The Evolving International CCS Community

In the past decade, carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) has emerged as a controversial climate mitigation technology with important political salience. Visions of ‘clean’ coal-fired power plants that will not emit CO₂ into the atmosphere have provided powerful motivation for large public and private investments in CCS technology (Bäckstrand et al. 2011; Meadowcroft and Langhelle 2009a). The scale of CO₂ emission reductions deemed necessary for climate stabilization is so large that some CCS experts and scientists consider CCS a necessary future technology without which society may not be able to achieve acceptable emissions reductions to mitigate climate change (Pacala and Socolow 2004; Schrag 2009). On the other hand, some have questioned whether CCS could actually slow down a necessary transition toward renewable-based energy systems (Greenpeace International 2008; Shackley and Thompson 2012;Vergragt et al. 2011).