compared to the needed 190 million tons per year.
The IEA report calls on more targeted support for CDR solutions.
Read more: New IEA Report Shows 80% Increase In Carbon Storage Capacity
