The world’s sleekest dump sits on an island near the picturesque port of Bergen in Norway. Strictly speaking, the gleaming Northern Lights terminal is just the gateway to the actual dump, where carbon dioxide will be off-loaded from ships and then pumped down into an aquifer 2.6 kilometers below the seabed, about 95.5 km offshore, keeping it locked away.
Getting to net zero mostly means stopping doing things that emit carbon. A supplement to this is capturing those emissions and storing them, like refuse in a landfill. In theory, carbon capture and storage (CCS), offers the ultimate climate hedge for fossil fuel producers, albeit at a cost of perhaps $10 trillion through 2050. More likely, it will play a vital role in mopping up the most stubborn emissions, but will be outcompeted by faster-moving alternatives for the energy transition. Moreover, the incentives required to make it work would present, in themselves, a profound risk to fossil fuel producers.
Of the emissions that need to be eliminated to achieve net zero in 2050, Bloomberg NEF projects CCS accounting for 16% of them. The amount being captured annually by 2050, more than 8 gigatons, would be bigger than the total energy-related emissions of the Americas today.