The fossil industry has latched onto carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a lifeline for oil and gas production, DeSmog Blog concludes in a recent post, after observing activity at some of the side events during the United Nations climate conference in Bonn.

Although the technology is still generally considered experimental—and can lead to disastrous financial results when utilities try to deploy it—the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) still hosted four events in three days at Bonn, all dedicated to the goal of “making CCS fly,” DeSmog reports. With delegates gathered to map out implementation of the carbon reduction goals in the Paris agreement, an IETA brochure pinpointed the attraction of a technology option that could offer “a clear way forward without the need for a rapid abandonment of the world’s fossil resources.”

Under a partnership with the UN climate secretariat, IETA was able to secure 73 delegate passes for business representatives attending the conference [even though those passes are much harder to come by for civil society delegates—Ed.]. Many of them, representing fossil companies, “made the case for CCS as the solution for the industry to play a role in a low-carbon economy.”

Jim Herbertson, climate and energy lead at the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), said the low-carbon transition will play out “across the course of the century”, adding that “there is still a role for oil and gas”. David Hone, chief climate change advisor at Royal Dutch Shell, agreed that “we are likely to continue to have large emissions in the economy that will need CCS”.

Tellingly, Total SA’s Dominique Copin acknowledged fossil companies have “failed” to scale the technology up , so it’ll take big government subsidies to cover the cost of transforming their operations. 

“CCS is needed not only for the future of the oil and gas industry, but also for the rest of society,” he said, quickly adding: “It is for society first.” But “we will never make it if we don’t have strong support from our governments. It is outside the capacity of our companies, although they are quite big and healthy.”

That pitch was indirectly reinforced in the latest edition of the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Outlook, where a long-awaited low-emissions pathway depends on extensive, likely unrealistic use of negative emissions technology to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

While there’s nothing new about CCS, “the scale of industry promotion of the technology seems to have ramped up” at COP 23, DeSmog concludes. That didn’t sit well with civil society groups looking for commitments to faster, deeper greenhouse gas reductions during the UN conference.

“Across the fossil fuel industry, companies continue to use the future idea of CCS as a shield for continued investment in new fossil fuels,” Chris Littlecott of the E3G think tank told DeSmog. “In a sufficiently slow timetable, they can be making a lot of money with business as usual.”

Friends of the Earth UK campaigner Guy Shrubsole called CCS “a unicorn” and said the community is “running out of patience” with an industry that “has been dragging their feet for a long time”.

DeSmog notes the UK government’s new Clean Growth Strategy includes £100 million for carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) technology. And in Bonn, Total’s Copin said the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a consortium of 10 colossal fossils responsible for about 20% of the world’s oil and gas production, has been focusing its CCS work on that one country.

That’s got Carbon Capture and Storage Association CEO Luke Warren speculating the technology could create more than 225,000 jobs in the UK by 2060. But to get there, “we really need to be moving quite quickly,” he told a breakfast meeting in London. “We need to have our first projects operating by mid-2020s. That enables us to start to build up capacity into the 2030s, so that we can really have an industry that’s scalable over the period to 2050.”

In recent years, the momentum on CCS has been toward cancellation of projects and funding rather than scaling up.